Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul

by Stephen Jenkinson

In the early days of diagnosis a dying person has as his or her new purpose in life to be “anywhere but here,” to know “anything but this,” to go after that fugitive running down the street called My Normal Life. But in the last days there is more often a feeling of “this, and this only.” When older dying parents in their last days or hours mysteriously stop wanting to see or talk to their adult children this makes for a lot of heartache, but what is really happening is that the dying person is distracted by the sorrows and grief and familiarity of the living from the epic project of setting his or her face in some other direction, in a way that finally obeys what is happening. They no longer face those who have come from them, but face instead—or try to face—those from whom they came. That is the instinct, to begin dying toward their beginnings instead of living for what they have begun. But the instinct is hamstrung when, after generations of immigration, flight, and amnesia about ancestry, a dying person isn’t sure at all from whom they came, or where home is to be found or faced. This is where the lament about not knowing what to do really comes from.