Defying death’s deadly stare
By Achike Chude
Death!
That infernal and eternal scourge of mankind struck again last week, and once more caused devastation and misery among the living.
This time around, it took a life at just 53 years. A life that had contributed its fair share to humanity but was still in bloom – that still had so much to give to the human family.
It is so vile, this death that has no respect for civility, custom, status and dignity. It is ever always on the move, across families, communities, countries, and continents defying the laws of time and place. It makes widows and widowers, and produces orphans. It denies societies of her most visionary and charitable people.
But death has a virtue. Death is fair and believes in the equity of spreading its misery to all, regardless of positions and accomplishments. No one, no matter how endowed, has the capacity and capability to prevent it.
Death can be unreasonable and myopic in scope and application of its eternal poison. Its encounter with old age is understood as an inevitability – unavoidable. But what business has it with the young – the infant, the youth and the middle aged?
There were no tears when death stopped at the door post of Hitler, Stalin, Mobutu, and the gang of the despicably unjust, but why Steve Jobs, Bruce Lee, Bob Marley and others who, rather than add to the pain of humanity, gave it the light of entertainment and progress?
Perhaps we can fear deaths’ deadly bile less when we contemplate Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar’s fatalism when he declared:
“It seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing that death, a necessary end will come when it will come.”
Though we might be helpless and powerless to prevent this creepy and ghoulish fiend, but we have the capacity to mock death and hold it in contempt. And that is by upholding the virtues of the human race. Love, tolerance, kindness, diligence, fidelity, courage, and vision. These are universal human attributes that stand in opposition to the forces of vice that lead to the despoliation of our environment and the degradation of the soul.
But perhaps we are too hard on death knowing that we sometimes toy with it, flirt and romance with it. Sometimes, we summon death upon our fellow human beings through mindless acts of terror by individuals, state, and non-state actors.
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And this is the human contradiction. We are so afraid of deaths’ deadly stare and want it kept at bay, if not permanently, then as long as possible, long into old age unaccompanied by sicknesses – the infinity of the old.
We do not want it for ourselves, yet the worst of us gladly dish it out to others on a daily basis. It is perversely fascinating that what we do not want for ourselves, we wish for, facilitate, or procure it for others – a clear violation of Christ’s admonition: “Do unto others what you would want done unto you” – a modification of a previous injunction of “Do not do to others what you do not want done to you.”
But there is good news. A reason to be of good cheer. “A clear conscience”, we have been told over and over again, “fears no accusation.” Not even Lucifer, that reputed accuser of the “brethren” dares bring an accusation against the ‘just’.
There is a high possibility that Mother Theresa, that venerable ‘Saint of the Gutters’ in her dying days likely said in defiance to death, “Bring it on.”
This is the likely position and posturing of people who have lived their lives in service of humanity and adopted the injunction of “Do unto others what you want done unto you.”
It is in doing this that we lose our fear of death. We can then say with all assurance and in dignified defiance, like Mother Theresa, “Bring it on”.
And in a final flourish, just before we take the final bow into the great beyond, we can say with glee, relish, and satisfaction, in line with 1st Corinthians, “O death, where is thy sting. O grave, where is thy victory?”
