This is interesting to me, as I grew up in a very different Jewish tradition / faith. The tradition is a plain pine coffin, closed casket. A close friend / family member stays with the corpse during the initial day or so, and there are ritual tasks and prayers. At the gravesite, after the casket is lowered, the friends and family shovel dirt over the grave. For the next week, the closest family members congregate at home, friends and family sit with them, doing any cooking / cleaning, reminiscing about the deceased. This all has the effect of taking vanity out of the experience, confronting reality, grieving openly and acknowledging that the person is gone but not forgotten. I imagine other faiths have rituals that serve these purposes in other ways.
I've heard that devout Jews and Christians (possibly Muslims?) continued to gather at home for important events like weddings and funerals, even though covid restrictions prevented it. I don't think more modern or 'woke' places of worship fared as well.
You mentioned a book a couple of times over the years, written by your mentor, that addresses misconceptions about rights when dealing with death. I don't remember if you co-wrote it. Would you share the title again, or the author's name? I remember she died a while back. My husband talks about being buried at home somewhere and he's serious about it.
I am still in disbelief that people meekly went along with letting their loved ones die alone in the hospital. There should have been marches, protests, signs, families trying to push their way in. Maybe I missed it, but I don't remember any of that happening.
I can not believe people rolled over for it all, but they felt so alone. I think it is a symptom of city dwellers being so independent these days. The rural locations where people know each other and family members seemed to care much less about the rules and more about the people.
To think that hospitals couldn't simply make family members wear masks, or hell, a freakin' bee keeper's suit, to say goodbye to dying loved ones. So much was set into place to test obedience, and to cause anguish and humiliation.
I find it shocking too. But I came to realise that perhaps many people accepted it because they had already come to see it as natural for nurses and care staff to occupy the roles that are supposed to sit with family.
I had this realisation in January 2023 when my partner's 98-year-old grandma had a stroke and spent the last month of her life in the hospital (the first half ostensibly being treated, the second receiving palliative care). During this time, various relatives chose not to visit and one of my partner's uncles (grandma's eldest son no less) still went ahead with a beach holiday an 8-hour flight away. (On his final visit he casually remarked he'd be back in 2 weeks' time, despite her being extremely frail at this point...)
The sad truth is that even when there are no visiting restrictions -- even when there is nothing standing in the way of duty and compassion -- many people still decide they'd rather not confront reality. Or at the very least, that it's best to keep it at arm's length. They have outsourced the process of caring for and comforting a dying loved one to medical staff. They think it's ok to occupy a supporting role, e.g., dropping by for half an hour or calling the ward to get an update. Meanwhile their loved one suffers alone, something that would have been unthinkable just a couple generations ago -- hell, something that is still unthinkable in many cultures and religions.
I wonder if during covid some people felt it was a relief to have that burden fully taken away? They didn't have to feel any guilt about not visiting, after all. Zoom check-ins and good-byes were just the natural endpoint of a process that has progressively become more and more sanitised and impersonal.
My partner and I were the last people to see her grandma, a few hours before she passed. Despite the hospital being hours away we knew it was important to be there for her in those last weeks as much as possible, as her loved ones and as her advocates (regardless of how much people kid themselves, even the nicest nurse isn't there to advocate for a patient).
In the end I was left feeling disgusted that other family members -- her own sons especially -- didn't see it that way. Even my partner's siblings refused to bring their kids to hospital because "it would upset them". Yet they knew it would have been a joyful occasion for Grandma Jean to have seen her great-grandkids one last time.
Oh, wow.... I hadn't thought about that: some were all to happy not to have to spend time with dying loved ones. How tragic that the grandmother didn't get to see her grandchildren. It just speaks to the validity of what Josh said about death becoming an industry that people farm out. SO.... it sounds like you and your partner were able to visit the grandmother during Covid?
When I was young my grandmother, who was really more like a second mother to me, was dying in a nursing home. In my immaturity, after visiting her a couple of times I never went back because I found it depressing and upsetting. I wasn't there for her at the end, and I'll regret it for the rest of my life. Twenty-six years later, when my mom was in a hospital dying, I sat next to her bed and held her hand during her final two days of life. I wish I'd had the strength of character to do the same for my grandmother, but sometimes it takes a while to grow up.
Bravo Josh, amazing piece. You have the uncanny knack for getting to the core of our societal mental illness. We are indeed deranged at the very most human level of life, death, family, animality, relatedness. We might pray for wisdom.
I never thought of death the way you describe in the beginning of your essay. I appreciate that perspective opening my mind.
I’ve been convinced the fear of death is the reason for the Covid event and also all humanity’s suffering.
At some point we get the opportunity to get close to death. I think most people do. I think the degree to which you let the black dog rule you depends on how to deal with the death before you.
I remember when I was a kid, and one of our beloved family dogs died. I knew he would die soon, I could sense it. That day I played piano for him while he lay on my bed. He was a dog that used to howl with joy when the keys were hit.
Our other dog was cuddling up with him. He sensed his death too.
He eventually went to the door to go outside and die. I knew that’s where he was going because I was in tune with the whole thing, somehow.
Two family members came to the back door and started getting stressed out, yelling, trying to hurl him back inside so he didn’t go out in the snow.
He’s dying, I said. He is going outside to die.
He’s not! They protested.
He died. Right there. At the intersection of the inside and the outside.
It was instinctive, a dog would want to go outside and die peacefully, alone.
My family members denied it til the very end. And they have done the same with human companions. And it keeps them emotionally stuck in some kind of denial and repressed grief without really letting go.
Cluster B society must deny death, as you’ve put it. It keeps them anxious, neurotic, and in denial about the ridiculous narratives and premises they swallow. It’s a mirror of their denial about life and death itself, perhaps.
This fear of death also blindsided a lot of people. When we're not accustomed to death, we can easily fool ourselves that our lives are good, rich and without a worry. But faced with the fear propaganda, a lot of people found out that they got nothing, and they consequently went directly into fight, flight or freeze mode.
The fighters turned overtly totalitarian and employed authoritarian means, the flight people just freaked out in a volcano of negative emotion (useful for the fighters who could now be their messiahs), and the freeze people just stared like deer in headlights and went along with whatever the message was without offering any resistance.
I was at that point immunized largely by my study of the Woke cult-religious movement, and to some extent my earlier days in cannabis reform activism.
Call it a psyop or a mass formation, but the fact is that when those are up and running, they offer a central Narrative that no one is allowed to criticize no matter how illogical (set the clock on the name calling), and they invent their own new-fangled morality and logic to suit the occasion.
My first huge identification was when I noticed that they had invented a completely new ethical system where people were suddenly "immoral" if they happened to infect someone else. The entire ethical system was invented out of whole cloth and it had never been like that before. (Notice how you can make the same analysis with "climate change"). And I also noticed at the same time that this new virus was treated as completely novel - despite there being quite similar viruses in the world (this is reminiscent of how marijuana is treated as "totally different than anything else" when alcohol isn't in fact all that different). If they can make you forget tradition and existing knowledge, they can make you think and do anything.
And once my critical factor was engaged the logical fallacies and inconsistencies just piled up like crazy.
The Rutter Requiem contains Anglican funeral sentences from the days of Queen Elizabeth I. They helped give me context about death.
The Rutter Requiem is glorious.
That's it. That's the comment.
“What are you going to do, lock the children in the barn?” 😂😂😂😂
Your sense of humor is 🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯
This is interesting to me, as I grew up in a very different Jewish tradition / faith. The tradition is a plain pine coffin, closed casket. A close friend / family member stays with the corpse during the initial day or so, and there are ritual tasks and prayers. At the gravesite, after the casket is lowered, the friends and family shovel dirt over the grave. For the next week, the closest family members congregate at home, friends and family sit with them, doing any cooking / cleaning, reminiscing about the deceased. This all has the effect of taking vanity out of the experience, confronting reality, grieving openly and acknowledging that the person is gone but not forgotten. I imagine other faiths have rituals that serve these purposes in other ways.
I've heard that devout Jews and Christians (possibly Muslims?) continued to gather at home for important events like weddings and funerals, even though covid restrictions prevented it. I don't think more modern or 'woke' places of worship fared as well.
So true all of this.
You mentioned a book a couple of times over the years, written by your mentor, that addresses misconceptions about rights when dealing with death. I don't remember if you co-wrote it. Would you share the title again, or the author's name? I remember she died a while back. My husband talks about being buried at home somewhere and he's serious about it.
Final Rights: Reclaiming the American Way of Death he co-wrote it
Thank you for this.
This thing about refrigerator trucks being commonplace adds a very important layer in exposing the psyop.
I am still in disbelief that people meekly went along with letting their loved ones die alone in the hospital. There should have been marches, protests, signs, families trying to push their way in. Maybe I missed it, but I don't remember any of that happening.
I can not believe people rolled over for it all, but they felt so alone. I think it is a symptom of city dwellers being so independent these days. The rural locations where people know each other and family members seemed to care much less about the rules and more about the people.
To think that hospitals couldn't simply make family members wear masks, or hell, a freakin' bee keeper's suit, to say goodbye to dying loved ones. So much was set into place to test obedience, and to cause anguish and humiliation.
I find it shocking too. But I came to realise that perhaps many people accepted it because they had already come to see it as natural for nurses and care staff to occupy the roles that are supposed to sit with family.
I had this realisation in January 2023 when my partner's 98-year-old grandma had a stroke and spent the last month of her life in the hospital (the first half ostensibly being treated, the second receiving palliative care). During this time, various relatives chose not to visit and one of my partner's uncles (grandma's eldest son no less) still went ahead with a beach holiday an 8-hour flight away. (On his final visit he casually remarked he'd be back in 2 weeks' time, despite her being extremely frail at this point...)
The sad truth is that even when there are no visiting restrictions -- even when there is nothing standing in the way of duty and compassion -- many people still decide they'd rather not confront reality. Or at the very least, that it's best to keep it at arm's length. They have outsourced the process of caring for and comforting a dying loved one to medical staff. They think it's ok to occupy a supporting role, e.g., dropping by for half an hour or calling the ward to get an update. Meanwhile their loved one suffers alone, something that would have been unthinkable just a couple generations ago -- hell, something that is still unthinkable in many cultures and religions.
I wonder if during covid some people felt it was a relief to have that burden fully taken away? They didn't have to feel any guilt about not visiting, after all. Zoom check-ins and good-byes were just the natural endpoint of a process that has progressively become more and more sanitised and impersonal.
My partner and I were the last people to see her grandma, a few hours before she passed. Despite the hospital being hours away we knew it was important to be there for her in those last weeks as much as possible, as her loved ones and as her advocates (regardless of how much people kid themselves, even the nicest nurse isn't there to advocate for a patient).
In the end I was left feeling disgusted that other family members -- her own sons especially -- didn't see it that way. Even my partner's siblings refused to bring their kids to hospital because "it would upset them". Yet they knew it would have been a joyful occasion for Grandma Jean to have seen her great-grandkids one last time.
Oh, wow.... I hadn't thought about that: some were all to happy not to have to spend time with dying loved ones. How tragic that the grandmother didn't get to see her grandchildren. It just speaks to the validity of what Josh said about death becoming an industry that people farm out. SO.... it sounds like you and your partner were able to visit the grandmother during Covid?
When I was young my grandmother, who was really more like a second mother to me, was dying in a nursing home. In my immaturity, after visiting her a couple of times I never went back because I found it depressing and upsetting. I wasn't there for her at the end, and I'll regret it for the rest of my life. Twenty-six years later, when my mom was in a hospital dying, I sat next to her bed and held her hand during her final two days of life. I wish I'd had the strength of character to do the same for my grandmother, but sometimes it takes a while to grow up.
Bravo Josh, amazing piece. You have the uncanny knack for getting to the core of our societal mental illness. We are indeed deranged at the very most human level of life, death, family, animality, relatedness. We might pray for wisdom.
This was one of my faves.
I never thought of death the way you describe in the beginning of your essay. I appreciate that perspective opening my mind.
I’ve been convinced the fear of death is the reason for the Covid event and also all humanity’s suffering.
At some point we get the opportunity to get close to death. I think most people do. I think the degree to which you let the black dog rule you depends on how to deal with the death before you.
I remember when I was a kid, and one of our beloved family dogs died. I knew he would die soon, I could sense it. That day I played piano for him while he lay on my bed. He was a dog that used to howl with joy when the keys were hit.
Our other dog was cuddling up with him. He sensed his death too.
He eventually went to the door to go outside and die. I knew that’s where he was going because I was in tune with the whole thing, somehow.
Two family members came to the back door and started getting stressed out, yelling, trying to hurl him back inside so he didn’t go out in the snow.
He’s dying, I said. He is going outside to die.
He’s not! They protested.
He died. Right there. At the intersection of the inside and the outside.
It was instinctive, a dog would want to go outside and die peacefully, alone.
My family members denied it til the very end. And they have done the same with human companions. And it keeps them emotionally stuck in some kind of denial and repressed grief without really letting go.
Cluster B society must deny death, as you’ve put it. It keeps them anxious, neurotic, and in denial about the ridiculous narratives and premises they swallow. It’s a mirror of their denial about life and death itself, perhaps.
Great theme, can you do more on death?
I've had two dogs who went outside, away from the house, to die. It's as if they know it's time and they just want to be alone.
This made me go back and listen again to your conversation on this topic with Stephanie Winn.
This fear of death also blindsided a lot of people. When we're not accustomed to death, we can easily fool ourselves that our lives are good, rich and without a worry. But faced with the fear propaganda, a lot of people found out that they got nothing, and they consequently went directly into fight, flight or freeze mode.
The fighters turned overtly totalitarian and employed authoritarian means, the flight people just freaked out in a volcano of negative emotion (useful for the fighters who could now be their messiahs), and the freeze people just stared like deer in headlights and went along with whatever the message was without offering any resistance.
I was at that point immunized largely by my study of the Woke cult-religious movement, and to some extent my earlier days in cannabis reform activism.
Call it a psyop or a mass formation, but the fact is that when those are up and running, they offer a central Narrative that no one is allowed to criticize no matter how illogical (set the clock on the name calling), and they invent their own new-fangled morality and logic to suit the occasion.
My first huge identification was when I noticed that they had invented a completely new ethical system where people were suddenly "immoral" if they happened to infect someone else. The entire ethical system was invented out of whole cloth and it had never been like that before. (Notice how you can make the same analysis with "climate change"). And I also noticed at the same time that this new virus was treated as completely novel - despite there being quite similar viruses in the world (this is reminiscent of how marijuana is treated as "totally different than anything else" when alcohol isn't in fact all that different). If they can make you forget tradition and existing knowledge, they can make you think and do anything.
And once my critical factor was engaged the logical fallacies and inconsistencies just piled up like crazy.