“So why do we prepare ourselves for birth and death so differently? Largely because birth is good news and death is not.”
This line captivated me. It’s in Planning a Funeral? Why Information Is Power at HuffPost. And it’s true, of course…but it hasn’t always been this way.
Because while death is bad news (not a point I’m going to argue, ever), the fact that we avoid planning for it due to it being bad news is a recent phenomenon. I could go all blah-blah-blah about cultural shifts of the 20th Century but instead I’ll cut to the chase: in prior eras, bad news (death) could not be avoided. Anywhere. It wasn’t shoved into ambulances or hospitals or nursing homes. Cemeteries were often connected to the local church right down the road, and when they were eventually pushed to the fringes of cities, people went out of their way to visit them regularly. A funeral procession was meant to stop traffic and bring everyone out of their homes out of respect, as witnesses.
Many of these rituals were, of course, religious. But the need they answered was (is) psychological: acknowledging death as another important milestone in life.
It was bad news, but it wasn’t hidden away. Birth and death were equally planned for, in different ways and with different emotions certainly, but with the same level of care.
These days, society holds such animosity for death that for many of us, particularly those of us outside of religious traditions, it’s something we shove away and refuse to acknowledge at the practical level. Some of the most intelligent, mature adults I know skitter away guiltily when asked about wills, living wills, or body disposal.
But just as we plan for a baby because we want that baby’s childhood to be awesome and fun and educational and full of love, we need to remember that planning for death has a similar motivation: it’s not for ourselves, it is a selfless act we do for those we love. Those ones who will be left behind, angry and grief stricken, who need to know what to do with you.
Planning for death is an act of love, because it helps soften the blow the bad news of our death with have on our family and friends.
