Georgia Perry’s memoir for Narratively reflects on the value of small, comforting traditions in the wake of bereavement: “You can still be in mourning and have ice cream,” my mother explained. She told me this was tradition — that when she was a little girl her father took her and a handful of her cousins … Read more“The Shake of Death”
Art Garfunkel’s song Bright Eyes, from the 1979 film adaptation of Watership Down. Author Richard Adams, who wrote the original novel, developed a fascinating matrix of “Lapine” language and a rich mythology, including tales of the Black Rabbit of Inlé. The Black Rabbit serves Lord Frith – essentially a deification of the sun – by … Read more“The Black Rabbit serves Lord Frith, but he does no more than his appointed task.”
This essay from the Jungian Center for the Spiritual Sciences offers a useful precis of, and excerpts from the renowned psychoanalyst’s writing on the subject of death: …death is an important interest, especially to an aging person. A categorical question is being put to him, and he is under an obligation to answer it. To … Read more“The Art of Dying Well: A Jungian Perspective on Death and Dying”
Dr. Joel Rowe’s article for The Atlantic makes the humanitarian case for advance directives in allowing terminally ill people to die with as much dignity as may be possible: My mom had prepared me for the worst day of my life. I was equipped with her advance directive, stating that after a short trial of … Read more“The Pandemic Should Change the Way We Talk About Dying”
In her opinion piece for the Scientific American, Dr. Shika Jain makes the valuable point that the binary rhetoric of “combat” is often not useful, and may be actively harmful, to cancer patients and their families: Unfortunately, cancer is not an opponent that can stomped out by sheer will, determination or persistence. A study published in 2015 … Read more“Let’s Stop Talking about Battling Cancer” (and Death)
George Romero’s Knightriders is a messy, eccentric and often quite beautiful celebration of/elegy for the idealistic, bohemian spirit of the 1960s. In this, one of the final scenes, the titular troupe of motorcycle-jousting knights and their friends gather to pay tribute to their fallen “king”, Billy (memorably portrayed by Ed Harris in one of his … Read moreKing Billy’s Funeral (“Knightriders”, 1981)
As Doug Muder writes for The New Humanist: If you can become part of a collective story, a story that will continue beyond your death, and if you believe in that story and can find a role in it that gets you out of bed in the morning, then death will not undercut the meaning … Read more“Living Without an Afterlife”
During August of 1893, the recent publication of a suicide note by a young Englishman named Ernest Clark sparked an impassioned letters-to-the-editor debate upon the philosophy and ethics of “self-effacement”. A missive by the prominent Scottish writer and theatre critic William Archer outraged those of less bohemian sensibilities – including G. K. Chesterton – by … Read moreWilliam Archer on the Ethics and Future of Suicide (1893)
Hazel Askew, of the folk-group Lady Maisery, on their song Order and Chaos: We have many traditional songs with religious perspectives on death or magical, folkloric perspectives on death, so I wondered if it would be possible to write a song with a scientific, physics perspective on death? Could this be a branch of the … Read moreLady Maisery’s “Order and Chaos” – a Scientific Folk Song About Death
Glenn Paton’s 2015 short subject dramatizes the notion of the Euthanasia Coaster, first posited by designer Juljionas Urbonas in 2010. Here’s Urbonas explaining the ethos behind his concept of euphoric, ritual suicide-by-machine: