It was then that I carried you: A Parable About Death

If you’ve been following my Facebook, Twitter or Instagram you’ll likely know that I’ve collaborated with the amazing designer Clark Orr to make a memento mori. A memento mori is a small object designed to help the owner reflect upon their mortality. It’s part of the ancient tradition of ars moriendi – the art of dying – and is designed to help free the individual from the oppression that comes from the frenetic denial of death.

Traditionally a memento mori defines death as that which marks the end of our life, and has been connected with a philosophy that advocates a type of detachment from the world. However philosophers as powerful as Heidegger, psychoanalysts as great as Lacan and theologians as brilliant as Tillich remind us of the ancient insight that death is not something that simply marks the end of life… but is an essential element of it.

What they mean is that a sense of lack, or non-being, is part of what it means to be – that we are human (non)beings. More than this, they guide us into the insight that the lack which clings to us, if it is faced, is a gift. A gift that helps us muster up the courage to truly affirm existence and shout out an amen to life. In short, the way to rob death of its sting, is to stop fleeing from its influence in our lives, and face it. When we do this, we will discover that death can provide a healing, supportive role in our lives.

With this in mind I wanted to create a memento mori that people could carry with them, an object that would not only remind them that death walks with us, but that this death is a possible friend to embrace rather than a somber specter to flee from.

So we created the Happy Reaper jacket pin.

Over the last couple of days I’ve been toying with the idea of having a parable on the card that carries the pin. Then, this morning, I woke up from a deep sleep with an idea that I’d like to share with you. It might be a little much, I’m not sure. But it’s meant to be both playful and provocative. What do you think?

Deep in his slumber, one night a man had a very real, yet surreal dream. He dreamt that he was walking along the beach with Death. As he looked up at the sky, he saw all the scenes of his life flash by along with two sets of footprints: one set for himself, and another for Death.

After all the scenes had flashed before him, he looked back at those footprints and noticed something quite disturbing: At the most difficult times in his life, he saw only one set of footprints.

This deeply troubled the man, so he turned and said to Death: “You said that if I followed you, then you would always walk with me through thick and thin. In looking back, I see that during the most painful times there is only one set of footprints. Why did you leave me when I needed you the most?”

“I love you and would never leave.”

“It was during those times when you suffered the most that I carried you.”