The Death Diary: Writing Death Scenes

When Life is Woe,
And Hope is Dumb,
The World says, "Go!"
The Grave says, "Come".

-ARTHUR GUITERMAN (Betel-Nuts)

I wrote about eternal truths in one of my articles. Probably I missed to point that every truth we face in our life is just an experience between two boundaries. Life and Death!

I would not mind to mention a lot about death but I have already produced my thoughts in few other articles related to it. This time I am bringing you a new approach to revival the summary of death. While going through our great literature, what I found was stunning face of death described by great authors and poets in history. The one – I already mentioned.

From the skull in Julius Caesar to the coffin in The Merchant of Venice to his famous speeches, death was a omnipresent subject. Tearing death pages with Shakespeare, play scene from Julius Caesar should be excellent beginning.

Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste death but once.
Of all the wonders that I have yet heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear,
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it come.

Shakespeare drew the death nicely in his two plays (probably in most of others) ‘Measure for Measure’ and ‘Twelfth Night’. He wrote nicely about fear of death in ‘Measure for Measure’ saying –

"The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, penury and imprisonment
Can lay on nature, is a paradise
To what we fear of death."

Another scene from the same drama. The mystery of death, and of the inevitably meaningless fate of the soul.

Ay, but to die and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods or to reside
In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendant world.

In Twelfth Night he depicted death in very passionately different way.

"Come away, come away, death,
And in sad cypress let me be laid;
Fly away, flay away, breath:
I am stain by a fair cruel maid.
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
O, prepare it my part of death, no one so true
Did share it.

We run in a life from every minute thing. We are afraid of something. Although we experience every good and bad things of life, we are unaware of something that threatens us. Each morning breaks our sleep to again treating us victim over threatening powers. And finally when death comes to us, it takes us away from every threatening evil. Shakespeare described scene in play ‘Macbeth’ with amazing flavor of death.

After life’s fitful fever, he sleeps well.
Treason has done his worst: nor steel nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing
Can touch him further.

I would have never come through to such pretty thought of mapping life and death that I did with Ecclesiastes. Time is above life and death. Time really controls them. Probably every action and loss is governed by time. Let’s drop some meaning from following narration.

For everything there is a season,
And a time for every matter under heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to seek, and a time to lose;
A time to keep, and a time to throw away;
A time to tear, and a time to sew;
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate,
A time for war, and a time for peace
-Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

In following dialog, however, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow terminated his points to life.
I wish if I can dare to understand it further.

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art; to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

There is no doubt having ending for every beginning. No one is there to live forever. At one stage of life, you find yourself loving death. You accept the truth. You are happy for what you did in your life. Immortality is subject to acceptance of death for new birth. Seattle said, "There is no death. Only a change of worlds". For every death we find new life. Is that immortality?

Death is a dialogue between
The spirit and the dust.
"Dissolve," says Death. The Spirit, "Sir,
I have another trust."

Because I could not stop for Death
He kindly stopped for me
The Carriage held but just ourselves;
And Immortality.
This entry continued...
- Emily Dickinson

It has always been unfair for writers to write death scenes. Death steels away a lot from a glorious man. We do not feel good even. We just continue reading the death scene. It holds us. No doubts you may start shivering or crying too. Anyway with death scenes, writer leaves a mark of an impression on readers.