I’m not exactly sure if it was the Christian up-bringing, or the mother who was terminally ill (until she passed away when I was 6), but the question of how I felt about death has always been a “dinner table-esque” conversation. My mother’s fate was never a secret or something to be afraid of. It was just facts- she was sick, she was going to die, and she was going to go to Heaven. Unlike many people my age, I am not afraid of death. I don’t ever remember being afraid to die, and when I come across people who are I am often astounded. Why fear the inevitable? Why spend your entire life running from something you have almost no control over? Conceptually, this makes no sense to me; but as I aged, I understood that for most people death is oblivion. Death is the greatest change, the greatest unknown they would ever face, and as we all know, humans hate the uncontrollable and inconceivable. My friends used the analogy of being afraid of the dark- once you turn off the lights, anything (or nothing) could possibly happen to you, and that is something to fear
Ironically, the Terror Management Theory has called me out. The more I do my own personal research, the more I understand my “lack” of fear of death. I am not afraid to die because I have convinced myself there is nothing to be afraid of, because I have pushed myself into a world-view that will not allow me to be for my own sanity.
Again, whether you attribute that to my Christian up-bringing or dead mother, my life has not allowed me to fear death. Imagine if my mind allowed myself to fear death, how much more of an unknown my entire life would be. If I questioned death, I’d inevitably be questioning what happened to my mom once she died. She’d be floating in darkness or some hopeless, desolate unknown. That would wreck me- to think of my mom that way. If I allowed my brain to doubt my Christian view of Heaven, I’d doubt my religion and my faith- something that I consider to make up 99% of my personality and life-style. As the Terror Management Theory states, people often throw themselves into these ideas of what happens after we die, to protect their mental state while they are alive. To put it simply, I am a walking coping mechanism. I have pondered death so much that I have subconsciously convinced myself there is nothing to fear, because if there was… my entire life would be flipped. And I for one, would rather that not happen. So, although I am aware my lack of fear of death is truthfully a coping mechanism for how much I could possibly fear it, I will go about my life choosing to be ignorant. If I decided to analyze this anymore, I’d probably be a little more traumatized than I already am, and no one wants to deal with that. This has lead me to ponder what other children of dead parents feel? Is this common? Does it make us all a little less afraid of death because we’ve had to deal with it, or does it make others even more afraid of it?
- Kara Ferrell (lab newbie)