Doctor Strangedeath: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and...

Oh, I Didn’t Stop Worrying

I send myself into a 2,000-word panic attack 

Just after my 19th birthday, I saw a man die on the subway. Now, I’ve seen dead bodies before. I don’t seek them out; in fact, I usually try to avoid them at all costs. I also usually only see them in the appropriate contexts, like funeral homes and, well, actually, just funeral homes. 

I had never seen someone die before, and I don’t particularly want to do it again. I still don’t know how it happened; no one did. One minute, we knew the man sitting at the end of the train was alive; the next, somehow, everyone knew he wasn’t. 

Death has always terrified me. The idea that I cannot, and will not, know what death is like while I am alive has pushed me into near-inescapable spirals. It’s not just that I’m afraid of being dead; it’s that I cannot conceive of what it is like to not be alive. Perhaps it isn’t death that I’m afraid of so much as not being able to understand it. This could also explain why I had such low self-esteem during 10th-grade Chemistry class. I’m almost convinced death is easier to understand than my midterm. 

As a child, I would lie awake terrified I wouldn’t wake up, though, upon reflection, it was not knowing that I hadn’t woken up that was terrifying, not the actual lack of consciousness. I read a biography of Leonard Bernstein several years ago, appropriately titled “Leonard Bernstein” by Humphrey Burton. Towards the end of the book, a good chunk was devoted to the death of Felicia Montealegre, Bernstein’s wife. She died of lung cancer at age 56 and did not go peacefully. Towards the very end of her life, she constantly screamed that she didn’t want to die; she didn’t want to go. I read this section on an airplane, which is not ideal for confronting the fact that kicking and screaming won’t save your life. 

I always assumed I would die kicking and screaming. Whether I knew it was coming because of a terminal illness, like Ms. Montealegre, or not, like the man on the subway, I will not go gentle into that good night. I rarely go gentle anywhere anyway; why make death the exception? 

Even though I know that kicking and screaming won’t spare me (just give whatever poor grim reaper comes to collect me a headache), I figure I’ll do it anyway because it’s the only action I can take in the face of fear of the unknown. I had resigned myself to this fact, hoping that when I went I still had enough lung capacity to really put up a fight. 

Ignorance Is A Bliss Someone Had to Ruin 

Image: Firstpost.com

But now I might be able to know. A VR experience designed by artist Shaun Gladwell allows users to simulate death in a hospital bed. You can see your dead body on a gurney as doctors try to revive you and then feel yourself shuffle off the mortal coil. 

Lots of people who have tried the experience use the typical metaphors for death, like a light at the end of a long tunnel and voices of passed loved ones. Maybe we’ve ingrained those experiences so deeply into our consciousness that that’s the only way we can express the feeling

of dying, or perhaps that’s actually what it feels like. Either way, those people felt something, whether it was accurate to death or not. 

But because the accounts are rather generic, or at least not particularly new, hearing about them doesn’t bring much comfort or new knowledge. If I want an accurate assessment of what death is like, I either have to put on a VR headset (which I don’t want to do because I’ll look stupid) or die (which I don’t want to do for reasons I have already explained). 

Now, there is a qualifier. The VR experience may accurately simulate certain circumstances that accompany the end of life, like a light at the end of a tunnel or an out-of-body experience. However, I also had an out-of-body experience when I was 10, too sick to eat all day yet entirely devoted to rehearsing my children’s theatre performance of Fiddler on the Roof (I was Yente, I was good, I have yet to do anything better), so I’m not entirely convinced that this VR experiment is can actually replicate dying. Without walking toward the light, there is no way to know what lies beyond that tunnel. 

But let’s say that it gets close. Maybe it doesn’t get past the moment where life ends, but it gets the gist of it. The part where if they miraculously saved you, no one would be able to tell you that your stories about almost dying are kind of trite since you almost died and there are certain privileged experiences (others include boating accidents, first kisses where vomiting, sneezing, or burping are involved, and negative celebrity encounters). 

Do I want to know? On the one hand, my fear is based on the unknown. While this VR experience may not get me the full VIP death package, I’d know a little bit of what might be in store. I might know what that man who died on the subway felt. I wouldn’t know where he went, but I’d know what he knew right before he went. If I knew what death started to feel like, maybe I wouldn’t be quite so scared. Rattlesnakes are scary because I know that they bite, but frankly, I’d be more concerned if the grass suddenly started sounding like my baby toys. 

But, and this is something I consider before most decisions, not just death simulations: I might hate it. If I thought reading about Ms. Montealegre was bad for my fear of death, what if she really had something to be kicking and screaming about? I enjoy a hoot and a holler as much as the next girl who likes a hoot and a holler, but I’d rather not be pitching a fit for the rest of my life because I know what’s coming for me. 

Death is peaceful, we say, although that might just be a meaningless platitude that’s more palatable than “God has a plan”. We have no idea what death is like. It might be the dull rotting of bodies and lack of consciousness that secularism says it is; it might be a brief blink before reincarnation; it might be an eternal beach party three miles left of the pearly gates. Do I want to live the rest of my life knowing what happened to the man on the subway? Or do I want to spend the rest of my life in fear of what is coming? 

I understand why people find solace in the concept of an afterlife. It takes life beyond the physical body into an eternal continuation of the soul. In some sense, the idea of an afterlife means that no one has to worry about what comes next because it is only materially different from what we experience now. I’ve desired that eternal continuation because it seems superior to being asleep in a wooden box six feet under.

If the afterlife is in the next room from our current existence, it’s not that I am worried about what the wallpaper looks like. Death is the doorway, and I don’t know if I want to know what the doorknob feels like in my hand. 

Shuffle Off the Mortal Coil, Shuffle It Back On, Look In The Mirror, Shuffle On A Different Coil, Then Shuffle the Old Coil Back On 

The promise of knowing something, even if it’s not everything, is tempting. I have been so afraid for so long. While seeing anyone die is a traumatic experience, having absolutely no grasp on the situation has turned what would ordinarily have been a bad night on the Q train into an intangible nightmare. The thing I am most afraid of happened right in front of me (okay, it was maybe 6 to 7 feet to the left), and I still have no answers. 

But I do believe there are some things we are not meant to know. Humans are greedy beings (I just ate three quesadillas when I only needed two, and I want the answers to life’s secrets). Much of the universe happens without us, beyond our range of perception. Our greediness does lead to incredible curiosity, which has resulted in a wealth of inferred knowledge, while not a whole lot of knowledge by acquaintance. But we can’t do everything, nor are we supposed to. Frankly, one of the great delights I see in philosophy, theology, and other more abstract studies is that there may never be an answer, or at least not a single one. There’s fun in the figuring, not the figuring out. 

While philosophers might be having fun (I hope they are), I am not. There is no joy in the figuring for me because it takes me from emotional paralysis to considering religion just to have a notion of heaven to studiously ignoring every movie that I know ends in death so that I don’t have to think anymore about it than I have to. But an answer might not be the salve I’m looking for, either. 

In some perverse way (which does not indicate a desire for death by my hand or anyone else’s), I wish I would die soon so that this would all be over, one way or another. If I go to hell, at least I know why I ended up there. But I don’t want to die; I’m rather attached to being alive, although tax season nearly took that out of me. 

As with many things in my life, I don’t know what I want. In the same way my friends never let me be in charge of picking the restaurant anymore; I can’t decide if I want to find out what dying is like. But while I freak out about this choice, at least I’m not freaking out about dying.