Death Q & A

The idea of something like ‘Car Talk for Death’ has been waiting patiently in my plans for a few years. Today it got real. Maybe, depending on what you think about VR.

I think place matters and I think a great place to talk about Death is a temple of some sort off in the mountains. It’s not quite as easy as snapping your fingers, not yet anyway — but my son’s EvolVR program in AltspaceVR has a world like that all ready to go.

Death and dying, end of life, mortality are all ideas I’ve made central to my life. I like to read and reflect and talk about them. I get asked lots of questions, some publicly, some more anonymously.

One way of looking at the Coronavirus of 2020 is as a large-scale mortality salience event. Dying became less abstract and more real, something that matters and is present in daily life.

That’s uncomfortable for everyone. It’s worse than uncomfortable for some people. Increased anxiety affects our gut biome and how we digest our food. It affects our muscles. Our thought processes.

There are plenty of ways to handle death anxiety. The way that’s worked for me is to learn about death, and the way I learn best is to get immersed in whatever it is.

Being a hospice volunteer was one way to get immersed in death. Talking to people in schools and groups and professional workshops has…