is precisely because we can be engaged with a situation through the medium of imagination, even though not physically present, that we are emotionally involved in novels, films, dramas, stories. It is one thing to know the story—Desdemona is killed by Othello. It is a different matter to be emotionally, imaginatively gripped by the pathos and horror of it. Only if the story engages our imagination can we genuinely appreciate it.
So I come back to the sudden acute pang which arises when I contemplate my death. It must arise from confusion. I know that I’ll be dead, but since I can’t imagine being dead, I imagine, unwittingly, that I am conscious, a presence in that future world, conscious of it and yet utterly cut off from participation in it.
That way of imagining my “death” is confusion because in reality I would not be there to suffer such alienation and longing. Nevertheless, in its negative way, it does compel me to see and appreciate the people that mean much to me, the activities that fill my life, the true significance to me of the joys and the sufferings in my life. I am imaginatively living cut off from all this. The more imaginatively we confront “death,” the more we are in fact envisioning, in the perspective of loss, the meaning to us of the people and activities that fill our life.
Of course, we also appreciate our life in positive ways. We thrust ourself into the things in this world that are of real value to us, into being and working with people, into activities we relish. A little while ago I was totally immersed in one of the late Beethoven piano sonatas, one of the sublimely beautiful offerings of this world. A few days before that I was completely caught up in play with my grandson: I played the villain, his mother was the princess, and he was the hero rescuing her from my clutches. We were all totally immersed, totally delighted.
On the other hand, I get a different, and important appreciation of life through the via negativa, the mirror image of life that death holds before me. This act of imagination shows the meaning to me of what I have by representing it as lost, wrenched away from me by death. It is in imagining their loss to me that even the trivia of daily life glow with a new radiance. Seeing life in the mirror of death is a revelatory experience.
There is the ancient teaching that tomorrow we die and so we should make the most of today. The paradox I saw in this teaching is that fear of death is not a motive that can engender truly carefree joy and fulfillment. Now I see the teaching from a somewhat different perspective. In recalling that tomorrow I may die, I discover, intensely illuminated, what it is today that makes my life full, that gives it meaning. That vivid revelation may enable me to live in a more focused way.
In this context I have new insight into an often mentioned puzzle. Why is it that my not having existed prior to birth causes me no distress, and yet the thought of my eventually ceasing to exist has such portentous meaning for me? The very question itself reveals that the mere fact of non-existence is not the issue. If it were, then we would feel the same about both periods of our personal non-existence. So there must be something at work here that goes beyond the mere matter of non-existence. Now I see what it is.
My relationship to the past before I was born is a matter of hearsay, not actual experience. I’ve read about, heard about, been taught about what happened. Whatever I may have learned and admired about the attractions of a Cleopatra or a Madame de Pompadour, I have never lived with them and loved them. Whatever the admiration I have for Jefferson, he was never a personal friend of mine.
The contrast is sharp when I imagine the post-mortem future, the future of people I’ve lived with, loved, disliked, respected, feared, dined with, worked with, fought with—the future of activities and projects into which I’ve put my heart. Suppose I do envision some situation where my wife and daughter are together, and I imagine they understand that I have died. They are sorrowful. While I don’t imagine myself as present with them of course, still it’s I who am doing the imagining, and so I react to the scene that is present to me. It’s not a scene with people from history whom I’ve read about in books. I react to the sorrow of persons with whom I have had the most intimate relationships, the thought of whom inevitably arouses vivid memories, desires, hopes, and feelings of every kind.
The more powerfully I react to their relationships to me, the more intensely do I react to my imagined absence. It’s akin to missing people in anticipation. I do that when I’m about to leave on a lengthy business trip. Even before leaving, I imagine being far away from home and I already feel longing for my wife and family. I may know that when the time comes I’ll be so busy that I won’t have time to miss them. That thought helps, but it doesn’t by any means eliminate this feeling now. I am inevitably reacting now to what I now imagine, although I am imagining a future situation. To imagine my family at home and myself apart is to react by wanting to be there with them. It is imagined, but the feeling aroused is strong.
So the post-mortem future I imagine is the future of the life I’m living, though I imagine it going on without me. I “miss” all that has filled my life. The historical past I imagine is of a life I never lived. I don’t miss any of these people or activities. I may wish I’d known them, but that’s very different from missing people I have known and loved. No wonder I have the attitude I do to my prenatal past, which is empty of personal engagement. No wonder this differs so dramatically from my experience when I try to imagine my death. In the latter case it is a poignant experience rich with intimate meaning from the life I have lived.
Separation
Death as separation, as departure, is a familiar theme in folklore and literature. The French saying tells us, “Partir, c’est mourir un peu,”—to part is to die a bit. “Farewell,” whether spoken to the dying or by the dying, is a theme that runs from Homer through Shakespeare to Keats and on into the present.
The theme of separation, and its profound impact on human beings of whatever time or place, is evident in the fact that in many societies the primary form of condign punishment is exile. In story and myth, and in personal memoirs, separation from one’s people means incurable anguish.
Can one get close to the inner, subjective meaning of one’s death by thinking of it as eternal separation? I have certainly imagined death as separation forever from my beloved wife, an intimate companion in my own great and trivial moments over many long years. This final separation seems a devastating prospect. My daughter also embodies a part of my life. To imagine departing forever from one so dear is to experience what is unnameably piercing to the heart. I will leave grandchildren, whose lives will move into youth and maturity, lives from which I will be forever cut off. Dear friends—lost forever. And then, too, there are the things in life that give pleasure or joy, or even transcendent beauty—music, literature, philosophy, the sun, the hills—gone. Does the shadow of death mean these things to me?
In my more sentimental moments I have imagined deathbed scenes. I suspect I’m not alone in this. I imagine myself saying “goodbye, goodbye forever” to those dearest to me. In a certain mood I imagine this vividly, concretely; and it becomes heart-wrenching.
Yet this is all confusion.
My death is not really a leave-taking, not really a “goodbye” situation for me. The notion of “goodbye” has surreptitiously taken on a radically different significance here from its normal meaning. Normally when I part from somebody—especially long-term, or permanently—the grief in parting consists in grief
