In his 1927 work Being and Time, the great 20th-century philosopher Martin Heidegger argued that facing death squarely is the only way to live an authentic life.
There is nothing easy about living with death in mind, but it does make one live with a particular sense of acuity. This is seen in those who have managed to escape or defer death. Their stance towards life itself often undergoes profound change, and they find themselves living with a keener sense of true values.
While I haven’t undergone that myself, I have experienced the nearness of death very much in my life. Because I live with complex trauma, I have been riddled with what is known as a sense of a foreshortened future. It is the understandable belief and feeling that since you have endured so much unendurable pain, surely life will simply have to end soon, one way or another.
I was never supposed to make it to 30, let alone 40 or 50, but here I am, with my 60th birthday only a few months away. And my relationship to death has transformed along the way. According to Heidegger, anxiety and denial are natural and appropriate reactions to death, but in that anxiety and denial we lose touch with our core self and the unique opportunities that only become visible once we truly face our own being-towards-death. The raw awareness of death makes it clear that we have to forge our own path with the time we have left.
Viktor Frankl opened my eyes to what death is existentially. From studying him intently, I have started to see that in death, we, so to speak, graduate from life. Our life becomes complete, freezes in time, and becomes a monument of all that we were. And we live on in the minds of those who remember us — and we live as long as we are remembered.
We need to be wary of the monument we leave behind us, and now, on this very day, is our chance to shape it. Every decision we make counts.
I am fully aware of the understandable terror that the thought of death brings to some. And also of the pain that being brought close to the reality, thought, or memory of mourning a loss also entails. Dealing with death is arguably the hardest thing a human being has to deal with in life, and the pain is real, has logic and rightfully fills us with a plethora of difficult emotions.
For those in need of consolation, I recommend Irvin Yalom’s beautiful book Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death. It has helped me help others with the difficult question of mortality.
For those grieving, I hope you can find meaning in your loss. This is about as hard as trying to live with meaning gets. Even if it may sound slightly ridiculous, I am going to tell my experience with it.
Ridiculous, because it is about the loss of a close family member who happened to be a cat. I am sure that those who have never shared their lives with cats might find this a massive exaggeration. But experience is subjective, and in my experience, the pain of loss was immeasurable.
We had to let our darling cat Nakke go a few years back, and the pain of that loss felt absolutely unbearable to me. I was desperate. I could not believe that life would just, like that, pull away my loyal toilet-visit friend, who would keep me close company through countless sleepless nights. I could not get over it, still haven’t and I have stopped trying. I can now live with him as a part of me who is there until I die.
But, importantly, what helped me cope was finally finding some meaning in the loss. After a couple of painful months, I saw a notice of two rescue cats in need of a home. The pet shelter could not understand why two lovely cats could not find a home simply because they are very afraid of people and are not the kind of pets who readily climb in your lap.
But having lived my life with trauma and understanding the mechanisms of trauma through my studies, I could see that their neuroception of danger is simply elevated because they have undergone extensive trauma. I knew what they needed: a safe home that puts their needs first, and then time will do the job.
Fast forward to today: the cats are still hypervigilant, as am I, but they are now safe with us and we co-regulate. When they get alerted by a noise, they are down-regulated simply by witnessing my staying calm. And so, every day, Peikko gets in my wife’s lap for scratches, and Kurre comes in my armchair, watches out for predators and is delightfully affectionate towards me. I had to wait for his first purring for years, and now it is a daily thing. All we needed to do was give safety, space and time, and let them advance on their own terms.
So, this was the meaning of Nakke’s death, quite invisible to me in the immediate aftermath of his loss. He gave space in our lives for a new deep and healing relationship to happen.
I still miss Nakke, I still feel his presence. But more than anything, I am grateful for the time we had together and the meaningful opportunity that followed devastating loss.
Arctic Search for Meaning 