Hello to Death

When death comes to your door
at the end of day
what treasures will you hand over to him?

I’ll bring my full soul before him.

I’ll not send him away empty-handed
the day he comes to my door…

All the treasures I’ve gathered
during my lifelong preparation
I’m now arranging for the last day
to give it all to death –
the day he comes to my door

– Rabindranath Tagore

When you work as a chaplain at a residential care home, you are surrounded by death and dying all the time. I have been there for people’s last breaths and have held my own as I watched their breathing slow and stop. And it constantly makes me analyze my own death and dying process. Which can be hard to do for a 30 year old, when death still feels far from me even though I’m surrounded by and reminded of it all the time.

But in order to prepare for the ‘big’ death, I realize that I have to practice the ‘small’ deaths first.

I heard about the enneagram years ago but it wasn’t until a few months ago I decided to take the test and find out my personality trait. My resistance to it, ironically, explained who I was: a 4. This means, particularly for me, that I think that no one can ever fully understand me, that I am uniquely special, that I value my uniqueness over top of any other achievement and I dive into the deep places, the dark spaces like (for example) death and dying. Like many people, finding out a little more about your personality through the enneagram or Myers Briggs can be helpful. It certainly made me feel less alone as a 4 in this world, realizing other people see the world and move in the world the way I do. And it’s also explained why I find it hard to maintain relationships with people who ignore my need to feel like a snowflake. But lately, I’ve been having a difficult time seeing myself as worthy of writing or creating anything. When I was in my early 20’s it seemed like I had so much more to say. And now that I’ve finished a Masters and looking into another Masters program, the less I feel like I have to offer.

‘The more you know, the more you realize you don’t know’ – Aristotle

Or maybe I’m more methodical. Maybe I’m able to rationalise my feelings and thoughts better than I used to, careful with what I share and what I ‘put out there’. I feel more vulnerable now, even though I’m still young, my skin still lays tight over my bones and muscles and my hair is still full and vibrant in colour, death, in theory, is one step closer. And so I move just a little slower, watching carefully where I take my next step, weary of cracks and cliffs to crumble over. I still have the sensation that I am special and unique and have something to offer. But I hold my cards closer to my chest now, because I have shown them too many times to people who have made moves to better their game by taking advantage of my own. But the thing with holding my cards close to my chest is that I often forget that I don’t need to play the game in the first place. I can let go of the things that are causing death in me. The point of being a 4 is that I’m more likely to abandon the game altogether. I can throw the cards in the air and dance naked. Which is what I want to do. To let go of the things that are causing me to die. Those people, those habits, those things that I put ahead of my well-being. I have the opportunity to change the game for myself. This doesn’t mean saying ‘fuck you’ to the world and hiding away. This does mean blessing the things that once gave me life and then mustering the strength to send them on their way. Like a bouquet of flowers, they weren’t meant to be alive forever nor were they meant to be hung upside down, dried and then have their death displayed. They were meant to live and then let die.

Goodbye to those people who were once alive to me, those habits and routines that once brought me life and hello to the death at my door: may you bless them and may you take them on their way.