Helping Others with Death

At the center of most received wisdom is the idea that the best thing to do in life is help others. So you’d think it would be easy. Especially helping with the hardest stuff, like death.

But, the scary parts where help is probably needed most are exactly where it is hardest to give, and hardest to receive. Like death.

At one of our weekly events in VR today, someone asked: How do I help my friends? The ones who might be dying and the ones who are losing someone, like, right now?

Usually people don’t ask clear and obvious and important questions like that, even though the event we were in is actually named Death Q & A. Usually they talk about deaths they have experienced, because there is a large reservoir of sadness that is an unexpressed part of all of us. When it’s OK to talk about Death, some of it can come out.

People also talk about near death experiences a lot. I like to expand that idea. Seeing sleep as a near death experience, a kind of rehearsal for transitions into unknown places. The Greeks and then someone even before them realized the close identification of sleep and death when the had the deities Hypnos and Thanatos not just be brothers, but twins. The sleep and death twins.

Asking, how can I help people with death and dying is different than sharing my unexpressed feelings about…