“Who said death is dead? He’s fully alive, traveling around the world,
throwing shadows and soaking in the sun. Visiting the young and old;
placing bets and dicing regrets, for the worse or a better off place.”
Anthony Liccione

This week in my grief educator training workshop, we engaged in an imaginal chat with Death as part of a visualization exercise in which we were invited to ask Death a series of our most burning questions.

It turns out Death was an amiable old white man who wasn’t really into answering any of my questions…whereas for a gal in my Zoom breakout room, Death was a young hot dude and a Yes Man. Go figure! And that, perhaps, is the point. Death is whoever or whatever we want or need it to be and therein lies the beauty of this exercise – to begin to appreciate, as meaning makers, how hellbent we are to shape Death into something that is always and only about us.

Have you heard of the clever book Death Wins a Goldfish: Reflections from a Grim Reaper’s Yearlong Sabbatical by the New York Time’s “Modern Love” column illustrator Brian Rea?

One of the occupational hazards of being a Funeral Celebrant and End of Life Soulsmith is that I spend a lot of time thinking about the death industrial complex. But seldom do I think how Death must be feeling. I mean, think about it. Imagine the long hours Death must endure, not to mention the lack of appreciation and recognition for all of Death’s day-in-and-day-out efforts. It has to be a slog!

And so, kudos to Brian Rea who, inspired by his father’s late life advice to his former 30-year-old self (“work less”), imagines “if Human Resources told Death he must take his vacation days—an entire year’s worth of time off. What would Death do with all that free time?”

This brilliantly-illustrated book cuts Death a lot of slack – 365 days of it, to be exact – affording the reader a compassionate gaze through which to see Death as this lonely, awkward creature who’s just doing his level best to make his way in the world and play by the rules despite the ambiguity of this gig called life. We tend to give Death a bad rap for being a greedy thief in the night. This visual feast of a book helped me see that Death, much like Arjuna in the Bhagavat Gita, is just doing his duty for others.

And spoiler alert, Death ends up doing all the things during his year-long rite of passage into all things human. He crafts a bucket list, goes shopping, builds a snowman, goes skiing, sneaks a peek at the obits to see what he missed, starts a journal, binges animal documentaries on Netflix, goes to the fair, wins a goldfish, rides the roller coaster and Ferris wheel, books a pedicure, embarks on a self-improvement program, swipes right on his phone, goes to the beach, jumps out of a plane, etc., etc.

In the course of his sabbatical, Death tackles these and dozens more endearing experiences, all of which are all so foreign to Death on account of Death being, well…this non-human entity called Death and all. And yet along the way, lo and behold, Death gains an appreciation for the fleetingness and the fragility and yes, the fun of living.

I’ve been sitting with this indelible book for the better part of this year, and not only does it tickle my funny bone; it’s also inspired me to look at Death, not as this vengeful someone who sometimes disproportionately steals our loved ones, but as a kind of cog in this ever-churning wheel of birth, breath, death.

So, if you’re looking for a gift that will help you or your loved ones lean deeper into living, this just might be the book that helps all y’all carpe your diems with added gusto.

And who knows? Along the way, you might even start to glean some sympathy for how “Death works harder than any of us” on account of how “he’s on the clock day and night; he never calls in sick or takes a day off.” Or more to the point, you might even feel inspired to craft your own bucket list and chase your own unrealized dreams, because as Death discovered, “quality time with others is important” and time itself? Yeah…you know it. It’s short.

 

“Go ahead and say death is a thief, but also say the fact of it can be the soil from which life grows. Meaning, the fact that the song will end can be the thing that makes us turn up the stereo.”
Andrea Gibson