Death should be treated as a natural part of a life led as part of nature.
Death denatured.
In modern societies death has been completely denatured both for the dying and for those who survive them. People are removed from family and home, hospitalized, subjected to medical technologies and impersonal hospital rules. Often they die alone in strange surroundings, surrounded by strangers.
The funeral ceremony is usually in the hands of professional priests and undertakers who may play a role of respect and compassion but for whom the dead person is basically another product in a line. Bodies are disposed of in ways that prevent them returning to nature, or that often actually damage the environment. Death is kept behind closed doors, the process of death and the facts of death taken away from the survivors so they are unable to say proper farewells and unable to work through the grieving process.
The pantheist approach to death.
Pantheism has a characteristic approach to death, based on its approach to life. In life, we are an inseparable part of the divine reality and of nature. In death we should aim to remain so.
Death should be treated as a natural part of a life led as part of nature. Medicalized, hospitalized, sanitized death – death that denies death, that stifles grief – should be replaced by natural death and natural grief.
The steps needed to achieve this are important for the psychological health of the dying and of their loved ones, and they can also help the health of the planet.
Avoidance of painful prolongation.
Life has given every animal the will to survive. Through good diet and exercise, we should all seek to prolong our healthy and active life as long as we can.
When humans cling grimly to the last glimmer of life, they are only obeying animal instinct. But we have the intelligence to rise above animal instinct when it is better to do so. There comes a time in every life when clawing at the cliff edge with splintering fingernails is no longer dignified or worthwhile. At that time we should have the courage simply to let go. To forego massive, costly medical intervention to prolong a life that is essentially over.
Imagine that you are dying of an incurable disease in hospital. You are resigned to the fact, you have faced up to it, and you are prepared for death. The moment comes, your heart stops beating, you are embarked on your last journey. Then an emergency team arrives, shouting, pressing electrodes to your chest, applying shocks to get your heart going again, to force you back into a life that you have already said farewell to.
Doctors naturally assume that everyone wants to live under any circumstances. But this is not always the case. If you do not wish this sort of scene to interfere with your natural experience of dying, then you should prepare a living will while you are still able to do so.
Albert Einstein, when his life was threatened by bleeding from a hardened aorta, refused an operation which would have given him a fifty- fifty chance of survival, even though this meant almost certain death. “The end comes some time,” he told his housekeeper, “does it matter when?”
Death at home.
It is unnatural to die in hospital, festooned with tubes and bags, cocooned in plastic tents, surrounded by bleeping monitors. Claudia Melnyk’s husband Andy was admitted to hospital with a brain tumour.
“He lost his identity, becoming the `nil-by-mouth’ or `bed two.’ And visiting him, I was ever, myself, conscious always of other visitors, the routine, the regulations. If our children were allowed in, they fidgeted, wishing themselves elsewhere . . . Medical institutions necessarily dictate conditions – where patients sleep, wash or eat; where, when, and even if they can see visitors. One cannot control the environment – cleaners bang around the beds, telephones ring unanswered, night nurses chatter and patients call out in pain or delirium. My visits often coincided with Andy’s meals or with the doctors’ rounds, when I would be banished to the corridor.”
For victims of sudden trauma a hospital death cannot be avoided. But people facing an expected death should be allowed or encouraged – by relatives as well as by professionals – to return to die in their own homes, with nursing care and pain-relief as appropriate. They could then die in a humane environment, near the people, the places, the animals and the plants that they love. This would also allow their family to face up to the natural reality of death, and to experience the full grieving process needed to accept and transcend the loss of a loved one.
Claudia brought Andy Melnyk home to die.
[From an article by Claudia Melnyk in The Guardian, March 3rd, 1990.]“In hospital I could only hold his hand; at home I slept in his bed. Family and friends came daily to say goodbye with a kiss, a touch or just a look . . . [As he was dying] I held Andy in my arms and talked to him for hours. I told him that he was dying, that he need not worry about me, our children or his elderly mother . . . The hours after his death were totally private. We could each say goodbye in our own time, our own way. There was no one to pull curtains around his bed, send his body to the mortuary or hand me a bundle of his clothes. We all look back on Andy’s final illness as a positive time of immense tenderness which we were privileged to share.”
Death in nature.
Some people may prefer to die alone, in the way that most animals die, or to be taken out into some wild place to die in the midst of nature facing the clouds and the stars. I know that’s how I’d like to go when the time is ripe.
Sun Bear explains how Native Americans used to die: “In the old way, when it was time to die, old ones would go off by themselves, feeling that the moment of death was as intimate between them and the Earth Mother as the moment of birth is between human mother and child. They would find a quiet place and there make prayers to the Great Spirit, thanking him for the life they had enjoyed. They would sing their song, and they would die. [From Many Smokes magazine, (now entitled Wild Fire), Bear Tribe Medicine Society, PO Box 9167, Spokane, WA 99209-9167, USA.]
Suicide.
Suicide was always considered a valid exit in the ancient world. Socrates, Cicero, Seneca died at their own hands.
Some people who feel their time is up hasten the end. Homesteader Scott Nearing lived to a 100, working till close to the end.
“A month or two before he died,” his wife Helen wrote, “he was sitting at table with us at a meal. Watching us eat he said, ‘I think I won’t eat anymore.’ ‘Alright,’ said I. ‘I understand. I think I would do that too. Animals know when to stop. They go off in a corner and leave off food.'”
From then on he drank only fruit and vegetable juices, and then water. A week or two later he was slipping away.
“We were quiet together; no interruptions, no doctors or hospitals. I said, ‘It’s alright, Scott. Go right along. You’ve lived a good life and are finished with things here . . . We love you and let you go. It’s alright.’ In a soft voice, with no quiver or pain or disturbance he said ‘All…right,’ and breathed slower and slower and slower till there was no movement anymore and he was gone out of his body as easily as a leaf drops from the tree in autumn, slowly twisting and falling to the ground.
[Excerpted from In Context No. 26 (subs. $31, airmail $42, from PO Box 11470, Bainbridge Island, WA98110, USA, tel 0101 206 842 0216)].
Suicide happens: it is a fact of life. Under no circumstances should it be encouraged – life is a precious gift to be enjoyed as long as possible, for one’s own sake and for that of one’s family and friends. But it should never be considered a sin, a crime or a source of shame to take one’s own life if the circumstances demand it, or if life has become nothing but a burden to oneself and others. Doctors should not attempt to prolong a person’s life if they do not wish it to be prolonged.
A congenial funeral.
No-one would deny that Christians have a right to a Christian funeral and burial. In the same way people with different religions and of no religion have the right to a funeral and burial in line with their beliefs and wishes.
Yet if they make no preparations, they are liable to suffer a Ceremony of the dominant religion in their society, done by a stand-in priest, chanting words that, if they could hear them, would make them turn in their grave. I remember at my father’s cremation the priest droning on about a deity and an afterlife than neither my father nor my mother nor I believed in, distracting us from the moment of grieving.
People who wish to avoid this fate should take precautions, and let their relatives know in advance what kind of funeral they would like. They may even design the details, with choice of music and poetry and thoughts on life and death.
There are several sources of ideas for non-theist funerals. The British Humanist Association produces a booklet Funerals without God, and also provide people willing to officiate at funerals if required. The American Humanist Association also has material on non-religious ceremonies.
Natural burial.
If we are concerned to live in harmony with nature, we should also try to die in harmony with nature. When plants and animals die, nature does not waste their elements: she recycles them as nutrients for new life. [See Elemental death.]
Yet human bodies are usually buried apart from nature, in metal and hardwood coffins. Bodies are often embalmed with formaldehyde, a potent carcinogen and dangerous environmental pollutant. Natural recycling is retarded or prevented. Cremation takes place often with expensive caskets which produce more pollutants on burning, and demand far more energy to burn than the corpse alone.
For the sake of the earth as well as of our own mental health, we need a return to natural ways.
Cremation returns many of our elements to the atmosphere, while our ashes can be buried in a favourite place, or scattered on a stream or on the wind. But to avoid environmental damage, coffins should be minimal – cardboard or wicker baskets from sustainable managed sources, or simply linen shrouds. Bodies should not be embalmed.
Many pantheists and pagans prefer to be buried in natural places, at sea, or in permanent pastures, woodlands or orchards, where their elements can return into the natural cycle. Memorial plaques can be attached to trees near the bodies.
There is a growing movement of woodland burial grounds, which combine pantheist practice with sound environmental sense. Such woodlands can act as refuges for wildlife and increase biodiversity. And in a warming greenhouse earth, they increase tree cover and soak up carbon dioxide. Where such burial grounds are in short supply, pantheists, pagans and nature-lovers can club together to buy plots of land and create them.
Taking control.
If people wish to have natural deaths and burials, they must take control of the death process while they are still capable. Once they are incapacitated, the logic of the medical and funeral industries and of the dominant religious culture will take over and ensure an unnatural death and burial.
The Natural Death Centre has produced a series of suggested legal forms so that people can state their wishes in advance. They also produce the excellent Natural Death Handbook, from which some of this page is drawn. It can be ordered through their site and has material on all aspects of dying, care of the death, green funerals, grieving and so on.
A Living Will sets out how you wish to be treated medically in case of terminal illness or total incapacity – stating, for example, under what circumstances you would or would not wish medical intervention to prolong your life, and whether you want to be allowed to die at home.
A Death Plan details other aspects of your wishes, for example who you would like to be present at your death, where you would like to be cared for, whether you would prefer to be conscious or unconscious as you die.
Finally Advanced Funeral Wishes state your preferences about organ donation, embalming, coffin type, bearers, place of burial and funeral ceremony. This can allow you to plan your own funeral as Egyptian pharaohs used to.
Contacts:
Natural Death Centre
British Humanist Association
American Humanist Association
WEBster’s directory of death and dying resources.
Questions? Comments? Email pan@pantheism.net
© Paul Harrison 1997. Posted 18/7/1997.
