Writing the Shadow: The Shadow in dying and death
“The meaning of life is that it stops.”
—Franz Kafka
We all die.
It’s an inescapable truth that every single person will face death in their lifetime. We will have to experience the death of others and the resulting grief, and ultimately, our own end.
We will also vicariously face it many times through books, TV, movies, and gaming since it is often the pivot point of story.
But death itself is not the Shadow.
As David Richo writes in Shadow Dance, “Death is not the shadow of life but its necessary counterpart, an ingredient, a season of the cycle by which nature thrives and renews itself.”
It is our feelings and behaviour and attitudes about death that reveal the Shadow, both individually and in our culture, religion, and society.
I’ve always had an awareness of death. I don’t know why. It’s just always been there.
I have a black skull bracelet in front of me as I write and a brightly coloured sugar skull covered in butterflies on the shelf behind me. I like to visit graveyards and ossuaries and catacombs filled with bones, contemplating the truth of ‘memento mori’ — remember, you will die. Much of this interest emerges in my fiction, and I have several episodes about it on my Books and Travel Podcast with places to visit if you are of a similar mind.
In 2022, I had an artist’s mark made for my J.F. Penn brand. It’s a decorative sugar skull with my initials entwined within. I use it within my books as well as on my websites. It helps me keep ‘memento mori’ in mind as I write, since every book is a choice in how to spend the limited time I have left.
Some might consider these interests morbid, but they help me live more fully, knowing that the end will come at some point. I know my life is finite, and that helps me focus on making the most of it.
I used to think that other creatives would feel something similar, as so much of writing and story is based around death, but that turns out not to be true.
Here are some ways that death remains in the Shadow.
Denial
I made my first will in my thirties when I bought my first house. I like being organised and I never want to be a burden to my family, so over the years, I’ve done all the necessary paperwork, including power of attorney documents in case of dementia or head injury.
Perhaps my pragmatism comes from my mum as she has already paid in advance for her funeral and leaves a sheaf of papers on her desk when she goes on holiday with directions for everything, just in case she doesn’t return.
So it’s fascinating to me how many people die without a legal will or an estate management plan, especially if they are creatively and financially successful. This refusal to engage with what happens after death can leave much damage in its wake, presumably stemming from the denial that death would ever come.
When Stieg Larsson, who wrote The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, amongst other books, died in 2004, he did not have a will. Legally, his extensive estate went to his father and brother, rather than his partner of thirty-two years.
Pablo Picasso died aged ninety-one without a will. It took six years and over $30 million to settle his estate between six heirs. Prince, Jimi Hendrix, Aretha Franklin, and Bob Marley are other examples.
But they are not unusual.
In the USA, LegalZoom reports that only 32 percent of Americans have a will.
Today’s Will and Probate in the UK reports that fewer than four in ten adults in the UK have a will.
Common reasons people put it off are that it feels morbid earlier in life, or that they don’t want to talk about it and cause conflict in the family while they are still alive. Perhaps they don’t know how to make a will, or what the ramifications are if they don’t have one. Maybe they think they don’t have anything valuable enough to make it worthwhile.
But it all comes down to avoidance and denial of the inevitable.
Fear
Even though death is inevitable, some fight it with every breath they have.
It might be through avoidance of the topic in conversation or through behaviour like missing health checks and scans. It might be the denial inherent in extreme risk-taking behaviour, while almost courting death.
It could go in the other direction and involve an obsession with health, taking endless supplements or following different drug regimes and dietary practices to stave off death. You can see this in the tech billionaires obsessed with longevity by injecting stem cells and younger blood and investing in research that may just keep them alive long enough to live forever.
Fear of death can also be seen in attempts to control what happens after death, an obsession with legacy through complicated inheritance structures.
Or it can emerge in attempts to control the experience of death, which I recognise in myself.
I want the right to die, pain-free, when I choose. I support the charity Dignity in Dying, which campaigns for assisted dying for terminally ill patients, enabling access to quality end-of-life care and choice over how and when to die.
I recognise the hubris in trying to control death, but there is some comfort in preparing for a possible future, even while the end is far more likely to come from some unexpected direction.
Suicide
“The key is in accepting your thoughts, all of them, even the bad ones.”
—Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive
Note: If you need help in this area, please contact a suicide prevention service in your country. In the US, go to 988lifeline.org, and in the UK, go to www.samaritans.org.
I first read Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure as a teenager. It shaped my desire to go to Oxford, Jude’s Christminster, and it was also the first time I remember encountering suicide. In the book, it is practicality, a misguided act of love to help others. It is understandable.
In my crime thriller Delirium, Lyssa, the sister of one character, died by suicide before the book begins and her death echoes through the story.
In one scene, her brother Matt says, “Some days it’s a surprise that we continue to live. It’s much harder to keep getting up and living in this world than it is to give up and relax into the darkness. Embracing oblivion is just a choice.”
I also wrote Lyssa’s diary for her. One excerpt reads:
“What if this blackness is part of me, not separate. What if it’s bound into every atom of my body? When they try to rip it from me, or sedate it, or electroshock it away, they’re destroying all of me. I am every colour on the spectrum and I need black to highlight the bright yellow, and iridescent green, and to let my brilliant turquoise shine. Without black, there is no contrast. Without contrast, life is monochrome.”
I’ve shared further thoughts in the Author’s Note at the back of Delirium, and in Pilgrimage, and I’ve talked openly about death on both my podcasts over the years. I’m grateful that I haven’t been shamed for sharing my experience, or felt judged. In fact, people have told me it’s helped them feel more normal about their thoughts. Suicide is not in my Shadow, but it remains there for many others.
Most people will know someone who has been affected by suicide, or have a family member or friend who has decided to die that way. It is certainly not unusual to think about it.
The mental health charity Mind notes that “one in five people have suicidal thoughts… Women are more likely to have suicidal thoughts and make suicide attempts, but men are three times more likely to take their own life than women.”
This is clearly a common human experience, but by pushing the idea of suicide into our collective cultural Shadow through shame, guilt, or denial, we make it much harder for people to ask for help. It’s better to have it out in the light and talk about it, even though it’s difficult, and in that way, hope to prevent possible tragedy.
“Revealing my darkness is just as natural as revealing my light.”
—baek sehee, i want to die but i want to eat tteokbokki
Grief
Psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross first outlined five stages of grief in the 1960s and that has since been expanded to seven. People may experience different stages at different times, or skip stages, or find themselves repeating aspects of each.
The stages are shock and denial, pain and guilt, anger and bargaining, depression, then the upward turn, reconstruction and working through, and finally, acceptance and hope. Of course, there are no exact ‘rules’ for grief. The stages are not linear and they may not happen in this order.
Max Porter writes in Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, “Moving on, as a concept, is for stupid people, because any sensible person knows grief is a long-term project. I refuse to rush. The pain that is thrust upon us let no man slow or speed or fix.”
The framework goes some way to normalising such a universal human experience, and the Shadow arises when we push elements of the process away as inappropriate or shameful or wrong, or we’re told we’re not allowed to feel that way. For example, our guilt at not having done more while someone is alive may compound if not acknowledged as normal, or we may struggle when being told to just get on with life when we need more time.
The experience of collective grief became clear for many of us during the pandemic. Shock and denial in the early months, the thought that it would all be over soon and we could just muscle through. Anger that erupted online and onto the streets. Bargaining around behaviour to avoid illness, and judgment of those who got sick. Guilt around not doing more for others, or condemning people for thinking differently or behaving in ways we considered wrong. Depression for many and eventually, a realisation that life would not go back to how it had been.
In a Harvard Business Review article in March 2020, grief specialist David Kessler noted, “We feel the world has changed, and it has… The loss of normalcy; the fear of economic toll; the loss of connection. This is hitting us and we’re grieving. Collectively. We are not used to this kind of collective grief in the air… We are grieving on a micro and macro level.”
Cultural attitudes to death and dying
Death is dealt with differently in every culture. Some handle it in a healthy way out in the open, while others push it into Shadow.
I’m English and our way of grieving is possibly one of the most unhealthy, underscored by a ‘stiff upper lip’ and an attitude of restraint. The dead body is kept hidden. At a funeral, quiet crying is allowed but certainly no loud wailing at the graveside. Any out-of-control emotion is frowned upon. We stay silent, speak in whispers, shy away from discussing death. We use the excuse that we are giving people space to grieve, but perhaps we just don’t know how to talk about it.
In other cultures, death is far more accepted and even celebrated. The body may be laid out in an open coffin for family and friends to visit a last time. There might be keening and ululating, a death wail to honour the dead, to comfort those grieving and as a cathartic release of pain. There might be a wake, a celebration of life.
In Varanasi, India, the burning ghats turn bodies to bone dust and ashes day and night on open pyres covered in marigolds.
In Tibet, sky burial leaves the corpse decomposing on a mountain top, exposed to the elements and eaten by wild animals.
In Mexico, Day of the Dead celebrates death and honours the ancestors. People dress in skeleton-themed costume, feast at the graveside, and acknowledge death by eating sugar skulls.
Established rituals around death can help the living with a structured approach to the end. This can be both a comfort to the person dying so they know how things will be managed, and a consolation to those left behind. It’s one less thing to think about in the administration involved after death.
Perhaps those of us who live in cultures that avoid death, and those of us untethered from religious tradition, need to spend time considering what death might look like for us, and for those left behind. In this way, we can bring death out of the Shadow and into the light of awareness, removing its power to control our unconscious behaviour and preparing for what will come.
“All that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity.”
—William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Questions:
• What are your feelings about death and dying?
• What are the personal and cultural experiences that have shaped your attitude?
• Do you have a will and/or estate management plan? If not, why not?
• In what ways do you recognise fear of death and dying in other people’s behaviour, speech, or attitudes?
• Can you recognise any of these in yourself?
• What are your thoughts about suicide? What are the cultural and religious attitudes around it and how might that push suicidal thoughts into Shadow?
• How have you experienced grief? How does it affect you? Are there ways you can accept the stages of grief for yourself or for others?
• What are your cultural or religious practices around death?
• How can you bring aspects of dying and death out of the Shadow and into the light of awareness?
Resources:
• Suicide prevention services: www.988lifeline.org (USA), www.samaritans.org (UK)
• Grief Is the Thing with Feathers — Max Porter
• i want to die but i want to eat tteokbokki — baek sehee
• Reasons to Stay Alive — Matt Haig
• Shadow Dance: Liberating the Power & Creativity of Your Dark Side — David Richo
• Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematorium — Caitlin Doughty
• The Author Estate Handbook: How to Organize Your Affairs and Leave a Legacy — M.L. Ronn
• Memento Mori: How Travel Can Help Us Deal with Death and Grief with Dr Karen Wyatt — www.booksandtravel.page/grief-death-travel/
• Life Obsessed: Cemeteries, Graveyards, and Ossuaries with Loren Rhoads — www.booksandtravel.page/cemeteries-graveyards/
• Dignity in Dying — www.dignityindying.org.uk
• LegalZoom Estate planning statistics — www.legalzoom.com/articles/estate-planning-statistics
• Today’s Will and Probate UK — www.todayswillsandprobate.co.uk/only-4-in-10-uk-adults-have-a-will-despite-owning-a-property/
• Mind mental health charity — www.mind.org.uk
• Seven Stages of Grief — www.choosingtherapy.com/7-stages-of-grief/
• List of books about grief — www.choosingtherapy.com/grief-books/
• “That Discomfort You’re Feeling Is Grief,” Scott Berinato, Harvard Business Review, March 23, 2020 — www.hbr.org/2020/03/that-discomfort-youre-feeling-is-grief
• “The Men Who Want to Live Forever,” Dara Horn, New York Times, January 25, 2018 — www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/opinion/sunday/silicon-valley-immortality.html
