Death in Society by Juliette

Death in Society

by Juliette

What place does death has in our daily life? How people see death and how do they feel about death?
Death is universal and guarantees the end of life, the extinction of breath and the cessation of bodily functions. Death is natural, unavoidable, fatal. In our modern society, death intrigues, surprises, terrifies but stays, above all, the unique way out for human beings. Man is not immortal, he’s ephemeral and soon after he cares to life, he becomes conscious that he will die one day. He doesn’t know when, where nor how. However, maybe this ignorance contributes to shape death as something mystic and mysterious for him.

Jean is an old friend of mine, the only one with who I can easily talk about this fastidious subject. Knowing that we have the same point of view of life, I was interesting in discovering if we had the same vista on death. Jean is fifty years old, her experience made me think that she had seen a few people leaving this world. Even if my interview meant digging up old wounds she was pleased to have that honour of being my interviewee.

Jean, first give me 3 adjectives that easily come to you if I ask you to characterize death.
I would say distressing, mysterious and hurtful

Did someone around you ever passed away?   How did you take that loss?
I lost my eldest cousin 3 months ago. She had a cancer: everybody knew she was going to die, so it was easier to handle. Yet, she was my cousin and I grew up with her, used to see her twice a year, she wasn’t really someone I was close to. She died so quickly I couldn’t see it coming. I really was shocked and badly surprise. It made me sad and it reminded me how fragile life is.

Beyond sadness, what did you feel?
I felt relieved for her. All that she’d been through was rough and no one would like to live like she did in the last years. But what I felt most was like if I was in some fantasy, like as if all of this had been a dream. A huge dream where everyone hadn’t really realize what had happened. I felt like everyone was blinded by sadness and that feeling of never seeing her again. This is, of course, entirely natural: losing a person is more painful that we think but it’s more than painful it’s unrealistic. I realized that her soul and her body were in the coffin, and it made the dream even bigger, into something unreal!

I can see that you’re finally realizing what it meant to you and I’d like to know if you speak easily about death with people around you? Because I am an interviewer and it’s part of my job to ask you questions and talk with you about death but it’s quite not the same with people that you see everyday..
To be trustful, I don’t. I mean, you can’t come to the office and say “Oh Jane, did I tell you that my cousin died of cancer!” Those things are things you keep to yourself and only share with family members who are aware of the events. I can’t start a conversation about death, even if I wouldn’t mind because I can talk easily about this. Some people simply think that it’s a delicate topic. It doesn’t surprise me to see that death is a taboo because it is! I can’t talk about death with everyone; people might think that I have problems or that I’m a morbid person. If people only could get over this idea that death isn’t to talk about maybe this society wouldn’t be so afraid of death. Death, even though it brings a lot of sad feelings, is something natural.

In that case, which way would you like to die?
I don’t know how I would like to die but I know how I wouldn’t like to. It’s simple: every painful way of dying, when you realize you’re going to die slowly: the stress of drowning, the pain of burning, the cold of freezing.

Do you think violent deaths affect people more than natural death? Why?
I do! I mean would you prefer to lose your son in a car accident, that you didn’t expect at all or that he died of leukaemia so you can accept little by little this illness and that he’ll pass away, enjoy the last moments, tell him everything is going to be fine and you’ll love him forever? Parents whose children has been murdered are never going to recover in the same way as parents who have lost their child to an illness. Violent deaths are even more frightening than natural and gentle deaths. Such deaths contain something that troubles one’s sense of humanity, something that stays in you, something terribly powerful and shocking.

Why do you think that death is so hurtful (morally)?
Us, humans, only know what it is to live. We don’t know how it is to die. We have this constant doubt and ignorance of what’s next. Every person we lose, even person that is close to us and that leaves, goes to the unknown land, hurts us. Because we are linked to each other by what I call human link. We are used living together, to create links and relationships that establish strong feelings. When a person dies, you know those mutual feelings are gone because this person is gone, you’ll never get to hold her, feel her warmth, hear the noise of her breath, hear the sound of her voice for real. There is a lack, an absence. You’re abandoned, alone and at the same time you realize that it can happen to you anytime, that you’re so vulnerable, so small and reckless. You’re just a little ant on a watermelon. Such a mixture of feelings actually hurts you, because you feel ephemeral, momentary.  

How do you live with death in general, in daily life? I try not to think too much about it, but we are overexposed to death. Death is everywhere! In TV programmes, films, documentaries, in journals, in games, in books. This determination to make death a banal moment has its defaults, it creates the impression we can protect ourselves but it also makes the world more violent. All these games and movies that show death as a banal thing in the end are really bad for our sense of morality. I think I accept this stage of life, but many people deny it when they should just think about it and make their own opinions that should create a kind of shield that protects them. By denying death we are just making ourselves more vulnerable. How can you fight an enemy if you haven’t ever asked yourself what that enemy represents?

As my guest spoke, I realized how fragile our little world is. Death doesn’t have its place in the society apart from sitcoms, movies or video games where it has become really banal because of the way it is represented: in sitcoms for example, the actors that play a man or a woman who has just lost a member of their family act the same way as a woman or a man that has just lost their dog. They show no real feelings, no extreme sadness and in fact it is not a realistic reaction. What the audience wants to see is how the police is going to resolve the murder and who is going to be the murderer not how the human reacted to his feelings.  When I look straight at real life, I realize that, in fact, death troubles people; it makes them uncomfortable and marks forever. Death is seen as a negative event. It doesn’t bring peace for the people still alive. The barricade they make around themselves to protect themselves contributes to the pain they will have when they are going to lose someone close to them. This barricade will contribute to the disappointment, the surprise and yet, also the sudden realization that we are all going to die. Death, in our society, is a taboo. Just count 6 seconds and think that someone just died. Do you see any change? No, because you have to keep living and accept the idea that people come and go.