When we witness death,
we must grapple with its finality,
but also with our own mortality
and the knowledge that one day we too will die.
Whereas once this was understood as the natural order of things,
we now find ourselves conflicted
and less willing to see death as ‘natural’.
If anything, death breaks into our lives as an unexpected surprise.
Rather than continuing to avoid death,
or to fear it, what if we changed our perception?
Might we conceive of death, instead,
as the winding down of life’s frantic clock –
and dying as a means of coming to terms
with our identities, our loved ones, ourselves?
Brandy Schillace
Death’s Summer Coat