Let’s talk about death

To be young and fully alive is the societal ideal we all strive toward and grieve when it feels lost, writes Kirralee Nicolle.

BY KIRRALEE NICOLLE 

Death is everywhere. In a commercial sense, at the very least.  

We’ve just had the time of the year when houses, supermarkets, novelty stores, craft shops and many other buildings are decked out in spiders’ webs, skeletons and fake blood. Halloween is typically a time of revelling in visuals of decay, gore and horror. 

It isn’t fun or enjoyable for everyone. I’ve heard bereaved parents who have tragically lost children say that Halloween was a painful reminder of loss, especially paired with the rituals of trick or treating and small costumes. Of course, for many Christians, the day feels unnecessarily dark in a world where Jesus has overcome the power of death. 

My family recently lost a loved one. Our household, which includes young children, has had to reckon with the finality and grief that accompany death. We’ve had conversations about what death means, what happens to our bodies when we die and have tried to begin the process of talking about what life after death looks like from a Christian perspective. 

In all of this, I’ve been reminded of just how palpable the human fear of endings can be. We don’t want things to stop, because that would mean the end of what we definitively know to be true, possible and available to us. While the status quo continues, we can also keep disappointing ourselves and others in the small ways we fall short each day, with less guilt or remorse than if we knew exactly when all of this might come to its conclusion.  

Not to mention, we love the thought and feeling of vitality. To be young and fully alive is the societal ideal we all strive toward and grieve when it feels lost. Death and decay are the antithesis of our world’s sense of hope – they undermine our sense of being able to maintain control and stay at the top of our game. 

With all this in mind, I understand the draw of Halloween. It offers a hopeful subversion. If we can befriend death and turn it into a marketable product, perhaps it can be less frightening; warmer, cutesier. 

Christians have also been accused, somewhat fairly, of being obsessed with death. We hang crosses on almost anything we can find, sing about tombs and death being taken into custody, and while The Salvation Army does not prioritise baptism, other church denominations symbolise death through immersion in water. Walk into a Catholic church, and you might be confronted with a lifelike Jesus, dripping with blood, face contorted in agony. Even the idea of being ‘promoted to Glory’ brings with it a certain labelling of what death means in The Salvation Army context, and its own cultural expectations.

In this way, we all – believers or not – do our best to reckon with death’s solemn reality in whichever ways most soothe us and feel right in our spirits.  

As Christians, we know this state in which death is a solemn reality to be a temporary one. As Revelation 21:4 states, Jesus will, one day, “wipe every tear from [our] eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." Our hope is complete in knowing, in an eternal sense, that death will one day be no more. 

I encourage you to consider how the idea of death sits in your spirit. What comes to mind when you think about death? Is it elements of your belief system, anxieties about your readiness and those you might leave behind, or something else? Has this changed over time for you? 

If we can befriend death and turn it into a marketable product, perhaps it can be less frightening; warmer, cutesier.

It’s not often a casual conversation topic in Australian culture, but I would encourage you to bring it up where you can. Talking about death, especially sharing our experiences and fears, brings it out of the abstract and the frightening into a realm where it can be held, touched and considered. We may find ourselves less inclined to run from the topic and more inclined to befriend death in a way that doesn’t simply line the pockets of corporations marketing Halloween decorations. 

Because true peace cannot be bought. It has already been given to us, at no cost, by the Giver of Life himself – Jesus.