I Am Not Afraid to Die

I am not afraid to die, even though I am agnostic about the afterlife, if there is one—about judgment, bliss, suffering, and all the other elements that tradition has accreted onto the afterlife, creating Heaven and Hell.

I am afraid of dying, the process of life coming to an end. If it occurs by gentle decline, I will be okay with it; I am already trembling and weak and have many old-man emergencies. Nobody escapes these things. I just don’t want to die in any of the spectacularly painful and outrageous ways that we hear about on the news literally every day all over the world, whether it is a kid getting shot at school in America or a kid dying of malaria in Africa.

A quiet death at the end of a good life does not bother me. What makes me and almost everyone who thinks about it furious is an untimely death, for example, of a young person (a child, or a soldier, or in a death camp). An example is the Franz Schubert song Death and the Maiden, which he wrote into a quartet. Why should death come to a young woman who has done nothing to deserve suffering? The thought of this made Schubert furious. The Death and the Maiden quartet is one of the few places in Schubert’s music in which his fury makes him totally lose control. Usually he weaves his musical motifs together beautifully, even when the subject is depressing (as many of his songs are). But if you listen to this piece of music you can hear a couple of measures where the musical structure just falls apart into clamor. It was Schubert’s brief excursion into insanity.

I refuse to continue this list of examples. But if the end of my life can be quiet, then I can slip into death. I have no fear of this, for several reasons.

First, I won’t know I’m dead. I won’t be caught in blankets of darkness and silence, but with a conscious mind telling me, oh no, I’m dead, and I have to be aware of being dead forever. Literally nobody believes this. I won’t wake up dead some morning. It’s like the song set to the tune of Irish washerwoman:

McTavish is dead and his brother don’t know it

McTavish is dead and his brother don’t know it

They’re both of them dead, they’re in the same bed

And neither one knows that the other is dead.

If this seems bloody obvious, I merely point out that it is also comforting.

Second, the story has to come to an end sometime. I finished an academic career, and I figured out a lot of things about life during my journey from fundamentalism to agnosticism, and about the world of science. What an exciting journey it has been, from the top of Mt. Whitney to the bottom of Badwater, from the tropical forest to the desert, seeing the large and small wonders of the natural world that most people walk right past without noticing. I have written books in which I have shared my excitement about the world with my readers. But I retired and am preparing for the final phase of my life, primarily as a grandfather. There is no plot if there is no conclusion. I want to draw my life into a conclusion that makes sense and makes sensible all of the things I have thought and experienced, in such a way that I can help other people make sense of their lives.

We all know this. We all know that, as we grow older, certain investments are ridiculous. I take hikes and eat moderately in order to maintain health in my remaining days, for my own comfort but also so that I do not make myself a decrepit nuisance on others who will take care of me. A few years ago a dentist tried to interest me in straightening my lower teeth. Nobody can see them. This might be a sensible investment for someone who is just entering a profession, to put a good face on things, but for a fifty-year-old man, as I was at the time, it is like decorating something that you will soon discard. There is a relief in knowing that old things, such as old bodies, do not need to be maintained in pristine condition

The story has to draw to a conclusion. Can you imagine the tedium of playing harps and singing hymns forever? To explore this idea further, you should read Mark Twain’s Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven.

Third, suppose there is an afterlife? There are lots of fundamentalists who think that if you disagree with them on even the tiniest theological point, even from ignorance, you will suffer infintely forever. Yet they also claim that God is love. This is utterly ridiculous. I have chosen to live a life of love. Every day and every year I look back and evaluate myself: Have I made the best use of my opportunities? Have I made life better for other people (maybe not everyone, but most people)? These are not vague thoughts. I keep a very detailed diary, which is separate from my journal. Nobody will ever read them; there are too many millions of words in them. Their main function is to focus my mind on the way I am living, to be consciously happy about the blessings I receive each day, but also to plan ahead. I plan ahead to accomplish things that will make the world better; and if I fail in some of those things, I try to let go of them. As John says in the New Testament, “He who loves is born of God and knows God; he who does not love does not know God.” It’s pretty simple. If there is an afterlife, I am ready for it, by any reasonable standard

I do not want to die before I have finished my work. I may not have a choice in this, but I try to keep my body and mind healthy so that I can finish more books, for example. I do not want an untimely death.

 

In many cases, dying is a tragedy. But timely death is not.