Death is often overlooked, especially in Western society as bad, unbearable not worth looking at or not worth wrestling with. As a whole, western society is afraid of wrestling with and looking at death. Why? Death challenges and questions everything from top to bottom and strips everything bare and raw. Ultimately bringing to the surface and questioning what is of ultimate value. Death destroys the lies and reveals the truth.
What is beneath the seemingly full glory of gold and glitter on the surface?
Death often also gets overlooked in the therapy room. But death's heavy and dark presence is always there, right from the very beginning. The moment when boundaries are established - length of session, duration of therapy, time/day death has entered the room. Varies Shades that are indirectly pointing towards death also enter the room - Such as beginning, endings and breaks.
Other cultures around the world especially the indigenous people of Mexico have a very different relationship with death. Perhaps there is something to be learnt from. Death is often interpreted to mean an absolute ending. However, without endings, there can be no life and life and cannot be without death.
If it is true that the giving of birth is a traumatic experience according to Otto Rank [The Trauma of Birth] for both newborn and mother and the cutting of the umbilical cord is the first significant separation between parent and newborn then right from the beginning of inception the is a parallel process of growth and seperation unfolding. This also coincides with being in therapy. According to the psychodynamic approach being in therapy is akin to journeying through childhood. If this is true then the ending of therapy is in fact a beginning. The beginning of 'becoming' an adult then the ending of therapy means going back out into the world ready to engage with life and the existential exactions that situate a person in a particular way. This is then the beginning of questioning and exploring even discovery of how the person colours the world? how is the person coloured by the world?
In this light death and life are heads and tails of the same coin.
In short, death is our greatest teacher, yet if we can only allow ourselves to learn the lessons.
This blog theme originates and is inspired by Jamie Moran