Reflective Essay Sample About Death

Unfortunately, every person alive has experienced death. Not only in everyday occurrences, such as the once beautiful flowers in the vase withering away to a decayed stump of what they once were, but also in the life-altering moments where someone who you once loved who had brimmed with sunshine is plunged under the ground into darkness. With that being said, one would think that after eons of experiencing this loss, it would result in this golden, perfect answer of how to best cope with the emotion of it all. However, this is not true. Every individual has their own method of dealing with their grief. This diversity can be seen when researching language associated with Death in modern culture. After analyzing specific readings, it can be determined that the main three themes of language associated with Death are as follows: the expression of the weight placed upon focusing on the normalcy of circumstances before the death occurred, the denial of those who cannot deal with the initial pain, and the difficult attainment of acceptance.

Death isn’t a concept that is pondered upon everyday; the thought only seems to cross a person’s mind when a loved one passes on. When this happens, it causes a person to take stock in their life and how that person once used to, and now can no longer, fit within its many unique nuances and intricacies. When doing this, most tend to focus on the circumstances surrounding their lives prior to the passing, especially the normalcy of it all. This can be seen when analyzing Joan Didion’s book, The Year of Magical Thinking, where she recounts the journey she had to traverse when trying to grapple with the tragedy of her husband’s death. Didion describes this coping strategy of focusing on the events that preceded a loved one’s passing in the very first chapter: “...confronted with sudden disaster we all focus on how unremarkable the circumstances were in which the unthinkable occurred, the clear blue sky from which the plane fell, the routine errand that ended on the shoulder with the car in flames, the swings where the children were playing as usual when the rattlesnake struck from the ivy.” Didion chooses to introduce this idea as a way to effectively display the inability of humans to resist trying to rationalize this situation, trying to rationalize this “ordinary instant”. In a way, it exhibits how it is almost too easy to fixate on this sense of normalcy that is pre D-Day, pre Death Day. Another modern writer who is quite familiar with this feeling of being surrounded by death is Anderson Cooper, a disaster journalist and reporter, who spent a great deal of his life on streets stained with blood and within buildings crumbling under the weight of their history. Cooper did not always fantasize about being the person who was on the front lines, recording these horrific events; it all stemmed from the moment his father unexpectedly died. As seen in his book, Dispatch from the Edge, Cooper had a very close relationship with his father. In chapter two, Cooper writes, “late at night, if I couldn’t sleep, I’d go into his study and curl up in his lap like a puppy, my arms wrapped around his neck, my ear pressed against his chest. I could always fall asleep listening to the beat of his heart.” Unfortunately, past the age of ten, Cooper was no longer able to bond with his father in this way. After his father’s passing, Cooper began to shut down and revert into a feebler version of who he once was where he wouldn’t discuss his father at all. However, it can be deduced that he still held these ordinary, normal moments very close to his heart, even though he wouldn’t outright admit it.