Reflections on Death
What really matters at the end of it all?
Hi All,
It’s been a while since my last newsletter. Life’s hit a rough patch lately, my father-in-law passed away, I suffered a minor concussion from a fall while running, and my family is facing some major health issues at the moment. All these matters have put me into a pensive state about the fragility of life, the importance of health, and the inevitability of death.
I have many thoughts from this past few months, but I want to highlight a few in particular from my father-in-law’s memorial service. During the memorial we gave people an opportunity to say a few words about his life. I don’t live in the same town as he did, thus I didn’t know any of his friends well, so it was interesting to see how his local community perceived and celebrated his life. Here are some things I’ve been pondering:
1. The importance of friends and family
During the memorial nearly everyone talked not about his possessions, accomplishments, jobs, or money, but their relationship with him as a person, a volunteer, a brother, a friend. One of his male friends shared how my father-in-law articulated a distinction between acquaintances and friends. He realized he had many acquaintances but not many real friends. And he decided to change that.
As they age, many men report having fewer and fewer close friends. This is a worrisome trend, that I can definitely see in my own life. College was my pinnacle friend era, where I had the greatest number of people I would call close friends. But every decade since, that number has dwindled. I’ve made attempts to address this, and I would encourage you to do so as well, no matter what age you are, as at the end of it all, friends and family form the life support system that really matters.
The memorial was standing room only, and I was glad to see how many friends cared about my father-in-law even at such a late stage in life. It made me wonder if that many people would attend my memorial?
2. What do you want people to say about you when you’re gone?
I spend time on many frivolous things, and it’s made me rethink what I invest my time in. There is a balance to be struck here. While it’s an inspiring saying, you cannot realistically “live every day as if it were your last”. At the other end of the spectrum is a sad waste of life potential. Somewhere in the middle we find varying levels of effort to leave some kind of impact on the people around us. It makes me ponder what kind of impact I’ve had on the people around me. Honestly I feel like it’s less than it should be, and I’m wrestling with that.
If I envision my own memorial service, I’m not super clear on what people might say about me when I’m gone. I suppose it would vary depending upon what era of life they know me from. But similar to the dwindling friends, I feel a bit of dwindling impact on the world as I get older. This is something I want to reverse.
3. Where you live matters
My father-in-law moved to a small, quiet town for retirement, known for its strong sense of community, particularly for retired people. I’ve moved quite a bit in my life and depending where I lived found varying levels of “community”. Los Angeles was one of the hardest places to make real friends, while a small town in Mexico was one of the easiest.
Some geographies just seem to have a better environment for friend making than others. Walkability, physical proximity to others, community activities, your personal initiative, and other factors all contribute to this.
The choice you make here can greatly influence the quality of your friendships. Of course moving is hard at first, as you have to start over to make friends, but it might be worth the effort if you escape a more lonely part of the world.
4. Real life is better than virtual life
My father-in-law was not active on social media. He wrote no blog, posted no videos, was not an online “influencer” of any kind, and left hardly any digital trace of his life. Yet he lived a good life. Nowadays it feels like if you’re not online, you almost don’t exist. But could this be part of the reason we’re more lonely and depressed than ever? We are bragging about lives we don’t really lead, to people we don’t really know, about things that mostly don’t really matter at the end of it all.
The hollowing out of our real lives in service of a never ending social media wall just might be why life feels so empty, why social media is so unsatisfying, and why our relationships have become so vacuous. My online persona is interacting with your online persona and we think we’re building some kind of relationship, but are we really? Not the kind of friendship where you’ll show up at my funeral.
I haven’t posted on social media for months now, and not a single person from my online world has checked in to see if everything’s ok. And I don’t blame you, I would probably do the same. It’s not that we have no heart, it’s that our hearts are joined by such a thin virtual spiderweb strand that it can easily be severed even by a short pause in activity. Contrarily my small handful of “real life” friends know exactly what’s been going on.
5. A simple life is a good life
My father-in-law was a simple man. He expressed very few needs. After my mother in law died, he pondered moving to an even smaller home, almost like a 1 room cabin, where he could continue living his unencumbered life, and work on simple things he liked to do. He volunteered at a local nature preserve and a foreign summer worker program where kids from all over the world would come to get work experience in the USA. He met with a small group of guy friends every week at the same cafe, to talk about life, current events, and grandkids. His formula for a good life was quite simple: volunteer, hang with friends, help people locally.
While he was definitely aware of the world’s problems, and enjoyed discussing nearly any topic, he didn’t concern himself much with global poverty, climate change, geopolitics, or the catastrophic risks of AI. I think not being on social media helped him focus on what was physically in front of him rather than carry the weight of all the world’s problems in his pocket.
Through social media we expose ourselves to every imaginable ill in the world, beyond what any individual person can mentally absorb, much less do anything about. Sometimes I wonder if I just paid more attention to the 5 mile radius around me instead of fretting about the entire globe, I might enjoy life more.
6. Spirituality adds meaning
Like many baby boomers, my father-in-law was a man of faith, that informed and motivated much of his acts of service and concern for others. Many of his friends didn’t share his interest in spirituality, but it didn’t stop them from being friends. I don’t know the full contents of his conversations with others around this topic, but during the memorial people mentioned his spiritual underpinnings and how they knew it was an important meaning framework for him.
I’m old enough to no longer fret over where people land on this topic, I’m more interested in whether people are adding light to the world, or adding darkness. My father-in-law was definitely sprinkling light, and his life and the lives of people around him were richer for it. Existentially speaking “leaving the world a better place than you found it” is a good principle, no matter what you believe, and it’s made me rethink what I could be doing to spread more love and light in the world.
Death has a way of bringing life into profound focus.
If you’re young, death can feel quite far away, I didn’t think about it much when I was young, and it can be depressing if you think about it too much, but every now and again it’s worth pondering, as it can help you decide and refine what really matters to you.
If you’re wondering what to do with your life it might be an interesting exercise to envision your own memorial. What would you want people to say about you? How do you want to be remembered? From the latter half of life, where death is coming into greater focus on the horizon, I can confidently say that for me, people matter more than things, helping others is more meaningful than amassing attention to oneself, and a simple offline life can be a great way to live.
Dave
First and foremost. Welcome back to the ether. My deepest condolences to you and your family, and best wishes through this time of struggle.
Memento Mori sounds like a cheesy, stoic phrase for podcasters until you truly ponder life & death, or have your life deeply impacted by it. I lost my Dad at a very young age. He had just finished his graduate degree, found his dream job, and had begun making plans for lots of activities and travel with our family. Then cancer took him before he had the chance to enjoy any of that. He was 42. My wife currently works in a Neuro-Critical Trauma ICU. She sees a wide range of life-changing cases in people of all ages. Sometimes older adults, sometimes people younger than us (we are both mid-thirties). She sees people who waited until retirement to take their sailboat around the world, only to have a stroke a month into their retirement and never put the boat in the water, or a twenty-two-year-old get pushed into a moving train downtown and suffer a major TBI and paralysis. We are both unfortunately intimately aware of how short life can be and how quickly it can change.
So we travel. As long and often as we can. Because we want to be able to see the world while we still can. I can't tell you how many times we've been to places and had conversations with retired folks we meet, who tell us they wished they'd started earlier. Wished they'd made "living" a priority. It's why we eat well and train often. I understand this comes from a place of privilege. We both have well-paying jobs, generous work flexibility, and no children. But it's also what we put the highest priority on. Maybe someone can't travel the country, but they can still put a priority on living for the things that make them the happiest. Sitting at a park watching their kids play instead of working an extra hour. A nap by the local lake. Building a model in the kitchen. People tell us how careless we are all the time, but I've learned the proper response is simply "Our priority is seeing as much of the world as we can, before we can't."
*It's important to note that we don't finance our trips. We plan the big ones out ahead of time and save up for them. We've also stayed in a LOT of roadside motels and had the "Continental Breakfast" for breakfast while stuffing muffins and bananas, and the occasional waffle, in our pockets for lunch.
Thank you so much for opening up about this topic. I hope you find the healing and growth you need in this time
Thanks for this, Dave. We hope Karen's family took comfort in their father's incredible support at the service. He sounds like a great man.
A Ronald McDonald House Charities New Zealand founder, Lionel Whitehead used to speak on writing one's own obituary as a yearly habit on their birthday. I try to remember to do it but usually forget. It's a good habit to get into as it forces oneself to consider how they will be remembered, what they wish to be remembered for, and guides one's efforts throughout the year.
Another plan of attack for when one is feeling melancholy, and truly the only cure for depression, is to get out of one's head and focus on helping others. Go to the homeless shelter and volunteer, a soup kitchen, go fix things for the Salvation Army or St. Vincent DePaul Society to sell, or visit the infirmed in the hospital who have no visitors. Stop thinking inwardly and start thinking outwardly. It works.
Mostly, I think we all need to remember that we are all God's beloved. Great or small, "normal" or not. His Love knows no bounds, but we are bound to treat each other with such grace to be truly happy.
Lots of Love