As a student of Buddhism and a writer of detective novels, giving death a comfortable place to stay in my mind where I can visit it frequently has a certain macabre relevance. My hope is that if I get used to visiting death it won't be a shock when death comes to visit me. He will be an old friend.
Why is death always personified as male? You could say that a skeleton in a robe with a scythe is genderless, but I've always thought of it as a male skeleton. Apparently 100% of children do as well, when asked. Maybe it is the power that death holds - it is ultimate. You cannot escape, evade or avoid death; you will die. Emotions do not sway death from taking his due. Nor does fairness. There is no comfort. No kindness. And death often comes at the hands of men.
And then there is the pain. When people say that death was "a release," we are all reminded of the pain that often accompanies death. And we fear pain.
Or suddenness - a car accident, typhoon, lightening bolt, heat attack, a fall. Most people who die do not expect to do so when they wake up on the morning of their last day. We should be starting each day with the thought, "Today is the last day of the rest of my life." Maybe we would be our best selves more of the time.
Death keeps poor company and is associated with misery: famine, war, pestilence, plague, poverty.
Death takes children before their time, annihilates those who would live, create, love. It is not selective.
I've sat with both of my parents as they died and it was a labor for each of them. Their bodies' becoming unreliable: an enemy. Breathing is hard, talking an ordeal, moving an impossibility. The knowledge that any action they performed would probably be for the last time. There is a poignancy and at the same time a desire to get it over with - it's too hard, just get it over with, let me go.
