Let's Talk about Death!

In general, people do not want or like to talk about death. Even when death is approaching, most of us choose to avoid mentioning this term – Death. Of course, there are quite a few words that can substitute “Death”, e.g. passed away, deceased, gone, left, etc., or even some more interesting words like expired, uplift, flown away, and rejoined by other loved ones. The intention of choosing alternative words is all good, except that this shows how much we want to avoid “Death”!


The more you think about it, the stranger feeling you would acquire. The thinking goes like this: Birth is the first stage of life while death is the last stage of life. If only birth without death, the life process is not complete! You may also see birth and death as two sides of the same coin. You would not have birth on one side and also birth on the other side. Most interesting of all, death (and of course birth) is taking place everyday, everywhere and to everyone. It is impossible that you can live in a place without death, or you can find a community that does not experience death. Yet death is so difficult to be faced or even discussed.

The more so, in some culture such as Chinese or generally Asian, death should be totally avoided, especially to the elderly people. If you see a sick person in terminal illness and clearly with a few days left, people will lie (yes it’s simply a lie) and wish the person “Everything will be okay and you will get well soon!” There is some worse situation that the person was hidden from the truth of his/her illness up to point that he/she died. Does the person has the right even to know he/she is being cheated? How would he/she feel, at the last moment of his/her life, to find out he/she indeed is going to die? Is it really more beneficial to the person if he/she does not know about his/her destiny? Rather, would it be better if we are better equipped and prepared for our death, not only as an individual but also as a community? Should we not change this tradition attitude of “avoiding death” to “openly talk about death”, to “accept death is an integral part of the life process”, to “death is good and it’s a joy to die!”?

In school, we are trained on various academic subjects, from mathematics to history, from biology to social studies. Our intelligence and knowledge education is significant. Meantime, we are seldom trained to grow emotionally. No one teaches us how to handle life crisis in school and when life crisis happens to us (or someone nearby), it is typical that we try to hide our feeling or waiting for time to heal us. Worse, if something happens to ourselves, or to someone we love, and if death becomes inevitable, we usually are not readily prepared for it and easily find either numbness or emotional unsettlement within us.

On the bright side, if we start making changes in this direction, i.e. to start promoting discussion of death more openly, to accept death is inevitable, or even to make the best sense and meaning out of death, we can actually live a happier life today! We are able to treasure what we have now, who we are with, and most important of all, death will no longer a painful process, it becomes a joy – the Joy of Growth and the Joy of Achieving Inner Peace! By doing this, we create a win-win scenario for BOTH the dying one and living ones. The dying one will see the living ones are living stronger and happier and thus to reduce the dying one’s emotional burden and concern. While the dying one can depart with enriched attitude and internal peace and thus to make the living ones happy and relax as in the future days, after the dying one died, they will continue to keep this happy picture in mind which should sooth their downtime!

Think again … is this a better and more sensible approach towards death? Being a dying person myself, let me tell ya … I am going to openly talk about death, I am going to live peacefully with death in the next few months (while continue to face and fight my treatment challenges), and I am trying the best I can to out-live death. Not that I will recover, but I want to make this dying process more meaningful and rewarding, for me and my loved ones!