\u201cMy life is going to end,\u201d Sister Theresa Aletheia Noble, 40, told the paper, \u201cand I have a limited amount of time. We naturally tend to think of our lives as kind of continuing and continuing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her antidote: a worldwide Catholic movement called memento mori<\/em>, which literally means remember you must die<\/em>. \u201cWe try to suppress the thought of death,\u201d the Sister says, \u201cor escape it, or run away from it because we think that\u2019s where we\u2019ll find happiness. But it\u2019s actually in facing the darkest realities that we find light in them.\u201d<\/p>\n At the other end of the spectrum sits Ingemar Patrick Linden, a former New York University philosophy professor whose book, The Case Against Death<\/em>, was recently excerpted in an academic journal called MIT Press Reader<\/em>.<\/a> \u201cThis may sound persuasive,\u201d the professor writes of what he calls the \u201cprevailing\u201d view represented by the likes of Sister Alethia, \u201cbut we should not buy it. Despite its dominance, its distinguished defenders, and its impressive provenance [it] is false. If death is the end then it is simply awful, and it is time we admit it.\u201d<\/p>\n I suppose my view lies somewhere between those two extremes. I still remember the first time I witnessed death, in the guise of a little green turtle. He was a childhood pet that, every once in a while, we\u2019d set out in the backyard under a glass bowl for sun. One day my father forgot and left him there too long. I was the one who found him, a lifeless parched shell that had once been a beloved presence, now forever gone.<\/p>\n These days I draw comfort from various sources. Recently a long-time Boston<\/em> Globe<\/em> reporter, Jack Thomas, discovering he had a fatal cancer, wrote a touching essay for Globe Magazine<\/em><\/a> chronicling his thoughts. \u201cEditing the final details of one\u2019s life,\u201d Thomas wrote, \u201cis like editing a story for the final time. It\u2019s the last shot an editor has at making corrections, the last rewrite before the roll of the presses.\u201d<\/p>\n Another writer I\u2019d never heard of, Aracelis Gonzalez Asendorf, published one of the most beautiful essays I\u2019ve ever read\u2014entitled \u201cMy Dead\u201d\u2014in a literary magazine called Brevity<\/a>.<\/em> \u201cI see him now,\u201d she writes, \u201cmy father, in the wrinkles around my eyes, and the set of my mouth. My brother keeps him company there in the shape of my nose. My dead have taken over my body. I see them daily. My grandmother, grandfather, mother, father, brother.\u201d<\/p>\n The only one missing, Asendorf continues, is her recently deceased husband, whose presence she sees in their children. \u201cHe\u2019s in their faces, in their eyes and brows. He\u2019s in their hands, and body, and heart\u2026And, if I look carefully and steadily at my children, I catch glimpses of myself\u2014then I know we\u2019re all together\u2014my dead, my husband, and me.\u201d<\/p>\n If immortality exists, perhaps that\u2019s it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Click here<\/a> to subscribe to my free email list.<\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n _____________________________________________<\/p>\n David Haldane\u2019s award-winning memoir, \u201cNazis & Nudists,\u201d<\/a> is available on Amazon. A former Los Angeles Times staff writer, he is a journalist, author and radio broadcaster currently dividing his time between homes in Joshua Tree, California, and Northern Mindanao, Philippines, where this column appears weekly in the Mindanao Gold Star Daily<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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