Dying Is Simply a Part of Living

Published September 30, 1982. One aspect of marriage is seldom discussed and yet remains a fact of life. As husbands and wives, we infrequently confront the fact that both of us will eventually die. And most of us fear death in one way or another.

The mass media today has distorted death and dying. Most of the deaths portrayed on television and in movies are quick and even appear to be painless in many cases. It is what I call synthetic death and not the kind most of us will encounter. Death is not an event; it is a process usually lasting months and even years. And some of the most trying and yet tender moments in marriage can be during these times.

Because death is such an integral part of marriage and family life, I have read many books and articles on the topic. And from my own religious orientation, I have found the following few paragraphs among the best and most insightful on the topic. Under the title” Fear Not Death,” Hugh B. Brown has written:

“I am persuaded that the reason many men are afraid of death is because they are afraid of the unknown. They say, and rightly, that we know really very little about the pattern and detail of what is over there. The Lord hasn’t revealed very much about the details of that life, but that there is such a life He has made plain through repeated revelation.

“One reason that some men (and women) are afraid of death is that they say no one has come back to tell us what happens there. They say, ‘I am afraid to go because while I know what is happening here, I don’t know what is going to be there.’ When I hear a man speak like that I think and sometimes ask him, ‘How much did you know about this world before you came into it? Were you afraid to come?’

Elder Brown continues, “According to the scriptures, we shouted for joy at the prospect, although I am sure we knew something of the risk involved. We were not afraid in one sense, for we had some knowledge. However, when we entered that prenatal state where our bodies were being formed, we began to forget what we had learned in a pre-existent state, and in that state just before our mortal birth, if someone could have talked with us as unborn babies, and had said to us individually, ‘You are to be born into another world shortly,” I am quite sure if the little child could speak or think, he would have shrunk back and said, ‘I don’t want to be born into another world. I am happy here under the heart of my mother. Separate me form her, and I must die. Don’t ask me to be born into an unknown world. I fear it.’ I think perhaps that is what a child would say.

“The remarkable thing is that when the child is born—and if it had not been born, in due course, it would have died, and the mother too, perhaps—he finds an environment suited to him. He finds that during the months of preparation he has been developing certain functional organs which were not needed in that prenatal state, but which immediately began to operate when the child breathed the first breath of life; the lungs and other organs of the body began to function.

Huge B. Brown then concludes, “Now I wonder whether in a very real sense this earth life is not a prenatal state. Prenatal meaning before birth. I personally am very sure that that is true. This is a preparatory state. If that is true, then we are now, perhaps, largely, unconsciously, developing certain, shall we call them organs, which we do not fully utilize, but which when we are born into that next life will begin to operate and function. We shall find there as we have found here that preparation was made for our coming, not only in the environment, but in ourselves.”

“What we call death is but a birth and a beginning, and we need not fear this change.”