Meredith Little
“Death is an exciting topic”
Surrounded by the Alps and with the steady clear sound of a mountain stream in the background, I sit with Meredith Little, the ‘grande dame’ of contemporary rites of passage and co-founder of the Californian-based School of Lost Borders. Little is in Switzerland to teach ‘the practice of living and dying’, a week focussing on death and dying, and to support the brand new Swiss rites of passage association founded by Carine Roth. Little’s words, as her person, are filled with simplicity, wisdom and humility.
We’ve just spent a week engaging with practices in death and dying. What do we lose as a culture when death and dying becomes a taboo subject and we lose our relationship to it?
I think we lose each other. We lose a really important connection that we have. We lose the ways that we can support each other and be with each other through conversations, through learning how to support each other in those last moments, months or years, of moving toward death. And yet, death and dying is an exciting topic. There are so many stories that people want to tell that really are ‘learning stories’. When the message is that death is morbid, it becomes not okay to talk about it. It gets lost and stuffed down, and this creates a lot of fear around death and dying. It’s natural to have some fear around death and dying but when we can have that conversation, it is very rich and it also makes a difference in how we live. Recognizing that we are going to die and that we have some choice in the context of that also makes a big difference to the choices that we make in our life and about living.
I’ve been wondering about that throughout the week, listening to peoples’ stories. The program is called ‘the practice of living and dying’: would you say we are more afraid of living or dying?
Some people, like we had in this group, clearly recognize that they are more afraid of saying a full yes to their life than to dying. I know that talking about death and dying, and all the teaching that comes with it enhances our life. Even in just recognizing that we don’t know when we are going to die and that we are not in control of what happens makes a difference to the kind of life traces that we make. We think, ‘let’s just pretend it’s not going to happen, the medical system will keep us alive a really long time. I don’t have to think about it now’. This can keep people stuck in safety rather than taking rich risks and changing as we grow.
EARLY ENCOUNTERS
You’ve dedicated your life to rites of passage work and have had the opportunity to have these conversations over decades with lots of people from different generations. Have you observed any shifts in our relationship with death over that time span?
Overall, there is less taboo on talking about death and there are more books, experiences, workshops and seminars than before, but I don’t see there being a lessening in people’s inherent fear of death and aging. I think aging, with all the modern technology and medications, is really where the focus of the fear tends to be, rather than on death itself.
In early cultures, people died in their homes. They died of things that today are fixed really easily, families were around, and everybody was there to take care of the person. There was more of a gentle kindness about it. There is fear in the thought of being taken to a hospital where it is sterile and impersonal, and far away from family. There is the fear of dementia and cancer, which we have more of because we are living longer. So, I think there is more talk about it but I don’t think there is less fear of the dying process.
I really like the notion that, over the week, came out of many stories of childhood of children having a natural, maybe even intact, relationship with death. What can we do to support children to stay in good relationship with death rather than it being in the way of living?
By getting a lot more comfortable with it ourselves. By not seeing it so much as a failure, and by feeling able and comfortable to answer questions when children begin to ask them – they naturally ask questions – without feeling that we have to give them a whole thesis on what happens. As they grow up, children begin to ask more and different questions about death and we need to be able to show up for that. When there is an encounter with the death of a pet or a relative, again, not to fear that this is too painful for the child. Really embrace them and let them be a part of the process, help them explore their own feelings around what happened to that person, help them develop their own sense of what happens to animals when they die. Certainly, it is helpful to have them get out into nature and see the living and dying that’s happening out there all the time.
“The work of dying needs to be done in order to move into different phases of our life”
You mentioned how adolescents and young people feel comfortable talking about it as well. I saw you light up a few times this week when talking about our young people. There seems to be a fierceness for young people trying to grow up in a world where there are a lot of stories around death, crises, species dying and war…all of that. How can we show up for them as adults and elders?
I think they are the guides. We have to show up, as you said. We have to ask and we have to listen to them. We have to respect their thoughts. If there is trauma and tragedy around, it is really dangerous if they feel helpless in relation to that. So, we can help them find ways of helping, find an action so they feel a little bit of something that makes a difference. If they can find something that makes a difference, they don’t feel so helpless and they are less traumatized. They grow with their evolving value system about what’s happening around them.
DARK TIMES
We already talked a bit about the place of death in our culture. I love that you mentioned that we look at disease as our fault and death as a failure. How can we approach that narrative differently again? It seems to be such a toxic narrative that doesn’t support us to move towards a good death.
I think at the root of it is the way that we see ourselves as separate from nature. Somehow, we are better than everything else that dies. I’m surprised by how many people there are that think that we could easily live to be 170 years old. That….that’s a goal! For early people, that would be selfish. When it’s your time, you gracefully find a way of saying goodbye and you make room for the young generation coming in. You don’t take up all the food and space that is needed by everybody else. There’s such fear around that today. We get messages from spiritual traditions and medical institutions about how we’re doing something wrong when we die and even when we get sick. If you get a cold, you’re doing something wrong, rather than it being your body naturally trying to find a balance. It’s another way that we separate ourselves from nature.
You said a few times ‘I’m going to die messy’. I wrote it down because it surprised me. You who have spent so much of your life with these practices, preparing for death, you could say, if you can’t do it, who can?
I think that’s why I say it. We’re all human. I don’t know what my death is going to look like. I know I certainly haven’t been perfect in my life even though I try to communicate clearly and take responsibility for relationships. You know, I think I say it to remind us that it’s not about being perfect. It’s just not. There is so much tension around needing to be perfect, to die a good death by having done all our work. There is no good or bad death, there is just learning how to keep growing into our humanness. I imagine I’ll keep learning until I die and that there will be unfinished stuff behind me. I think it’s inevitable.
So, what is the one thing we should take away that we can integrate into our daily lives as a practice of living and dying? How can we start engaging in this?
It’s different for everyone. By having the conversations, not being afraid, not seeing talking about death as being morbid but as a fascinating conversation, spending time on the land; Death Cafes are great. I think it’s just about recognizing how much we’ve been stunted by making death and talking about it a taboo – not only in our physical living and dying but also in being able to move from doing the work of the dying that needs to be done in order to move into different phases of our life. If we can be aware of that and recognize that and not see going through a dark time and a time of fear or depression or time in the underworld as something that’s wrong but as something that’s moving us toward new growth, it would change a lot of our life.
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