or centuries, it was said that
the young do not fear death. Today, that old adage has lost all meaning. The typical Millennial is more afraid of the spectre of death than his great grandmother. Not only does he fear it, but he refuses to acknowledge its presence. It’s the ultimate ‘no-go’ zone.
This is a trend that has been in the making for a very long time; I daresay that it began with the middle class insistence on turning death into something comfortably bourgeois by rechristening it as “passing away”. It is a very polite euphemism, but not entirely true; the world may pass away, but the dead stay with us.
Mary Rogers’ Funeral
Last year I attended two funerals. One was for an elderly woman at my parish. Her twin sister and lifelong companion had died a few years before; she had lived her twilight years in solitude. She had no family, and all her friends had died. I am very glad that I can remember her name; it was shared by the famous muse of Edgar Allan Poe.
The priest at Mass the previous Sunday had asked for people to attend her funeral; a handful of us did. The hymns were traditional; the eulogy given by the Methodist daughter of an old friend.
I cried, not out of a sense of loss, but of sadness. Only a dozen people had assembled to bid her farewell. But the homily of the priest managed to dispel all sadness. In her last few years, this woman had seen death as the ultimate release.
He said that she had prayed for it every day, offering up continually her loneliness and suffering. By the time death came for her, she saw it as a gift, not anything to fear.
A priest above and beyond the call of duty
The other funeral was for a prominent priest, a man who had exorcised demons, restored the Latin Mass to our diocese, and educated a Prime Minister and an Archbishop. He had suffered a stroke whilst saying Mass, and died a few hours later, surrounded by his parishioners.
There were hundreds of people assembled for his funeral, spilling out from the church onto the steps and the parish hall. destined for sainthood.
These examples of the welcome acceptance of death are shocking to people my age, simply because they go against conventional wisdom. The young do whatever they can to put off death; grinding their bodies to the bone in an attempt to outrun it, or simply refusing to accept its existence.
Even more distasteful to young people, however, are those who aspire to eternal youth after reaching the fullness of adulthood. Haunted by the approach of an undefeatable enemy, they try to deny it. They refuse to accept the onward march of time, shuddering every time they see a wrinkle or grey hair in the mirror. These outward signs of age are unbearable for them, and they fill their bodies with silicone and botox, or revert to hair tonics and atrocious wigs. There are few things as pitiful as an adult pretending to be a teenager, with all the drinks, drugs, and lust that entails.
For those without Faith, death is an unknown quantity, something they cannot control or bring to heel. It is a sign that they are human, and subject to a greater power than themselves.
F
REGINA | 59