Taking Death Seriously

Key West Sunset ~ February 2025
Originally called "Cayo Hueso," meaning "Bone Island"
in reference to piles of bones & human remains
dicovered by settlers in the early 1800s.

1. Willa Cather (1873 - 1947) : "She hadn't any of the sentimentality that comes from a fear of dying. She talked about death as she spoke of a hard winter or a rainy March, or any of the sadnesses of nature."
The Professor's House, 256

2. Thomas Pynchon (b 1937): "At the heart of the story, most crucial and worrisome, is the defective way in which my narrator, almost but not quite me, deals with the subject of death. When we speak of 'seriousness' in fiction ultimately we are talking about an attitude toward death - how characters may act in its presence, for example, or how they handle it when it isn't so immediate. Everybody knows this, but the subject is hardly ever brought up with younger writers, possibly because given to anyone at the apprentice age, such advice is widely felt to be effort wasted. (I suspect one of the reasons that fantasy and science fiction appeal so much to younger readers is that, when the space and time have been altered to allow characters to travel easily anywhere through the continuum and thus escape physical dangers and timepiece inevitabilities, mortality is so seldom an issue.)"
Introduction to
Slow Learner: Early Stories
p 5, emphasis added

3.Terry Pratchett (1948 – 2015): "No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away, until the clock wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone's life is only the core of their actual existence."
from his novel Reaper Man

Ripples Left Behind
Thanks to my friend Lynn Z. who said:
"Nice way to hold people close even after they’re gone
~ be the ripple."

4. Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886):

I stepped from plank to plank
So slow and cautiously;
The stars about my head I felt,
About my feet the sea.

I knew not but the next
Would be my final inch,—
This gave me that precarious gait
Some call experience. (#875)


For further thoughts on
taking death seriously,
see my recent post

Vanity Fair:
Laughing at Death
[Also Smiling]

@The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker
A literary blog of connection & coincidence;
custom & ceremony

P.S.

I used to love "Prufrock" so much -- "There will be time, there will be time." But now we see that indeed there may NOT be time! So hurry, hurry, hurry to take it all in. In younger days, if I hadn't heard from someone in awhile, I would tell myself, "Oh settle down, they're just busy." But these days: no! You're right to worry; you're not being pararnoid; they may be dead. That's no longer being morbid, just realistic.

P.P.S.

"I am dead:
Thou livest;
. . . draw thy breath in pain,
To tell my story."

~Hamlet, V, ii