A Matter Of Life & Death

Coming to terms with your mortality can enrich your daily life

Hallowe’en can seem a bit tacky, but what’s behind it? The Christian festival of All Hallows Eve, like its Celtic precursor, Samhain, was when people would honour the dead, talk with our ancestors, and face our own mortality. So maybe now is the right time to explore this delicate topic.

As we age past 60 and 70, we have to come to terms somehow with the D-word. You can enrich every day of your life by your awareness of death. If you talk to those who work with dying people, or read Stephen Levine’s book Who Dies? An Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying, you’ll discover that many people experience dying as a gentle transition, a release.

‘I’m not afraid of death: I just don’t want to be there when it happens.’ Woody Allen

It’s liberating to face up to death, in a practical, emotional and spiritual sense. If you have a partner or grown-up kids, talk to them about your will and your funeral preferences. If you start with practicalities, it makes it easier for you and those close to you to talk about the feelings too. Here are some initial pointers to start engaging with this big topic:

- Death is a natural part of the life-cycle. What are your hangups about it?

- Let go of the illusion that you’re in control. In death and life, all you can do is influence, realising this can bring you to a more realistic two-way relationship with the world around you, and free you from the stress of trying to control everything.

- If there are things you want to say to people before you die, do it now. It can enrich the rest of the time you have with them.

- Cultivate gratitude: appreciation arises when you recognise that this moment is all you have. Thankfulness will enrich your life and others around you.