THE ACT OF DYING
After discovering that the fear of death is the worm at the core of the human condition, D.S. Moss stands quivering on the threshold of psychological oblivion. He figures the best way out of this state of anxiety is to actually experience his own passing (obviously). In this episode, Moss crawls into his deathbed and is taken to total body failure with the hope that upon return he’ll have a new perspective on life.
SALLIE TISDALE
Sallie Tisdale is the author of nine books, most recently Advice for Future Corpses (and Those Who Love Them). Her other books include Talk Dirty to Me, Stepping Westward, and Women of the Way. Her collection of essays, Violation, was published in 2015 by Hawthorne Books. Her work has appeared in Harper’s, Antioch Review, Conjunctions, Threepenny Review, The New Yorker, and Tricycle, among other journals. Tisdale is the 2013 recipient of the Regional Arts and Culture Council Literary Fellowship. She has received a Pushcart Prize, an NEA Fellowship, the James Phelan Literary Award, and was a Dorothy and Arthur Shoenfeldt Distinguished Writer of the Year. Tisdale is a long-time member of PEN and was a judge for the National Book Award in 2010. She teaches part-time in the writing program at Portland State University.
photo cred: Rachel Wolf
TRUDI JINPU HIRSCH-ABRAMSON
Trudi Jinpu Hirsch-Abramson is an ACPE certified chaplain supervisor and an APC certified chaplain. A resident of Zen Mountain Monastery for 12 years, she completed her monastic training in 1998 and was ordained as a Zen Buddhist Priest and received Denkai transmission in the White Plum Sangha. She previously worked for 14 years as a chaplain and supervisor at various hospitals in New York City. For eight years, Jinpu served as a faculty member and Chaplain Supervisor for the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care in NYC. She is presently the chaplain supervisor at Vassar Hospital in Poughkeepsie, NY.
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Music Attribution
transcripts
SALLIE
We do use the term total body failure…
...That's one way you could define death. It is total body failure.
MUSIC: "Landscape" BY evgeny Teilor
D.S. MOSS_VO
In the previous episode I sat down with my philosophical spirit animal, psychologist Sheldon Solomon to discuss how the fear of death influences just about everything that people do - the worm at core of consciousness.
If you haven't listened to it already, please do - but here's the spoiler:
SHELDON SOLOMON
Okay. Now that you realize the reality of the human condition. You, like all other creatures are finite and mortal." When you let the real anxiety of that sink in to the point where it momentarily shatters these belief systems that you involuntarily adopted...
...Then and only then can you start to reconstruct yourself where you have a hand in choosing your own meanings and your own values.
D.S. MOSS_VO
It reminds me of something my grandpa used to say, "Come to terms with death. Thereafter, everything is Gucci."
D.S. MOSS_VO
Never one to shy away from shattering involuntary belief systems, in this episode, I'm allowing the death anxiety to sink in by actually dying.
SALLIE
I frankly think it's going to be comfortable and interesting. I have my own personal spiritual beliefs and you do too, but I think it's going to be a fascinating experience.
D.S. MOSS_VO
In her most recent book - Advice for Future Corpses (and those who love them) Sallie Tisdale provides a directive for how to prepare for death, to include what to expect in those final moments of life.
MUSIC: "Landscape" BY evgeny Teilor
D.S. MOSS_VO
And so, I've asked her to sit with me bedside and guide through the process of my own total body failure.
What do you see? What do you hear? What do you feel? Is it peaceful? Or painful and full of fear?
If you've ever been curious about what happens in the moment of passing, then please join me on my deathbed as I transition to the other side...
in Episode 2 of Season 2: The Act of Dying
S2 OPENING BUMPER
MUSIC: "MEMENTO MORI" BY MIKEY BALLOU
RUTHIE_VO
From The Jones Story Company, this is: THE ADVENTURES OF MEMENTO MORI, A Cynic's Guide for Learning to Live by Remembering to Die - the podcast that explores mortality. Here's your host D.S. Moss.
CHAPTER 1: DEATHBED
MUSIC: "RAM" BY Alison Ables
D.S. MOSS_VO
In this episode I am going to die an imaginary death.
I'm 84 years old and dying of natural causes. A chronic illness, perhaps? I'm not entirely sure what does and doesn't not qualify as natural in modern medicine, but the main idea is that I managed to survive the upcoming apocalypse and make it to the year 2060 without getting hit by the preverbal bus.
End-of-life nurse Sallie Tisdale has agreed to talk me through what I should expect in the final moments of life.
The purpose of me doing this exercise is not to curate my last moments, but rather to meditate on the expiration of my body to hopefully alleviate some of that subconscious anxiety talked about in Worm at the Core.
Ok. Here we go. Time to start dying.
CHAPTER 2: BEGIN TO DIE
MUSIC: "Te henga" by evgeny Teilor
D.S. MOSS_VO
We begin the process at D minus 2. Two more days until the end. I'm lying in my bed at home, propped up by pillows with any pain controlled.
SALLIE
You're not interested in eating, probably haven't been interested in eating for a while.
You may be having trouble swallowing anyway. You may not feel much in the way of interest in drinking fluids. Some people are thirsty, but it's been found that they're thirsty even if they're hydrated. It's a different kind of thirst.
You probably have dry lips, dry tongue. Your mouth feels a little bit sticky. The person with you can give you a few ice chips or a wet clothe that might feel good.
D.S. MOSS_VO
The hospice nurse is there along with a few close friends and my future children, perhaps. All five of them. Oh, how nice it is that they've set aside their differences to be here with me.
MUSIC: "into the forest of the fall" BY evgeny Teilor
SALLIE
If you're urinating, it's pretty thick and dark. It might have a strong smell and you're not peeing very often.
SALLIE
And your body is moving pretty slowly if at all, very limited movement. You feel a really profound fatigue and fatigue is a specific thing where we just simply don't have the energy to do something. You're not tired. You can't find the strength to move very well by yourself...
SALLIE
No real strong intentional movements unless there's a big emotional moment, the person you've been waiting for.
SOUND: Footsteps on hardwood floor entering the room
SALLIE
Who do you want to see more than anyone in the world? That person comes in the room, you're going to muster everything to turn toward them, but it will take everything.
D.S. MOSS_IN
And so I can't talk?
music: Don't Leave the door open BY evgeny Teilor
SFX evolving sparkle
SALLIE
You might be able to talk. You might or might not make any sense to the people who are listening. You might [00:10:00] think you're talking. You might hear your own voice, but it comes out in such a whisper that others don't hear. I have heard people speak coherently a few hours before they died and for the most part it's days before they die when you hear the last thing. Like I said, we don't know if it feels coherent to the person who's dying. They may be saying exactly what they need to say and getting done exactly what they need to get done.
CHAPTER 3: THE MOMENT IS NEAR / INTRODUCE FEAR
D.S. MOSS_VO
It's now D minus 1. I'm no longer eating, talking or have the energy to make any intentional movements.
SALLIE
Perhaps your hands and feet are really cold. That's a very common and strong sign that death is close...
MUSIC:dont leave the door open BY evgeny Teilor
SALLIE
Every organ is beginning to fail and they fail in this cascading set of dominoes. As the heart fails, then oxygen depletes and other organs begin to fail and toxins accumulate and it all feeds back on itself. Your kidneys are shutting down. You're not urinating very much. Your sphincters relaxed, so you maybe soiling yourself without even being aware of it.
I may see modeling. There's a slackness in the face sometimes. There's irregular breathing. You can see all of this literally in seconds and it's a very familiar picture. Most of us die in very similar ways...
...At this point, you don't have much left.
D.S. MOSS_VO
As one might assume, it's unsettling to visualize the 84 year old version of yourself lying in a bed and dying - the color of your face is uneven, the blood beginning to pool and your jaw hanging open.
It's even more disturbing to imagine feeling your body shutting down - organ by organ - failing.
If inducing death anxiety was the point of this meditation - it worked. Because I have a very strong urge to not want to die right now.
But facing this anxiety is supposedly when things start to become Gucci, so I'll see it through to the end.
Next up, It's time to call in the Chaplain...
My last rights, after this.
CALL TO ACTION 1
MUSIC: EMERGENCY EXIT BY DR. FRANKENSTEIN
RUTHIE_VO
Hello fellow provocateurs that believe death is a topic worth talking about. We need your help spreading the word. Be the slightly odd yet endlessly fascinating conversationalist at your next party and tell your friends about The Adventures of Memento Mori.
Have show ideas? Contact us on our site remembertodie.com
Be sure to stay up to date with the quest for enlightenment on Instagram and Twitter by following @remembertodie.
And now, back to show...
CHAPTER 4: A CHAPLAIN WALKS IN THE ROOM
D.S. MOSS_IN
All right. We are rolling. The hardest question of the day so far is, "Who are you?"
TRUDI
That's the Buddhist question...You're going to start with that one?
D.S. MOSS_VO
Note to self, when interviewing a Zen Buddhist priest expect Zen Buddhist answers.
D.S. MOSS_IN
...However, you are a multi-disciplined chaplain?
TRUDI
Yeah. Chaplaincy is inter or multi-discipline, or interfaith, sometimes we say.
D.S. MOSS_IN
If someone says, as they're dying, "Pray with me," how do you approach that?
TRUDI
I see from their perspective as much as possible, as much information as I'm able to obtain that way, and then I value their religion, so if I've known, we've had a conversation of what's important to them, and religion doesn't have to be faith-based. It could be like your dog, you know? Whatever you love is your religion. I try to find what that is.
D.S. MOSS_VO
Last year, a guest from season 1 recommended that I reach out to Trudi Hirsch-Abramson.
Why exactly, she couldn't really say. She just had a feeling we should meet.
A year later here we are, Chaplain Trudi at my imaginary deathbed helping me imagine to die.
TRUDI
...If you were my patient, I would be present to you in a very intimate way, and hear your story, and hear who you are, like that original question you asked me, and what's important to you.
...Someone who's totally there with no intention to change, or to move, or to give advice. Only to be present...
...So, I am there for you.
D.S. MOSS_IN
Do you notice when people are on their deathbeds, if there is a sense ... I just can imagine it could go either way. A strong sense in religious belief, and beliefs in the afterlife, but I can also see the opposite happens where they're like, "I am now in doubt that there is anything after, and this is it." Does this still go both ways?
TRUDI
All of the above. You know, all of the above. Everybody's different and how they grew up is different. Most people, as they're dying, revert to their original religious upbringing. So, they're really, let's say you've been a ... As growing up, you had to go to church every Sunday, but once you reached 14, you went, "This is all ridiculous. I don't need any of this religious humbug anymore."...You find that that same person, when they're 80 and about to die, have a need to reconnect to their religion of when they were growing up. It's almost in our genes.
D.S. MOSS_VO
That actually sounds a bit familiar. I grew up Pentecostal, but I had my religious humbug phase around the age of 11 instead of 14.
I actually wanted to believe in something, so during my early 20s I became Catholic, then I became Southern Baptist, but ultimately just couldn't get behind the dogma of any organized religion.
Now, I am religion-less. More importantly in context to this episode, I don't believe in any type of afterlife. This life, as magical as it is - is it.
But, here's the rub...
TRUDI
Religion is helpful in dying, and when people don't have it, that's when there's ... What do they have to hold onto? They can't hold onto life anymore, and there's nothing given to them that they believe that they can hold onto, so that's the torture. They're in a hell realm, and that's the torture.
D.S. MOSS_VO
So, say that the love of my dog as religion isn't comforting enough in that moment, what does someone without faith do to have a peaceful death?
TRUDI
...you start wrapping yourself around the inevitablity of your death..too bad.. It's the fear that people are afraid of. It's not usually death.
D.S. MOSS_VO
It's the fear that people are afraid of?
I'm sure it was the stupid look on my face that prompted Trudi to help my confusion with a story about Ruth...
TRUDI
She's actively dying, and there's nobody for her. All her friends are dead, her family is dead. She is alone. They called me in, and I was more of a youthful chaplain at that point, with that kind of arrogance, going in there to help somebody die.
I sit next to her, and she opens her eyes, and she goes, "I'm really scared." I go, "I can understand. This is not an easy time." She goes, "Can I hold your hand?" And I go, "Yeah, sure." I take her hand, and she grabs it, and I'm like, "Whoa. This is someone who really doesn't want to be alone in death." I'm like, "I'm here for you," kind of thing. She lets go of her hand for a second, and I bend over, and she wants to say something to me. I'm close, like closer than
MUSIC: where's Amy by evgeny Teilor
... I'm this close. Eye to eye, right? We're eye to eye. She takes her hands and she grabs me like this. This is someone who's totally weak, right? But strength now like you wouldn't believe. That happens quite often. She's got this lock on me, and this-
D.S. MOSS_IN
Around your back? She's like, hugging you?
TRUDI
It wasn't a hug. It was a grasp of, "If I stay with you, I'm alive. If I let go of you, I'm dead." You know? I'm aware of it, but now I'm starting to get ... It's like a death lock, you know? I'm still staring her in the eyes like this, and there's fear. It's like, "Fear. Fear." Back and forth. "Fear. Fear." First I'm scared she's gonna take me-
D.S. MOSS_IN
And you're inches from her face?
TRUDI
Inches, like that. She's got me like this, and I go, "Okay. Okay." Everything in me wanted to run away. I've never had that feeling. It was like, " You're not gonna take me to death. I'm not ready for that yet." You know?
D.S. MOSS_IN
She's falling. She's grabbing for you.
TRUDI
...she's gonna take me with her, and that was so powerful that everything in me, my survival kicked in, and I was trying to get away from her, get out of there, because I had a fear like I'd never had before of being that close to death...
With her, I wasn't sure I was walking out of that room. We were struggling, like I'm trying to get away, and she's pulling me tighter, and there's one point where I can't do that anymore, and I go, "Okay. Whatever." It's like, "Okay." I just gave up my struggle, and she was still holding on tightly, and then she kept looking at me in the eyes, and then she relaxed her eyes. That moment was pure love between us. I just felt pure love...,
... I mean, the whole room was filled with this love.
D.S. MOSS_IN
Then she died in that moment?
TRUDI
She died. I just sat there, and I sat there in that energy that she offered, and I loved her. It was like someone I knew my whole life. It was amazing. I sat there for a long time.
D.S. MOSS_IN
Just by surrendering or giving into-
TRUDI
By letting go of that fear, and it showed me the fear, do you know? Even people who think they don't have it, boy, when you're up against it, you have it too...
D.S. MOSS_VO
Point taken. The message I got out of that story is - Don't prepare for the fear. That will come. Instead, Prepare for the surrender.
SOUND: into the light, beeps
CHAPTER 5: PRE-MOMENT
D.S. MOSS_VO
I'm now back in my bed...
...in my final moments.
D.S. MOSS_VO
It's time for my friends and family to say their goodbyes.
SALLIE
I think the things that are hardest for the loved ones to do is you say your goodbye once. You don't say it over and over and over and you don't pour your emotional pain on the person. Kneeling by the bedside and crying and saying, "Please don't go," which is so common and it's our urge is to do that, but it's putting a tremendous burden on a dying person who may be very aware of the distress that you're feeling and feel a need to fix that. I really encourage families to find a way to have that a space outside the room for their tears, a space outside the room to remember and to share. Go in, you say, "I love you, Dad. We're going to be okay." Say your goodbyes and then go outside and do your crying because dad has got something else to do right now than take care of you. He's got something really important to do.
D.S. MOSS_VO
Sallie also recommends avoiding using the deathbed as the platform to get your closure or forgiveness.
SALLIE
Otherwise, my best advice is do that inventory in the doorway, get a good sense of what you're bringing into the room. Try to be peaceful, be attentive, be patient, be authentic. You get one shot at this. You want to do it right.
D.S. MOSS_VO
The moment of death, right after this.
MUSIC: "O CEREBRO DO MORTO" BY DR. FRANKENSTEIN
RUTHIE_VO
Do you consider yourself a fan of podcasts? Show it by donating to the Adventures of Memento Mori. Donate 10 dollars or more and we'll mail you a surprise Memento Mori keepsake. $100 or more will give you a post credit shout out to let the world know how much you mean to us. Go to remembertodie.com slash donate. That's remembertodie.com slash donate.
CHAPTER 6: THE MOMENT
Tunnel2, breathing in/out, beeps, and internal heartbeat,
SALLIE
What are you experiencing? Perhaps a very rich interior experience, perhaps very limited external perception...
Um, Your peripheral vision is very limited.
Imagine that you're falling slowly and comfortably down into this interior space. Vision is not that important anymore
We do have good reason to believe that hearing is preserved.
SALLIE
...We don't know what that psychic space is like and we don't know what that sensory experience is like. I have the sense that it is a narrowing and a narrowing of perception so that the whole world begins to constitute this smaller, but perhaps much deeper place. When we hear that, we think, "Oh, it's so small and constricted," but it may be very deep, profound, and attention grabbing.
That's what I tend to think is that you've turned already toward it. The people in the room may not be particularly important to you at this point or seem worth the time because you're done. You've moved forward.
D.S. MOSS_IN
You mentioned that being able to have any access for obvious reasons into the psychic space in those moments. As far as the eyes because I think once people die, there seems to be this poetic or this very literal thing that the light disappears behind the eyes. is there...
...is there something happening to the pupils?
SALLIE
What happens at the moment of death is when all the electrical activity in the body stops, muscle tension ceases. The facial muscles fall into a shape they've never been before.
There's a total slackness that does not exist in life and the eyes literally do sink a little bit because the ocular muscles aren't holding them up anymore. It looks like the eyes sink and they do literally. Does the light go out?
I think what fools a lot of people, what becomes the stuff of poetry a lot is that utter slackness and it is the stuff of poetry. My God, this is death is that there is no activity of intent anymore.
D.S. MOSS_VO
No more activity of intent.
D.S. MOSS_IN
Now, we're in the moment of my passing. I guess as far as the timeframe, the moment is, is it 10 seconds? Is it like the actual ...
SALLIE
What is that moment? We don't know. This is sort of the idealized or typical death like this.
Has the person died when their breathing is not capable of sustaining life and their heart is maybe still beating slowly?
Have they died when the heart stops beating? If they're still taking an agonal breath and there is evidence that brainwaves continue for some time, a minute maybe after death, after breathing and heart stops.
What is the moment of death?
What would you say?
D.S. MOSS_VO
I would say it's just semantics at this point. Does it really matter if the moment of death when the lungs stop breathing or when the heart stops beating. Or the brain stops sending signals?
But, like most things, I stewed on it for a bit and I actually think it does matter - at least symbolically. Plus, any chance I can take to decide something for myself I will.
So, I would say, don't put the tag on my toe until every single last brain wave is no longer traceable.
SALLIE
But Honest to God we don't know what the moment of death is. We have legal definitions because we have to pick something.
It's just really good to get out of this idea that there's this some dramatic exact point that you can point to and say that exact second that's when mom died. It's much more extended than that and it's a kind of eternal moment.
MUSIC: RAM by Alison ables
CHAPTER 9: CONCLUSION
D.S. MOSS_VO
Considering the Act of Dying as an internal experience in an eternal moment helps diffuse the anxiety of this meditation. Just because it's total body failure doesn't mean there's not an incredible experience in the psychic space. After all, I do love a good psychic experience.
And, unless I revert back to being a Pentecostal (which is highly unlikely), it's a relief to know that the lack of religious faith during those last moments doesn't have to be torture.
Easier said than done, I know, but I'll start not fearing the fear and surrendering in my daily life to get some practice in beforehand.
Which, I guess, is a Buddhist practice. It seems like the more I explore death, the clearer the Buddha becomes.
TRUDI
You'd make a good chaplain, too, so if this doesn't work for you ... No, seriously.
D.S. MOSS_VO
Remember earlier when I mentioned that someone felt it was important that I meet Trudi?
I have to admit, as I was driving to her house near the Zen Mountain Monastery in upstate New York I was having the same intuition. This trip was somehow much more important than just an interview.
TRUDI
You're interested in people. Your questions and your way of being personable is really nice. Totally trustworthy.
D.S. MOSS_IN
Thank you. I appreciate that.
TRUDI
Well, let it stew. Let it stew, you know?
D.S. MOSS_VO
Letting it stew is what I do. It's been stewing ever since I drove back to the city that day. Chaplain D.S. Moss. Really?
The main problem with that, of course, is that Chaplains are religious figures. And I have no religion. Yet.
MUSIC:"3 in Raw" BY jazzafari
D.S. MOSS_VO
Thanks for joining me on another episode of The Adventures of Memento Mori...please join me on the next episode as I explore my future as a Chaplain and dig deep into religion and beliefs in the afterlife.
Thanks to Sallie Tisdale. Check out her new book...Advice for Future Corpses (and Those Who Love Them). Please go to www.remembertodie.com for a link to her work.
Thank you Zen Buddhist Chaplain, Trudi Hirsch-Abramson. I have a feeling this is not the last time we'll be talking.
I am D.S. Moss. Back again next time for more...The Adventures of Memento Mori.
MUSIC: END WITH OUR THEME MUSIC
FEMALE ANNOUNCER
The episode was produced by Josh Heilbronner and D.S. Moss Theme music composed by Mikey Ballou. This has been a production of The Jones Story Company. Until the next time... remember to die.