I speak to each of my parents every week, on occasion maybe twice a week if there is something particularly unusual happening in one of our lives or in the world. This means that for the last 30+ years I’ve had at least 1,563 conversations with each of my folks. I also see them once or twice a year in person which adds to my total conversations.
I don’t recall having a conversation or visit with my dad in this 30-year period when we didn’t spend some portion of our time together talking about death.
These aren’t somber conversations. Some of them are serious, but more often we are laughing. We talk about the inevitability of our deaths, our preferences for burial (which have changed for both of us over the decades), the friends and family who have passed away but who continue to impact us, the role of technology on human lifespans and more.
We talk about death with an ordinariness, while knowing all the while that death is the most mundane and the most extraordinary of human experiences. I talk about death with my parent not out of fear, nor out of anxious obsession, but rather as an affirmation and reminder of the blessing of life.
I often wonder what our society would be like if everyone were in a truthful relationship with their own mortality. I have no doubt it would propel us into a more honest relationship with our lives. How could this shift from fear to acceptance ripple into other parts of our lives? In what ways could this orientation transform Jewish ancestral trauma and lessen the burden for those of us living now? How might we live more fully, more ethically, if we remembered how beloved and significant our lives – and the lives of all people – are?
Stosh Cotler is a social activist who founded Bend the Arc, a movement of progressive Jews all around America who fight for justice. www.bendthearc.us
