Yes, I Really Will Die

We heard a talk yesterday by Paul Becker, the director of the Deeded Body Program of the Nebraska Anatomical Board.  Mr. Becker spoke about whole body donation after death.  This is different from organ donation for possible transplantation.  Whole body donation is for educational purposes—to train physicians, surgeons and other health care professionals through the use of specially prepared bodies for gross anatomy classes, surgery rehearsals and other important training education and skills development.  The Deeded Body Program is a not-for-profit enterprise whose sole purpose is education.  The program has a website with information and bequeathal forms at http://www.donatemybody.org/.

This seems like a wonderful program.  The relationships with the family and friends of the deceased receive appropriate care and respect.  Cremation and burial costs can be covered by the Anatomical Board.  A funeral can still take place prior to the donation (and with appropriate prior notification to the relevant funeral director).  Funeral expenses are not something the Anatomical Board covers.  This whole body donation program is a worthy consideration.

It does require that one comes to terms with the realities of personal mortality.  That may seem obvious, but it isn’t really.

Most people who have lived beyond adolescence have thought about their own deaths in intellectual terms.  

• Every person dies.
• I am a person.
• Therefore I will die.  

It is one thing to construct a logical equation.  It is quite another thing to deal with that equation at the level of emotion and experience.  A conversation about whole body donation, for example, forces individuals to have that more intimate self-conversation.  I observed a lot of nervous glances and anxious fidgeting during Mr. Becker’s talk.  People began to imagine physicians in training using their bodies for thoracotomy practice.  Things got a little tense and quiet.

I imagine that Mr. Becker has gotten used to that kind of response.  On the other hand, there was great appreciation for the opportunity to use one's dead body to give life.  This seems like yet another way to do battle with death and to be part of something that lives beyond us.  Perhaps that's why Mr. Becker referred several times to the "donor" rather than to the body and described what would happen as "teaching" rather than something more passive.  We want to make a difference even when we're dead.

George Bonnano discusses a sub-speciality of bereavement studies called “Terror Management Theory” (TMT).  TMT is rooted in Ernst Bloch’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Denial of Death.  Bonnano summarizes TMT in these words:

“The great discovery of TMT research is that most of us have, somewhere, simmering just below the surface of conscious awareness, a vague dread of our own vulnerability and mortality.  Even the simplest reminder of our mortality may dramatically alter our attitudes and behavior in ways that appear to be consistent with some of the larger claims of the theory” (The Other Side of Sadness, page 120).

Those larger claims of TMT include the assertion that we engage in shared beliefs and worldviews that give us a sense of being part of something larger than ourselves, something that will outlive us in one way or another.  “One of the strongest claims TMT researchers have made is that when people are reminded of their own mortality, they cling all the more tenaciously to shared worldviews, thereby fending off the threat of death” (page 118).  

Simple and immediate reminders of personal mortality can affect the ways in which judges set bail for prostitutes.  These same reminders can influence people to value good behavior more highly than they would otherwise.  Reminders of personal mortality can prompt people to demonstrate an increased desire to have children.  You can read about this one in the article entitled “Mortality salience and the desire for Offspring”

(http://people.uncw.edu/ogler/Experimental/TMT%20offspring%202.pdf).

This reminded me of a striking experience.  I preached once at a service for parents who had suffered the death of their infant in the previous year.  I was honored to participate in that powerful and meaningful service.  One of the things that struck me in that experience was the predominance of another pregnancy among the bereaved couples.  My observation was that about three-fourths of the couples present were expecting again.  I was surprised by that rapid turnaround, and I asked one of the staff people if that was representative of her experience in such cases.  In fact, it was.

Our awareness of mortality has at least this effect.  We are, unless completely debilitated, moved to seek and to affirm life.  We will examine our priorities and problems.  More often than not, we will find ourselves making the resilient response.  More often than not, we will choose hope.  That doesn’t assuage our fear of death.  That doesn’t remove the pain of our loss.  But we are not wired, for the most part, to allow death to win.  We know that God, the Universe, our Higher Power (pick your worldview) is on the side of Life.  

And we will, in most cases, do something to pick that side as well.