None of us wants to think about death. But pretending it won’t happen may not be the best option
No matter how much we put it off, the bell will toll for each of us. How do we process that eternal human dilemma?
- Making sense of it is a column about spirituality and how it can be used to navigate everyday life
When I was 16, a good friend of my older brother was killed in a car accident. The vehicle he was driving had slid into a parked truck on a country road. Apparently, there was barely a mark on him, but he had hit his head in the wrong spot, and just like that, his life was extinguished. He was 18.
I remember my mother answering the phone call that conveyed that news and hearing her burst into tears. For about a year afterwards, whenever the phone rang in our house, I felt a surge of anxiety. Death had come near, and I found it profoundly shocking. Years later, and with a decades-old religious faith, I am only partially cured of the discomfort at the thought of death.
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