How Can We Better Understand Death?

I don’t normally show a picture, but this made my day:

If you don’t already know, you’re missing out on the newest meme format of Ghanaians dancing with a coffin. It features a couple of arguably professional dancers proudly honouring the death celebration with impressive body movement, graceful footwork and incredible energy that would make any family proud. In other words, I guess we can say that they put the fun in funeral. It is no wonder families are increasingly paying for the services of these pallbearers to send their loved ones in style.

After all, who wouldn’t want to bring life to a funeral?

Even though some of the earliest videos of the Ghana’s Dancing Pallbearers date back to a mere couple of years ago, this unconventional approach towards death goes waaay back. Remember the time I wrote about Heidegger’s philosophy towards death? How about Zhuangzi’s philosophy towards death? Here is a little continuation:

When Zhuangzi’s wife died, Huizi came to the house to convey his condolences and join in the rites of mourning. To his surprise, Huizi found Zhuangzi sitting with his legs sprawled out with an inverted bowl on his knees, drumming upon it and singing a song. Huizi exclaimed, “She lived with you. She brought up your children and grew old with you. It is bad enough that you’re not weeping and mourning for her, but don’t you think that music and singing is getting out of hand?”

“This is going too far!””

In response, Zhuangzi said, “You misjudge me. When she died, I was in despair, as any man well might be. But soon, pondering on what had happened, I told myself that in death, no strange new fate befalls us. In the beginning, we lack not life only, but form. Not form only, but spirit. We are blended in one great featureless indistinguishable mass. Then, a time came when the mass evolved spirit. Spirit evolved form, and form evolved life. Now, life in its turn has evolved death. It is just like the natural progression of the four seasons, its sequence of spring, summer, fall and winter. If someone is tired and has gone to lie down, we do not pursue her with shouting and bawling. If she is going to lie down peacefully and I were to follow after her bawling and sobbing, it would show that I don’t understand anything about fate. It would show that I know nothing of nature’s sovereign law.”

“That is why I ceased to mourn. So, I stopped.”

I believe it is simple to spit out sentences such as life and death being phases within the cycle of change. It is simple to understand the inevitable physicality of human being that there is no escape to our death. However, for some of us, it takes more than a lifetime to come to terms with it. Maybe the past and current examples of making merry after death has little to inform us of the conformity and convention of society. There is no clear-cut answers and rules. Perhaps the truth value of our claim, especially pertaining towards life and death, is related to its context and perspective. What is good for one individual might not be good for another, or good for a single individual at different times.

The same goes for beauty, usefulness, happiness and so on.

Little by little, we return into the flow of life around us. The natural part of the ebb and flow of work, family, leisure and contemplation. There will be times when we feel as if we will never know laughter again. Other times, we laugh. We laugh at how silly we are, because how can anything or anyone die when it is still loved by the living? Your physical body has left my world, but everything else about you lives on in me. Slowly but surely, we will rediscover happiness and joy. Their memory remains etched in our hearts, but their passing no longer resembles an open wound. In our very own way and time, we will think of our loved ones. Some of us cry. Some of us laugh. But all of us will move on beyond death, until it claims us too. After all, loss can only be felt by those who have lost. On a totally related note, I’m dying to have the entire soundtrack of Damien Rice played at my funeral. Sadly, I wouldn’t be around anymore. What a loss — wasted.