Kick the bucket. Meet your maker. Bite the dust. Pass away. All fancy expressions that say the same thing: death. We can make up phrases all we want to avoid saying “it,” but we can’t avoid its reality. Or can we? Perhaps the more obvious question of why we don’t like to think about dying and death (it’s scary as hell—no pun intended) should be replaced with a pondering of how we manage to avoid thinking about it.
Looking around, death is mentioned at every corner. You’ve got the news, with their daily death tolls in fires, floods and car crashes. There’s always a good flick of gory deaths and dismemberments playing at the movie theatre; and there’s never any shortage of television ads for wills, life insurance and charities that need your money to prevent another death at the hands of cancer. With so much focus on the topic, how do we manage to convince our brains not to think about it?
Just recently I learned that an acquaintance from high school committed suicide. Although everyone I talked to seemed to agree he was a victim of tragedy, before too long he became more powerfully a victim of gossip. But I suppose that is to be expected, as it’s more or less our prime source of community news.
However, a more perturbing revelation came from the scattering of MSN names adding an “R.I.P.-we’ll miss you” phrase to their nick, when the day before it contained something to the effect of “man, I got so shit-faced last night…LOL.” Equating a person’s suicide with that oh-so hilarious night of intoxication put the two on the same level of trivialized, meaningless MSN topics of conversation.
I’m sure no harm was meant, and it was only their way of avoiding seriously internalizing the situation. They tucked it neatly into the closet, quietly shut the door and dead bolted it. Passing the news subtly on to their friends, they did their part to encourage others to reach out (to their keyboards) and to personally express their love and sympathy (via the internet) to those grieving the loss. Choosing the original and meaningful phrase “Rest In Peace” that carries with it so many heartwarming connotations, they made others feel almost guilty for not participating in such a public display of genuine concern. Almost.
By downplaying the nearness of death, we can make it too simple and too insignificant to have any role in our lives or even in our trains of thought – until the bomb hits a target too close to ignore with the death of a loved one: father, sibling, best friend. But by this time we have sheltered ourselves from death too much to actually be capable of dealing with its baggage.
The cliché “RIP” was a dead give away the gesture was all an act. But this is how we steer clear of actually thinking about it. We distance it from ourselves completely to avoid the frightening notion that death is also a part of life. A part we have an obligation to consider.
A serious matter calls for serious deliberation, and I think we owe it to ourselves (and to our dearly departed) to realize that people may die for glory, fame or a good cause, but trust me, no dies for a place in the MSN hall of fame.
**Originally appearing in The Cord
Great Dane 
You Say