Be not proud

Last Tuesday morning at around 2:30 am Abe had a stroke; his brain stopped working in the way that it was supposed to work. (For the record, I think we need help with English usage here, as I don't know what it means to "have" a stroke, or a heart attack. Don't these things happen to you. Even this is semantically difficult, because your own body is doing this; your body is malfunctioning. So in that sense, yes, Abe's body malfunctioned, in a way that we call "stroke". (And what then is a "stroke" of genius?)) On Thursday at 4:15 pm Abe's body ceased to work altogether.

Today at 2:00 pm we will meet for his funeral. Abe lived for 78 years. In fact, the day before the stroke, he rode his bike for 28 kms around town. The day before that he served as an usher in church. He was very much alive, and he was, by all accounts, happy and satisfied. But that didn't seem to matter to death. It came around anyway. Not many of us have expressed our complaint with death's timing much better than John Donne in Holy Sonnet 10:

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.


I'll admit that I like Donne's attitude, his "smash-mouth," "in your face" threatenings and fist-waving at "death", but I'm not sure how seriously we can take his pronouncement in the last two lines. I understand his need to imagine that the finality of death can be overcome in some way, but it seems to me that cycles -- karma, or beginnings and endings, or causes and effects, or yins and yangs -- are not only the source of the greatest pains, but also of the greatest pleasures. I'm sure that Donne was aware of this paradox, that there is no happiness for us, without the spectre of sorrow and loss. If Death dies, I would contend, then so does Life. If we do away with pain, we do away with pleasure. How does this help me with the pain of Abe's passing? Not much, except that it's important to understand the necessity and inevitability of it.

I choose to read Donne's sentimental complaint as irony. I know that death cannot die; it's ridiculous, and impossible to imagine the death of death. If, however, we come see our understanding of "death" as our nostalgia for our consciousness (which is the only thing that really "dies"), then can we imagine overcoming, or ending (killing), our worship of the self, of selfishness, and self-consciousness? Can we imagine then that we are all one, we are all, all, and we are always, in one way or another living all together. That I am simply borrowing the molecules that have currently formalized themselves as PK, and someone else will arise and use them, reuse them, when the organization that is PK has run its course. Everyone of us is a borrower and, ultimately, a lender of life. To live and never die, or never experience the angst of death, we must immolate this individualist, selfish sense of the ownership of life-force, of God. God can be experienced. God can be enjoyed. God can be endured. God can be worshipped. But God cannot be controlled.

Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?
Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you will answer me.


- Job 38:2,3