Passing Over

Of all the fears which beset modern humanity, I believe the fear of death is the greatest. How sad this is, for it is unnecessary. Our life on earth is but a brief span compared to our life in eternity. You and I have always existed and will continue to exist forever. Each phase of our life is a preparation for the next phase and we cannot omit any step of the journey. Why is it that, compared to my grandparents’ generation for instance, we fear death so much?

Part of the reason has always been there. That is that due to the overpowering influence of the five senses, we are persuaded that earth life is the total of our existence. Because the senses are concerned almost solely with material things and take little or no account of the spiritual, they easily persuade us to accept their view, especially if we have separated ourselves from the world in which we live. What do I mean by this? I mean that in former days all people lived much closer to nature and were acutely aware of the rhythms of nature and the need to work with those rhythms. Death is a regular occurrence in the natural world and it was therefore much easier then to accept death as a natural part of life. The acceptance that everything dies and is renewed was universal at one time.

In modern urban society we are closeted from nature (many children think milk is produced in factories) and we do not meet death nearly as frequently as our forebears. I suppose the exceptions are pets and warfare. In the case of the latter, because invariably it is the young who die our negative attitudes to death are reinforced. We also have a tendency to try to protect our children from an awareness of death and what it means. When I was a child, it was expected that all members of a family, irrespective of age, visited the deceased loved one lying in his or her casket or coffin in the front room. I cannot say it was an enjoyable experience but it did bring about closure, taught us that death is part of life, that life continues and the importance of accepting those things. Today, my experience is that many parents keep their children away from funerals or anything to do with death and the practice of the coffin sitting in the home for three days has long gone. Added to this, the media have gone out of their way to emphasise the macabre aspects, at no time more than just now as we approach Halloween. Instead of the spirits of loved ones being presented as loving, caring souls, we are taught to be frightened of them by the use of ghost stories or movies like 2012 aimed to frighten us with images of disaster that kills millions.

Consequently we have a generation that fears death and its results more than any previous one and treats spirit presence as a macabre entertainment. As a result stress builds up because the inner spiritual self is being denied self-expression due to the dominance of the conscious mind or ego. If only more people could accept that death itself is not a bad experience and that nobody dies alone, there is always a person who loves you from the spiritual world there to help you into your new life. Then this mindless fear would be removed, stress lowered and although we would naturally still miss our loved ones when they pass, prolonged, painful grief would become a thing of the past. It is natural to feel grief when a loved one passes but the depth of misery some experience and their conviction they will not be able to cope without him or her is not. It points to our responsibility to face the issue openly well before the end arrives. We need to discuss how the survivor will manage and what they can do to help themselves. For instance, if a man is involved deeply in his own business and has shared little or any information about it with his wife, he needs to change that. We never know when the call might come and nothing is more daunting for a widow than having to learn how to run or dispose of a business about which she knows little or nothing. There are many unscrupulous people out there ready to take advantage of such a situation and it is surely our responsibility to ensure our partner never has to face that kind of experience if we pass early.

Canon Henry Scott Holland wrote a wonderfully uplifting piece on this subject and the importance of accepting it as a natural, unavoidable but not final event:

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“Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is this death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just round the corner. All is well."