Consolation Of The Soul
Or On Death
Part 1 — On Death
“Let us learn to meet it steadfastly and to combat it. And to begin to strip it of its greatest advantage against us, let us take an entirely different way from the usual one. Let us rid it of its strangeness, come to know it, get used to it. Let us have nothing on our minds as often as death. At every moment let us picture it in our imagination in all its aspects” — Montaigne
When my father died of cancer one year ago, I remember being alone in the morgue and staring at his dead body for five straight minutes.
I stared at his pale, skinny face that didn’t even remotely resemble the person that I had known and loved.
All his pain was gone, all his troubles were gone, all his regrets were gone. Soon that body will become ashes, I thought. I will cherish the memory of my father until I die, and once I have children, I will probably be able to make them remember his name and who he was. But after they’ll be gone it will likely be as if my father had never existed…
When people think about death they usually try to dismiss the thought of it. They can’t deal with the inevitable anxiety that comes with the thought that, in the end, we are going to become nothing at some point.
