To Die Well, We Must Live Well—And for Others

I was struck by Elizabeth Regnerus’s article in these pages on why the increasing number of people dying alone is one of our culture’s greatest tragedies. As an attorney, a scholar, and an educator, I have wrestled with the modern-day confusion around our mortality for almost a decade. I have spoken and written about assisted suicide and recently led a reading group on L. S. Dugdale’s The Lost Art of Dying. Now, however, I am concerned with life: in the past few years, I have come to think that the only way to avoid dying alone is not to live alone, that is, solely for oneself.

Lonely deaths are only partly the fruit of a disregard for our final day: the path to a lonely death is forged in life. Stronger faith communities and more attentiveness to our life’s ultimate purpose can prepare us for our final days. But at the same time, I often think that “the clock will not be turned back,” that people will not approach death as they once sought to—surrounded by relatives and friends—unless life, too, is approached as it once was: as a relational, communal, sacrificial, and generative experience. 

Lonely deaths are the inevitable product of our independent lives, the necessary outcome of decades spent “focusing on ourselves” as our culture mandates. They are the natural consequence of hours dedicated to running on a treadmill instead of chasing children; of hundreds of hours studying privately, uninterrupted by conversations with friends and peers who might have slowed us down; of hectic sleep schedules that prevent us from taking part in our friends’ plans and parties; of choosing solitary meals over shared ones. Such a focus on oneself is typical of today’s culture across the board. And it is by no means exclusive to single people.

Marriage and family life is not, in itself, a remedy to our egocentric cultural ethos. We all know families who leave elderly parents alone or even acquiesce to family members’ desires to give up on life. Said differently, there is little that an institution, even one as noble and as necessary as the family, can do on its own. Marriage and childbearing are paths to self-sacrifice and community, but they are not the only way, and they are not sufficient. I recently had a conversation with a psychiatrist here in Austin and she and I agreed that, at least partly, this may be what the latest surgeon general’s advisory indicates. After a life spent focusing on careers and on how to invest “our” time, and never having cared for younger siblings or older relatives, upon becoming parents, adults lack the virtues and skills that caregiving requires. Family life must be approached with a self-giving rather than a demanding heart, but there is nowhere for young people to learn the former attitude, which is not just a natural instinct. Today, this self-giving love and care are in critically short supply—from conception to natural death.

I believe the remedy is to recover our ability to see the other and to love him or her in all the different stages of life (and to allow ourselves to be the subjects of such love). We are made for communion, for relationships. Even the first man, Adam, was lonely before he encountered Eve, who was bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. He had everything a man could want, but he felt lonely nonetheless. The same is true for us: we are utterly incomplete without one another. It was with Eve that Adam found joy and fulfilled his likeness to God. He became able not just to generate new life, as animals do, but to embody human souls. As one of my young students reminded me, it is revealing that sacrifice is an absolute requirement for Adam’s fulfillment: his rib needed to be taken from him (literally) for Eve to exist.

Contrary to what we are generally taught in school and popular media, we need to rediscover that a happy life requires not just the company of another, but sacrifice for the other. At the same time, we need to see the other as an end, not just as a means to our personal happiness. 

It helps to take time to remember how many times others’ gratuitous gifts to us have enriched our lives. We are alive and well because a mother and a father first gave us life and then prioritized us, nourished us, and educated us. We then encountered the people who directed us toward the right schools, careers, friends, hobbies, and spouses. Our accomplishments, then, have value in relation to others, not in a vacuum. We want to be seen, and this is largely what makes our promotion or our new car exciting: someone will notice. As Elizabeth Regnerus reminds us, death and illness cause us sorrow, and sorrow is more manageable when it is shared. As relational beings, the same is true for joy. 

In The Shattering of Loneliness: On Christian Remembrance, Erik Varden offers a powerful invitation that, when accepted, can cure our epidemic of living and dying alone. By remembering our finitude a little more often, we won’t only see our ailing parents, relatives, and friends. We will also recognize how much at every stage of life we are them: in dire need of attention, care, and love. The lonely deaths of today are not so much the result of our inability to think of our final days and of the limits we will inevitably face. It is rather our blindness to our neediness, to our finitude in the present, and to the abundance of all that we have. With our smartphones in our hands, and our Facebook communities online, some of us may delude ourselves by thinking that men learned how to live and sleep and eat on their own. In reality, we all are filling our hollow hearts with things that—as my mom wisely says—won’t bring us tea when we are old and sick.

I recently met a young and handsome man who told me that he does not want to get married or have kids because his life is perfect as it is right now. “I cannot even take care of a puppy,” he added. I hope that this young man is investing more in his friends now than he would in that hypothetical puppy. Life won’t always be perfect. And when it isn’t, we will have nothing to reap when we haven’t taken the time to sow.

I want to close with a disclaimer and a confession: I am guilty as charged. Living for others is hard for everyone, in any stage of life. And in a culture that exalts the autonomous self, it is hard to remember that sacrifice is the only path to flourishing. Letting go of that proverbial rib—be it our time, our plans, our desires—is the only way to authentic happiness: and to a guarantee that in our final days, we will be remembered, and surrounded by, those who love us. 

Image by Rido and licensed via Adobe Stock.