Advice for Future Corpses - A Short Review
A Practical Perspective on Death and Dying, by Sallie Tisdale
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How do you think about your own death? Most humans tend to avoid thinking about death, especially about their own or those they love. But philosophy, famously, is about “learning how to die,” and the Roman Stoics were strong advocates of meditating on death. Continuing an already ancient tradition, Seneca recommends thinking about death every day, and Epictetus famously tells us to whisper to ourselves that our loved ones may die at any time. Some of Marcus Aurelius’s most compelling meditations are on this theme:
Consider what it means to die, and that if one considers death in isolation, stripping away by rational analysis all the false impressions that cluster around it, one will no longer consider it to be anything other than a process of nature, and if somebody is frightened of a process of nature, he is no more than a child; and death, indeed, is not only a process of nature but also beneficial to her. Meditations, 2.12
In his writings to himself, like the one above, Marcus presents various techniques for keeping death in mind and removing its sting. These techniques include:
remembering that death is an indifferent (2.11)
breaking death down into component parts to make it seem less scary (2.12)
changing perspective to remember that death happens equally to everyone (4.32, 4.48)
contextualizing the shortness of life, regardless of how long it is (4.47)
reminding himself that death is nothingness, which means a lack of awareness and lack of pain (8.58)
seeing death as a neutral and natural process (8.18, 9.3)
suggesting that there’s a lot about life he won’t miss, like back-stabbing courtiers (9.3)
Sallie Tisdale’s 2019 book, Advice for Future Corpses and Those Who Love Them: A Practical Perspective on Death and Dying, fits well into this venerable tradition of memento mori. However, rather than offering consolation like many philosophers, she presents a practical portrait of death, shaped by her years of experience as a hospice nurse.
In elegant, unflinching prose, Tisdale explores the many facets of death we will all encounter at some point: avoidance, preparation, bereavement, joy, and the unavoidable moment itself. Her goal is not so much to reason us out of our fear as to grow comfortable with death, even befriend it. We peek behind the mask, so to speak—as Epictetus says, comparing death to the masks worn in theater performances, “What is death? A bogey. Turn it round and you'll find out; look, it doesn't bite!” (Discourses, 2.1, 17).
In this vein, Tisdale invites us along on a journey to look at death from all its many sides. She recounts her own experiences with deaths both sudden (an anonymous biker in front of her house), lingering (her mother’s slow decline from cancer), and in between (her friend Carol’s unexpected diagnosis and rapid death). She pokes and prods the aftereffects of death—i.e., the decomposition of bodies and how we choose to dispose of our own. (You might be surprised how many options there are, ranging from ultra high-tech crystallization to ultra low-tech worm farms.) In echoes of Marcus Aurelius, she explores bereavement and grief in various forms, leaning on her Buddhist training to analyze the nature of death:
We are nothing more than a collection of parts, and each part is a collection of smaller parts, and smaller still, the things we love and all we cherish only aggregations. We are put together from other things and will be taken apart and built anew. There is nothing known that escapes this fate.
p. 206
What I especially appreciate about Tisdale’s approach is her ability to bring death to life (if you’ll pardon the expression). It’s one thing to talk about dying at a theoretical level, as so many philosophers do. It’s quite another to develop a practice that allows you to intensively, viscerally imagine what death and dying are like. In Advice for Future Corpses, we look death straight in the eye. This includes an acknowledgement of how difficult it is to fully comprehend that death is personal:
I have been forced to believe in my own death over and over again. And yet I get distracted. I resist. I forget. I am reminded again; I believe again. Of course people die. Everyone dies. Except (secretly, without the conscious thought) me. Such internal contradiction, these emotional and cognitive dissonances, are the complications that make us human and difficult and fascinating. I say yes and I say no; I am scared and I am curious; I refuse and I accept.
p. 28-29
Throughout this journey of acceptance, Tisdale offers wise advice on preparing for our eventual demise. While she does not refer to Stoicism at all—and frequently uses “stoic” in its stereotypical meaning of “unfeeling”—her guidance is not out of place in a philosophical life. For example, she suggests that our character in life plays an important role in our death:
We spend our lives creating our future, by creating habits, learning from experience, examining our weaknesses and strengths. Our lives as we live them day by day create the person we will be at the moment of death. You see this at the bedside of a dying person. You see it in the way a body rests or fights, in the lines of the face, in the faint shadow of a smile or a scowl, worry or peace. With every passing day, we create the kind of death we will have.
p. 14
I can’t help but think of Epictetus insisting, “I'd wish death may overtake me when I'm attending to nothing other than my power of choice, to ensure that it may be unperturbed, unhindered, unconstrained, and free” (Discourses, 3.5, 7). In other words, the choices we make in life influence our character, which in turn influences our approach to dying. In this, Tisdale’s work reinforces one of the great lessons of Stoicism. Perhaps influenced by her Buddhist practice, but definitely aligned with a Stoic view of our own agency in difficult times, she observes that it is in our power to choose our attitude toward that ultimate, final fear:
Attitude leads us—attitude, and habits of mind. I want to meet death with curiosity and willingness. What do you want to do? Do you want to meet death with devotion, love, a sense of adventure, or do you want to rage against the failing light? Cultivate those qualities now. Master them. Then you will have a deep and not even conscious attitude—a mastered reaction set, as it were, that stays with you even when the mind is going. When I find myself in a new situation, when I’m scared, I try to feel curiosity even in the midst of fear. I consider the bus sliding up onto the sidewalk behind me. I consider the heart attack. The meteor. Can I be curious about the meteor?...If I experience curiosity in the midst of fear often enough, it will be there when I need it most.
p. 55-56
In my view, this sense of curiosity and willingness to face death is Tisdale’s greatest contribution to a philosophical memento mori practice. Adding curiosity to our “mastered reaction set” of Stoic virtues will surely help us when our own time comes. And in the meantime, building this attitude into our regular meditations will help us to live richer and more courageous lives. Alongside the techniques presented by Marcus Aurelius above, this curiosity about death is an excellent strategy for life.
I loved Advice for Future Corpses when I first read it four years ago, and when I picked it up again recently I was pleased to find it lost none of its potency on a second reading. Even though it’s not Stoic in every respect—for example, Tisdale assumes that grief is unresponsive to philosophical preparation—this book is a gem of poetic and practical insight into death. For anyone who is serious about matters of life and death, Advice for Future Corpses is essential reading.