All That Remains: A Life in Death

by Sue Black

Fear of death is often a justifiable fear of the unknown; of circumstances beyond our personal control which we cannot know and for which we cannot prepare. ‘Pompa mortis magis terret, quam mors ipsa,’ the philosopher Francis Bacon wrote over 400 years ago, quoting the Roman Stoic Seneca. ‘It is the accompaniments of death that are frightful rather than death itself.’ Yet the control that we like to think we have over our lives is often an illusion. Our greatest conflicts and barriers exist in our minds and in the way we deal with our fears. It is pointless even to try to control that which cannot be controlled. What we can manage is how we approach and respond to our uncertainties.