Accepting Death, and Letting Go at the Right Time

Everyone must die, and it is understandable that relatives are unwilling to give up on the dying. Yet sometimes one has to let go—for example, when a loved one's condition is so critical that medicine and surgery can no longer help.

Modern people hand over facing a loved one's death to hospitals and doctors, as if medicine could hold death at bay. For this reason, we today have almost no death education at all.

In my childhood I received ample death education. In those days, rural elders and gravely ill relatives cherished the tradition of "falling leaves returning to the roots." No one wanted to die in a hospital; they wanted to leave the world in their own home. After all, home is the warmest place a person ever dwells.

So in our village, once people turned fifty they would prepare their own coffin—locally called a "long-life box." Almost every home kept one or two on hand. Since burial was still the custom, a box made in advance and kept at home for years grew lighter as the wood dried, making it easier for the pallbearers.

Before an elder's death, the young relatives would take turns keeping vigil through the night—setting up a simple bed in the elder's room to sit with them. Usually it was the dying elder's nephews or grandchildren who kept vigil; to relax, they would play cards together, talking and laughing. There was none of the panic modern people show before death. I myself took part in two such vigils.

The dying did not struggle over death the way people do today; they would put on their burial clothes and quietly await that final moment of life. That is a benefit of living in a community and holding religious faith.

My great-aunt prepared for her death three times. Because she was frail in old age, experienced elders judged three times that she was near death and told the descendants to prepare. Each time she cooperatively put on her burial clothes; the first two were false alarms, and she felt embarrassed—she felt she had needlessly troubled her children and grandchildren.

In the countryside, an elder's death was traditionally a "happy funeral"; only the death of a young person cut down early caused bitter grief. Mr. Fei Xiaotong once said that every custom has its social function; human societies have customs because people living in society have such needs. Funeral rites, too, have their social function.

In the past, a rural funeral was grand and long. Before the burial, relatives kept vigil beside the coffin for three days and nights. Afterward came a forty-nine-day period of rites, with a ceremony every seven days to release the departed. Relatives and friends all came to take part and comfort the closest mourners. Besides those forty-nine days there was also the "hundred-day memorial."

On the first day of the Lunar New Year after a person's death, every family in the village sent a representative to bow before the spirit tablet in the home of the deceased. On the second day, relatives from other villages came to bow too. At the Feast of the Hungry Ghosts that year, the tablet was burned; we called this "removing the spirit."

Until then, every day the family offered food before the tablet; only when the "removing the spirit" rite ended was the complete funeral considered finished.

I am an atheist, yet from a sociological angle I saw how such a lengthy, elaborate funeral comforted the bereaved family.

After my mother died, we performed most of these rites. Each ceremony brought some comfort to my heart, and the relatives gathered together comforted us too. Offering food before my mother's tablet made me feel better. Confucius said "sacrifice as if present"; when I sacrificed to my mother, I truly felt she had not left me, that she was still somewhere within my reach.

When my mother died, for a long time I lived almost as if dwelling by her grave, sweeping it morning and evening and offering food before her tablet at every meal. Even in those years right after she left me, my atheistic faith never wavered. Yet I still drew much psychological comfort from those mourning rites; that comfort eased the pain of her loss.

Death is not so terrible; everyone must die. If death is unavoidable, then rather than fill our loved ones with tubes and prolong their limited years in suffering, it is better to send them off serenely as they left.

Leaving the world is not as painful as people imagine. Before she died, my mother insisted on seeing her "long-life box" and burial clothes with her own eyes; she was fully content with all of it. Smiling, she asked her own eldest sister—my aunt—whether her "long-life box" was fine.

Though she was loath to part from this world, because she held a sincere Chinese folk faith that mixed Buddhist reincarnation with ancestral clan rituals, she left with extraordinary peace.

In that sense, most of us need religion. Some faith is better than none; religion teaches us how to face death, and that spiritual comfort is useful at the end.

On his deathbed, Darwin said that as an atheist he needed no comfort from God and could face life and death without fear. I myself have seen enough life and death and long since take it all lightly. But for people of faith, drawing on belief to overcome the fear of death is no bad thing. In this pluralistic world, everyone is free to choose the way of life and faith they prefer.

Fast-paced modern society handles the question of death far worse than traditional society. City people no longer have the ceremonies by which relatives once helped the dying through their final days, nor the long, elaborate funerals that seem a waste of time. People live ever more lonely lives, struggle ever more panic-strickenly against death, lose the composure that should come at life's end, and add much suffering and anxiety.

Medical institutions have also taken on a burden that should not belong to doctors—confronting the patient's death. Many people today die in hospital; news reports of notable deaths usually include the phrase "died despite rescue." Many who die in hospital have no treatment value; hospitals accept them only because people no longer want to die at home.

Medical staff are flesh and blood too; no one wants to face patient death every day. The recurring outbursts of grieving, extreme relatives have made most health workers fearful—they dare not, and will not, take on this last mile.

Personally, I am unwilling to accept any patient near the end of life. First, I do not want to see a family lose both the patient and their money; second, I do not want to carry the risk of doctor-patient disputes when a patient dies; third, honestly, facing death every day makes my own life too heavy to enjoy. I would rather see patients' families face death rationally, accept it, and let go at the right time.

What is humanitarianism? It is not only the saving and healing done by medical staff; it also means that, at the patient's end, the family should not make futile struggles that add suffering, and should not let emotion drown reason. Creating the conditions for our loved ones to die a "good death," letting them leave serenely and comfortably, is more humane than sparing no effort out of a filial piety that recklessly forces treatment.