Like many of us, I’ve held an almost ghoulish fascination along with a healthy fear of death since a young age. Perhaps it started at Catholic Sunday school. I could barely tear my eyes away from that page in the catechism depicting a sinister devil with his pointy tail, horns and pitchfork surrounded by fire and young children burning amongst the flames. But even now, where my leanings are more toward dismissing the Bible as more of an elaborate set of often grisly stories passed down through the ages, death is captivating in all its mystery. Whether devout religious or pragmatic atheist, the idea of death looming ahead surely gives most of us moments of contemplative pause. It is rarely a dignified process, not unlike birth. It reaches each of us no matter the course or length of our life – everyday Joe or famous actor; evil-doer or stunning vocalist; even a genius like Stephen Hawkings, who had one of the better grasps on how we all got here.
The renowned cosmologist had faced death since his diagnosis of ALS at the age of 21. Mr. Hawkings said, “I’m not afraid of death, but I’m in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first.” Rejecting the notion of life after death, he said the brain is not unlike a computer. It will stop working when its components fail. He proposed, quite simply, that while on earth, "We should seek the greatest value of our action.”
Still, to paraphrase Diane Butler Bass, author of Christianity after Religion, “Very few people can function without some fear of death hanging over them. We’re human beings and we’re very fragile. And so long as we’re fragile and there’s the fear of what comes next, God will be hovering behind our shoulders. When you look over your shoulder, you look up to the stars and ask the question, why?”
But rather than looking up to the stars, where I’m pretty sure no answer will be forthcoming, I’ve stayed grounded on earth to explore what I see as the tangible art of death. I wander through cemeteries and grave yards. It is there that I find a quiet, dignified beauty. It can be found in the epitaphs on head stones, or the rolling terrain of ancient burial grounds. It is here that we can luxuriate in the breezes that rustle the leaves in trees that stand guard over the bodies buried beneath them.
