{"id":177,"date":"2025-04-16T23:43:58","date_gmt":"2025-04-16T23:43:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/20-2\/?page_id=177"},"modified":"2025-04-23T23:30:35","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T23:30:35","slug":"deaths-placations","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/20-2\/non-fiction\/deaths-placations\/","title":{"rendered":"Death’s Placations"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Aidan Leopold<\/span><\/p>\n

I was a young child when I realized what it really meant to die, when I truly grasped my own mortality. My father and I were watching an awards show on TV, and some actor or singer was giving their acceptance speech after winning an award. If I recall correctly, the winner was expressing their appreciation for their ability to do something meaningful with their life when the realization hit me: I would die someday, and then there would be nothing.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Looking back, the whole situation strikes me as exceedingly odd. It seems to me almost too innocuous an experience to ignite the spark of my comprehension, as if the drama of the event didn\u2019t match its surroundings. Nevertheless, that is how it happened. Sitting there on the couch in my living room, for the first time in my life, I knew I was going to die. My immediate response was to completely disassociate; I remember feeling completely isolated, almost inhuman. The TV played in the background, somewhere far off, while I watched myself from outside and above my own body, as if I was finally being allowed to see from the puppet master’s view, finally clued into the meaninglessness of what I was doing.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While this realization does not necessitate a response governed by fear, that was the overwhelming emotional response with which I was faced. However, I wasn\u2019t scared of the actual experience of dying or the pain related to it. Instead, I was afraid of what came next, or more precisely, what didn\u2019t. It terrified me that there would be a point where I would pass on, and then my consciousness would no longer exist. I simply could not come to terms with the fact that I would someday cease to be. In the weeks and months that followed my epiphany, dying would constantly be on my mind, inescapably tethered to my thoughts. Every day, I would remember, and every day the panic was the same. I wet my bed abnormally often for my age because I would drink copious amounts of water before going to sleep for fear of dying of dehydration in the night. It upset me that the sun would someday run out of fuel and our solar system would cease to be able to support human life, as that disturbed my desired immortality. I had trouble falling asleep, and I resorted to repeating the words \u201cice cream\u201d in my head over and over again to prevent myself from thinking about dying at night. My every waking moment was plagued by death.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The realization of one\u2019s own mortality is one of childhood\u2019s great milestones. Be it after the death of a loved one or a simple injury, the moment one fully comprehends the limits of their body, the immense frailty of their being, they are forever changed. In many ways, this realization acts as a second, final birth, ushering us into the final stage of metamorphosis. Life after this point is spent in the pursuit of an impossible reconciliation: How can death be accepted in the face of life?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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One of the common placations that is used when someone expresses fear or discomfort with the idea that they are going to die is to tell them that it happens to everyone, but this has never comforted me, and my suspicion is that it does not comfort the people who say it either. They may want it to comfort them, perhaps even convincing themselves that it does, but it seems unlikely. We as a species are too arrogant, too self-important. After all, when has humanity accepted that something was \u201cjust the way the world works?\u201d No, if death is the natural way of things, then we will defy nature, that is what humanity says, that is what humanity believes. Furthermore, while the attempt to ease the discomfort with dying by invoking a reminder of the universality of the experience is commendable, this specific circumstance renders that tactic ineffective. While the idea of suffering together with comrades has helped many people get through many things, the essential factor that makes this coping mechanism work is the fact that the collective is actively suffering together. You cannot die together. While you can die at the same time as someone and you can die in the same place as someone, you cannot truly die together. The fundamental source of comfort when suffering together is the knowledge that someone else is sharing the experience that you have, and with respect to dying, you can never have that knowledge because you will be dead. It may be true that you can be dying together, but you cannot die together.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Another common placation for dying is the idea that you will be in a better place but even ignoring the obvious issue of this statement\u2019s reliance on a belief in some kind of afterlife, this has always struck me as a less than effective source of comfort. If the prospect of \u201cbeing in a better place\u201d truly provided solace from the knowledge of one\u2019s own mortality, then you wouldn\u2019t have to constantly remind someone of it. They would need no convincing. The fact that any convincing is necessary proves the futility of this approach. Moreover, even if someone does believe that they will go to a better place when they die, that person will still invariably attempt to postpone their death for as long as possible. Even believers are not eager to go to their supposed \u201cbetter place.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Recently, I went to a funeral, the first funeral of my adulthood. The deceased died of a Fentanyl overdose, and was survived by his mother and multiple siblings, all of whom were told that their beloved family member was in a better place. Striking me as always being more for the loved ones of someone who died, I wasn\u2019t surprised to hear the refrain of this sentiment echoing through the pews. While I always believed it failed as a placation for those fearing death, I thought that the idea that we go to a \u201cbetter place\u201d did serve some purpose as a placation for those who survive. It doesn\u2019t. It didn\u2019t stop the mother\u2019s grief. It didn\u2019t stop her sobs during the service. It didn\u2019t stop her pain, her hurt.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What did it do?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Funerals are uncomfortable events for most, as is only natural for a head-on recognition of death. I didn\u2019t know the deceased; he was a distant cousin of my fianc\u00e9e’s, but nevertheless, I was exceedingly anxious about my attendance, as I knew it was to be an open casket funeral. I had only been to one funeral previously, years ago, and the body was not visible, and so I knew on my way to the cousin\u2019s funeral that I would be faced with a dead body for the first time in my life. As I said, I became conscious of what dying really meant when I was quite young, but even so, a part of me was still able to deny the fact that I was to die. I was still able to delude myself with ideas of some exceptional exclusion from the lot of the human race. Looking at a dead man stripped me of that. Death was made undeniable, if only for a moment.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This is what the placation was for; this was why so many people told the mother that her son was in a better place. We value our ability to ignore death, to pretend that it doesn\u2019t apply to us. When we are faced with something that puts our ability to do that in jeopardy, it makes us uncomfortable. Statements like \u201cHe\u2019s going to a better place\u201d are indeed placations, but the people who are told it are not the ones who are comforted. These statements are more for the speakers than they are for who is being spoken to. We recite our claims without believing them, or more precisely, without giving them enough thought to believe or not believe them. Our mind pushes out the statement before we can consider what it is that we are saying, and that is the only situation in which these placations work. Their effect, their truth, dissolves upon close inspection, upon careful thought. This is the very same reason that these placations do not work to comfort those who are scared of dying or are struggling with grief. They examine the statements enough to see them for what they truly are: the fastest way for other people to avoid thinking about death. People get great utility out of telling someone that their beloved is in a better place, until it is being said to them; then they realize that the statement is wholly inadequate. They find that the placation was far less potent when on the receiving end, that while it may be able to help prevent thoughts of death, it can do very little to treat them. Ironically, nothing we can say to someone agonizing over the thought of their own death can help them because we are too busy hiding from the knowledge of our own deaths.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After I realized what death really meant, what my death really meant, the only place in which I found solace was ignorance. As it turned out, the most effective way for me to deal with my terror was to ignore it, to simply not think about dying. In the end, I found no way to reconcile with the fact that I would die. All the placations were unable to do what I needed them to do; distraction alone was able to give me the respite that I so desperately craved, but this was easier said than done. Not thinking about something is uniquely challenging, as the more you try, the more you fail. It isn\u2019t something that you can intentionally do, but rather something that you must let happen. Left with distraction as my only way to cope, I grew my skills of evasion, but it was slow going. The time periods between thinking about my own death grew longer, but this was over the course of years. Now, as a twenty-year-old, I am confronted with my own death less frequently, but that isn\u2019t to say that it never crosses my mind. Just like an old injury flaring up, there are days in which I am faced again with my own mortality. However, this is no longer the norm. I have mastered the skill of distraction. Perhaps that is what getting older is, getting better at not thinking about things.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Avoidance, distraction, ignorance. We are taught to not recognize the possibility of our own death, so much so that we offer hollow, ineffective words to those who are grieving and are in a panic about their own death just so that we ourselves can evade thoughts about our death. I suppose that I can accept this, but I have one nagging worry. What happens when we are dying? What happens when we are finally on our deathbeds, surrounded by our loved ones, and it is still not enough? Greedily clinging to life, we go where ignorance cannot follow, and only terror remains. That is not the end I want.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Aidan Leopold I was a young child when I realized what it really meant to die, when I truly grasped my own mortality. My father and I were watching an awards show on TV, and some actor or singer was giving their acceptance speech after winning an award. If I recall correctly, the winner… Continue Reading Death’s Placations<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":82,"featured_media":0,"parent":19,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-177","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/20-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/20-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/20-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/20-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/82"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/20-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/20-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":301,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/20-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/177\/revisions\/301"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/20-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/20-2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}