(initially written as a brief response to the suggestion that ‘people aren’t afraid of death but afraid of the uncertainty of what comes after death’:)

even ‘Death’ can become a matter of ‘fight or flight’. But if there is fear then I think that it is not so much the fear of what may be beyond death’ as the ‘fear of the process of dying’.

you may be a lucky one who, after a long, eventful but essentially satisfying and happy life, passes suddenly, painlessly and quietly at 4 am in the morning…

or you may be one who dies slowly, ‘valiantly’ resisting ‘giving up on life’ and enduring a protracted, painful period of ‘fighting an ultimately hopeless battle against some terrible illness’.

or you may, like my Father, die before you are dead — as your persona slips away, lost to the ravages of dementia, leaving only a vegetating husk, that finally fails one day and passes without a fight!

for those who cogitate on the matter, there may be fear of the uncertain/unknown (as you suggest), but there may also be fear of a long-drawn-out departure, becoming a still-lucid but increasingly entrapped soul in a decaying body (like my Mother was) who cannot ‘let life go’ yet becomes a burden to others… resentful, bitter, anguished and regretful.

as with so many things in Life even Death, and its anticipation, is not a one-size-fits-all matter!

poetry of death

Dylan Thomas has famously exhorted us all ‘not to go gentle into that good night’ but to ‘…rage against the dying of the light’… yet if you have lived a good, fulfilling and fulsome life, embellished my moments of great joy and blessed by love… surely there should be no need to rage? going gentle feels as if it is just the right thing to do…as you embark on the next phase of the journey (or not –according to what you personally choose to believe)…

Do not go gentle into that good night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas