Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul

by Stephen Jenkinson

What could this mean, that it is possible not to die? It means that if dying is what you do, it is more than possible that you will not do it. You may be afraid to do it. You may refuse to do it. You may not know how to do it. You may not know that it is something you do instead of something that happens to you. Any or all of these together could well end up in you not dying. Your metabolism will cease of course, and so will mine. Our hearts will slow and ebb and flutter and go quiet altogether. Our kidneys, spleens, and livers will no longer clear our systems, and our bodies will go septic and shut down. Our lungs will heave shallowly and then barely and then not at all. Even our brains, because of all this, will slowly stop knowing that this is what is happening. But this is our body doing what it knows how to do when it cannot continue as it once did. This is our body being itself at the end of its days, but we are doing none of it. Most of this will happen regardless of what we do or refuse to do. All of this taken together is not what dying is. It is what our bodies do at the end of our bodies’ lives. It is not what we are doing. It is at most a negligible part of what dying is. The rest—what this book is about—might be done, and it might not be done. It is more than possible not to do it. Most of the people I have worked with in the death trade have, at least at the outset, refused to do it. They do not spend their dying time dying. They spend it—I mean spend it, her...