Week 10 - Death and meaning

Our reading from the book this week gives ten ways of looking at death.

• Death as an image or object - flag at half-staff, monument
• Death as a statistic - mortality rates, life expectancy tables
• Death as an event - funeral, wake
• Death as a state of being - nothingness, energy state of being
• Death as an analogy - "dead as a doornail," "the dead of winter"
• Death as a mystery - "what happens after death?"
• Death as a boundary - "how many years are left?", "you can't come back.
• Death as a thief of meaning - "I feel so cheated," "I have much left to do."
• Death as fear and anxiety - "I'm afraid to die," "will dying be painful?"
• Death as a reward or punishment - "heaven awaits the just," "thee wicked go to hell.

Looking over this list, I see an omission. I'm not contradicting the authors here, they present death as being viewable in at least these ways. When I read "death as a thief of meaning" I automatically think about the inverse - Death as a giver of meaning.

Right now, I am alive. And I am trying out a hundred different things to assert that I am alive: I am keeping my connections to loved ones, I am educating myself to be able to do something new, and with my wife I am trying to have a child. There are real stakes to these actions, because I only have so much time to do them. It might be oversimplifying to say this, but I do these things because I will die.

There's some of this in our book, in the section on Death Anxiety. Being aware of death may push you to enjoy what you have. Terror management theory states that "ensuring the continuation of one's life is the primary motive underlying behavior and that all other motives can be traced to this basic one."

I think that, in part, our lives have meaning because they end. The fact of death gives shape to life; but also, the circumstance of death can impart meaning into someone's life that might not have been there before. This is all over our culture. These are the martyrs, the "heroic deaths," the soldier or the fireman who gives their life saving others. JFK and Lincoln are arguably more famous because they were killed in office. There are entire religions built on the circumstances of one person's death.

As Leah pointed out in her podcast, our lives can be touched by death at any point along the lifespan. This makes it not only an ending, but a part of life. What meaning do you get from death?

Week 9 - Joan Erikson's 9th stage and Gerotranscendence

From the instructor notes this week:

Erikson’s wife, Joan Erikson worked closely with her husband Erik and continued on with their work after his death in 1994. In 1997, Joan added a new chapter on the ninth stage of development, “very old age”. Joan Erikson wrote of the challenges faced by people in their eighties and nineties, such as autonomy over life choices and one’s own body, and discusses faith, hope and wisdom in very old age.

Erik Erikson collaborated with his wife Joan throughout their lives. Erik noted that he could not remember what parts of his theory were from him and which were from Joan. When they were in their eighties, they realized that eight stages were not enough, and conducted interviews of the very old.

Erik passed away in 1994, and Joan published the ninth stage based on Erik's notes and her own work. The ninth stage can be characterized as "trust vs. mistrust" - the same stage encountered in infancy! These questions of trust revolve around your physical world and body - do you trust that your leg will still work today? Your heart? Do you trust that your caretakers will treat you well? Despair and resentment are very easy to fall into in this stage.

Gerotranscendence is a theory developed by Lars Tornstam, a Swedish sociologist. He describes it as "a shift in meta perspective, from a materialistic and rational view of the world to a more cosmic and transcendent one, normally accompanied by an increase in life satisfaction." He uses Erikson as a starting point, and considers gerotranscendence - if achieved - to be the final stage of developing towards wisdom. In his view, a frail 89-year-old who is withdrawing from activities and socialization isn't deteriorating - she is evolving.

Take, for instance, the apparent tendency of some elderly people to confuse the past and present. “People sometimes describe their perspective on time changing,” Dr. Tornstam said. “They feel they can be children, middle-aged and old at the same time.” If an 80-year-old describes this sensation to a contemporary neurologist, the doctor might jot in his notes that the patient seems improperly oriented in time and place.

But Dr. Tornstam describes the characteristic as “a transcendence of the borders of time” and argues that old people who experience these changes (including greater spontaneity and playfulness, less self-absorption, and feelings of “cosmic transcendence”) take greater satisfaction in their lives.

(from an excellent NY Times article linked here, about Tornstam - Tornstam has also written a concise description of his theory, linked here)

I find this fascinating. Joan Erikson describes an almost complete regression at the end of life, and Tornstam describes an ascension - and they're keying off the same symptoms. Tornstam cautions caregivers to not treat their clients as victims of aging, though he does distinguish 'gerotranscendence' from dementia. He is saying, do not pathologize - be in awe of these people.