Each Death’s Impact

Hypothetical discussions are always challenging. One recent discussion involved the posing of the following question, which I thought was glacially poignant:

All things are not equal.

‘Glassing’ injuries and fatal shark attacks get much more press due to the issue of sensationalism... we just don’t hear of many of these deaths. There is automatically a distinct level of public interest.

Why do we not get just as interested in road deaths, fatal drug overdoses and suicides—all of which kill far many more human beings than the ‘sensational’ deaths or injuries mentioned above?

We have become dead at the level of our emotions regarding some of the more ‘common’ forms of death. Do they just occur ‘to someone else’s family?’

When we do not see the personal story behind each death we lose sight of what has really been lost; then we see someone left behind after their loved ones have died, perhaps tragically, and it suddenly hits home.

The very personal question is, “How do we approach death that occurs around and about us?”

Death is as much about life as births and weddings are.

Have we become numb to it?

And if we are numb to death, are we then both personally more susceptible to the mugging reality of death (i.e. the effects of grief if the death of a loved one occurred), and to be dissonantly unaware of the true suffering of those in the world around us?

There is a pure and divine sanctity about death—one we’re to respect, or we slowly become less human and certainly less connected with God than we perhaps could be.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.