We are a death-denying society. We don’t like to talk about it or even think much about it. Yet, we all know that death is an important part of life. Indeed, nature has a plan that includes birth, death and rebirth in equal parts. It takes a great understanding and more than what our culture can offer for us to reach this kind of faith and acceptance in the process.

My cat, Jazz, died on Saturday. He was old in cat years - 14 - yet showed no current signs of sickness. He heart just gave out. Within my sadness was the relief that he did not have prolonged suffering. There are few ways that the death of a pet can compare to that of a human loved one, yet it confronted me, once again, with the strange ways that we handle - or mishandle - death in this society.

I recently watched, “Darjeeling Limited”, a covertly thought-provoking movie and I was moved by a scene where a father prepared his son’s body for a cremation ceremony. This struck me because modern societies have moved so far away from any nature-based rituals concerning death. Instead, we send bodies to be embalmed and dressed by strangers, covering them with make-up and put into fortress-like caskets before we bury them in the ground.

Associate Professor of religion and women’s studies at Skidmore College, Mary Zeiss Stange, speaks about death in Sierra Magazine, “Our culture has a kind of schizophrenic relationship with death and dying. On the one hand, we are obsessed with youth - fearful and shocked by any idea of aging. In old age, we choose a drug and technology-filled existence over quality of life. On the other hand, we are literally and figuratively numbed and indifferent to the images of violent death we watch daily in tv and movies.”

I have hope that the wave of awareness of nature washing over the world will include new and/or old ways to help us acknowledge and handle aging and death. For I believe it holds more clues about life.

For more on aging and death, try this.

Tags: animals, culture, nature

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 at 2:29 pm and is filed under Green Misc., Philosophy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.