Not only old people, but youths also, die, and daily, some of diseases or calamities, some as victims of abuse, their own or others’ or both, indeed, some even kill themselves. But no youth dies of old age. Even when the elderly die of old age, that is just a comfortable cover up for our neglect of them. Yes, people old and young sometimes make it impossible for others to love them, and so they die by rendering themselves incurable. All of us may push away exactly that which would heal us.
In the film, The Fountain, a young medical research scientist, overcome by grief at the death of his young wife, abruptly tears himself away during their friend’s graveside eulogy. When she goes after him to bring him back, through his tears he indignantly declares, ‘Death is a disease, it's like any other. And there's a cure. A cure, and I will find it.’ The scene is deeply planted with pathos, and it seems he can never recover or avail himself of his wife’s confidence in the goodness of bodily death. But is it good?
Not believing in her recovery, she becomes fascinated by Mayan myths about the underworld which, unlike the Hades of the Greeks, is in the remote heavens, not below the earth. Xibalba, the Mayan world of the dead, is located in the Orion Nebula—though this is only in the film: actually it is below the earth as in other cultures—but it provides the mystic backdrop for the theme of immortality that drives the story. Now movies, in ancient times myths, still feed our hopes, but in vain. We know something’s wrong.
Yes, the death of children, and not just infants, boys and girls, but young men and women, their lives cut short—we call it tragedy. I learned the meaning of tragedy in my high school English literature class, and I’ve never forgotten it: not being able to realize one’s potential. That may seem dry and academic, but not to the teenager that I was. Tragedy was always lurking around the next corner for me. One of my favorite poems in that class was, To An Athlete Dying Young.
What makes me ramble on these hard thoughts? A friend of a friend, a boy aged twenty-two, passed away a couple of days ago. What the circumstances were, I do not know. What I was told is that he was from a troubled family background and had come out West to get away from it. Trying to settle here, he met with even greater dangers, and in the end succumbed. I asked myself, ‘Where was his dad?’ knowing full well that though a dad may want to help, a son often doesn’t want him.
Sadness, and grievous silence, and aching hearts, these are our protection against fully realizing the finality of bodily death. We would prefer cremation, too, because no one wants to have to see a body: death is then too real for us, and bigger than life. If we are dust, we can wax poetic again, ‘Dust in the wind, all we are is dust in the wind.’ We dare not ask ourselves if this is really true. We dare not ask, because we do not really believe, we are made of dust, but that’s not what we are.
Christianity for some is a kind of comfort. For others, it’s reincarnation. For the young woman dying in The Fountain, it was a solace for her that the matter of which her body was made might live again in a tree, or take wing as part of a bird. The immortality of the poet Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass is a similar idea, ‘If you want me again look for me under your boot soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, but I shall be good help to you nevertheless and filter and fiber your blood.’
But the resurrection of Jesus Christ means more than the reawakening of the earth’s green things in the spring. It even means more than the weekly celebration of it in the services of the Church. In times of grief, we let ourselves be lulled into religious euphoria to kill the pain. It takes time for the mist of our grief to burn off. But the truth is, Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and to those in the tombs bestowing life. ‘I am the Resurrection,’ He tells us, and asks, ‘Do you believe this?’
1 comment:
I like your definition of tragedy, meaning--not to have fulfilled one's potential. When I was in high school, my literature teacher was very firm in teaching us that the definition of tragedy in Shakespeare's works meant--having a downfall because of one's own character flaws. Regarding death, including untimely or sudden death, I think people often look at it comparatively. The death of a young person seems worse than the death of an old person in terms of the number of years lived. However, the old person, too, can die tragically (not having fulfilled their potential). We might say that the old person had more chances at fulfillment, but we might also say that the old person had more years in which to suffer on this earth.
Yes, I understand how people feel and I feel that way too. There is extreme grief at the death of a child or young adult. Yet, we cannot compare one life against another. One life is not worth more than another. The life of a child is not worth more than the life of an old person--even though that old person might gladly trade places and die instead of the youth.
Nothing makes sense unless, as you said, we look at everything within the Resurrection. We live in an era in which we must be vigilant, and we must pray for others, so that we do not die tragically--that is, not having known Christ.
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