“So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart.” – Psalm 90:12, NRSV

The Latin phrase memento mori means: remember, you will die. In medieval times, the saints would use this phrase as a critique against the vanities of the culture. When we remember our mortality we begin to realize that some of the things that seem so important now are only temporary preoccupations and troubles. As the Teacher from Ecclesiastes calls it: hevel – vapor, smoke. A few years ago I did a google search on “Memento Mori” in preparation for a sermon. One of the first results was an advertisement for a pair of Gucci skinny jeans with “Memento Mori” printed across the front. The price tag was nearly $2,000. I guess the thing to do when we remember our inevitable death is to drop a couple grand on pants. 

This past week I have been reading Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande. Gawande is a medical doctor who urges us to rethink end of life care. Modern medicine is in constant warfare against an opponent who will inevitably win: death. What is the purpose of medical care? We might think it exists to keep us alive. But if that is its purpose then it might as well not exist. No matter how advanced medical science becomes, it will never win the war against death. We might think it exists to prolong life. But at what cost? What are we willing to suffer at the hands of medicine to spend a few more years in a hospital bed or nursing home? Are we willing to spend our final days among doctors rather than our friends and family?

The book raises many important questions and a few helpful answers. But the fact remains that mortality is not something that can be properly understood by medical science. Science is good for many things, but it does little to help us understand and cope with the things that matter most in life.

The reality of death forces us to recognize our limits. Everything has an end. Like a child with a coloring book, there are lines that mark the limits of the drawing. And even if you do not respect the limits set by the lines, the page itself ends. 

I wonder if learning how to die well, like most things, takes practice. The challenge is: how do we practice death? We only die once. Yet life is filled with many little deaths that can teach us to practice accepting ends and limits. 

Going to bed at the end of the day is a little death. We acknowledge that the day is over. We will live on this day no longer. There are things that we accomplished and much more that was left unaccomplished. God gave us the day as a gift. We did what we could with it but now it is time for bed. Of course, we could rage against our body’s need for sleep. But sleep will catch up with us one way or another. Something as simple as getting adequate sleep can be good death practice.

Coming to the end of a good meal or dessert is a little death. I do not mean to be overdramatic here, but it is a little death when we get to the end of a good bowl of ice cream! The temptation, in our time in the world, is that we can always get up and get another bowl. We can have seconds and thirds and fourths of every good dish that we want. The portions given at restaurants these days are a testament to the fact that we do not like limits being set to how much we eat other than the limits that we choose to accept. I wonder if a simple act such as limiting our food intake is good death practice. Choosing to be done with a meal when we are satisfied and not when we are stuffed is a discipline in accepting healthy limits and boundaries.

Perhaps the best practice in death is Sabbath. Taking a whole day once a week to do nothing but rest is an acceptance and acknowledgement of our limits. We cannot work forever. Our labor has to have a point of termination. If we do not choose to take Sabbath, Sabbath will eventually catch up with us in the form of sickness, mental illness, or perhaps actual death. One of the things that keeps us from taking a Sabbath is the reality that the work is never done. There is too much to do in any given week to take a day of rest! But death will not wait for our work to be done. Death will not wait for our bucket lists to be completed. It will come whether we are ready or not. Taking a weekly sabbath is a practice and discipline in accepting that life has limits and our bodies must/will stop whether or not the work is done.

Learning how to die well and learning how to live well go together. We cannot do one without the other. We cannot do either without accepting the reality of limitations. The psalmist says that wisdom is found when we learn to number our days. We are wise when we accept limits, not when we rage against them.

In his famous poem, Dylan Thomas tells us, “Do not go gentle into that good night…” But people of faith trust that the night is good, because God is there. “Even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you” (Ps. 139:12, NIV).  I do not mean to make light of death. Death is an enemy – a defeated enemy, but an enemy all the same. Every death reminds us that we are still yearning and groaning for new creation. Nevertheless, we trust that death does not get to be the end of the story. The story will continue by the grace and mercy of God. Not even death can separate us from the love of God. And so people of faith can go gentle into that good night, trusting that the one called us remains faithful. We can trust and hope even in the dying of the light.