Since I read War of the Worlds when I was in first grade, I’ve been a science fiction and fantasy fan. It doesn’t take much poking around my interests to see that I’m an avid reader. Back around 1999, I read Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s collaboration, Good Omens, and subsequently loved it. I also truly loved the TV show version, which we all know is a dicey gamble at best, when it comes to transferring the written word to the silver screen. It was witty, irreverent yet respectful, and thought provoking about the most serious topics, in the most fun way.
However, it pains me to say, that’s as much Terry Pratchett as I had ever read. I know, I know! I KNOW. This was largely due to the fact that he’d written so much, I just didn’t really know where to start. There are plenty of guides online that told me what to start with, but they all differed, and I was paralyzed by choice. I’ve known this whole time that i was missing out, but hadn’t remedied it.
I finally bit the bullet a few weeks ago, and read Mort. I loved it. It makes Death someone that you would actually not mind meeting, scythe and all. Considering the fact that mortality is inevitable, I find this a very comforting anthropomorphization of an idea that modern Western culture seems to have done its utmost to avoid. I find memento mori to be a thing our current culture lacks, and through Death in Terry Pratchett’s books, and Death in the Sandman books, I think there are two very healthy ways of approaching the unavoidable specter of….well…..Death.
Frontispiece from Folio Society’s beautiful edition of Mort by Terry Pratchett
“THAT’S MORTALS FOR YOU, Death continued. THEY’VE ONLY GOT A FEW YEARS IN THIS WORLD AND THEY SPEND THEM ALL IN MAKING THINGS COMPLICATED FOR THEMSELVES. FASCINATING.” -Death, Mort
I love this quote from my In-Laws: “One out of one dies.”
They say it whenever life is just a bit stressful, or problems are a bit too big, and every time it makes me feel better. I hear that there are attempts to expand the human lifespan to 150+ years, and all I can think is, BLECH who would want that. I certainly wouldn’t. I intend to enjoy life as much as possible while I can, and then embrace the big nap when it’s my turn. I hope that I’ve left a legacy and stories to entertain and make my loved ones proud, but I would have no desire to outlive my natural life. And I think that’s a good thing.
Over the past year, there has been a lot of insanity from a lot of people. In many, many ways. And I think a part of that, has been a primitive reaction to having to stare death in the face. Many people have managed to run from the idea that yes, we all will die. If you buy a certain type of protein shake, or do yoga, or follow the right directions, on a primal level, it seems that we bought off on an idea that we could delay, or entirely ignore, the inevitable. And we couldn’t. And this past year, that came and looked us right in the peepers, and we couldn’t look away. So a lot of people just….lost it. Maybe they flipped out and got themselves banned on airlines when they were asked to wear a mask. Maybe they punched someone over a parking space. Or maybe they just decided that rather than cope in a healthy way, take a vaccine to keep themselves and their loved ones safer, they would….decide that it was all a big plot to implant magnetic microchips or whatever, brought about by….checks notes ….ah yes, satanic baby eating lizard people.
So rather than double down on crazy and decide to jump into the deep end of lunacy to avoid confronting that death comes for us all (though there are certainly ways we can mitigate some of the means, but not the end result), I try to face it. I take the Victorian approach. I like to look for beauty in graveyards. I enjoy watching movies with heartwarming death themes (thank you, Tim Burton); and now, I’ve fallen headlong into Terry Pratchett’s Death representation. I think it’s scary because it’s unknown, but I think it’s futile to fear what we can’t avoid. So we might as well humanize it, since it’s a truly human experience.
Death from the Sandman Comics. She so cute.
I’m just another mortal here, doing a slow shuffle on this coil, but I’m doing the best I can. So much of what motivates us is fear. Not necessarily conscious fear, like “Oh no I’m going to be late if this light doesn’t change” fear. But rather deep seated fears about love, death, judgement, and rejection, that usually wrap themselves up and dress themselves in the clothes of more mundane things. And I think that the more we can drag those deep seated fears out and name them to ourselves, the more we have a chance at happiness, and sanity. So if you’re looking for a way to do that, I highly recommend reading Mort by Terry Pratchett, or the Sandman “Death” comics, because it’s a way of making something we can’t avoid a bit less scary, naming it in a warm caring light, and taking the chill off.