PRINTEditor's letter: Let's talk about death
Vox staff
Kurt Woock
February 9, 2012 | 12:00 a.m. CST
Death might seem like an insurmountable subject. When someone close to us dies, we, for the most part, prefer to hire someone to, you know, “help make arrangements.” We often prefer not to have to call it by name. Perhaps the question “what, if anything, comes after life?” is what makes people uneasy; death’s door we can see, but what lies on the other side?
With those thoughts in mind, a handful of writers tackled the subject. They talked to people who deal with death and the afterlife in usual (mortician) and unusual (Facebook app creator) ways. What they all had in common is the understanding that where there’s a death, there’s a life, and where there’s a life, there’s a story.
Related ArticlesThe writers found people who use the Internet to record personal messages and stories to be released upon their death and an organ donor who enabled the stories of others, in this case a young woman, to continue. They found imams and priests who teach that individuals’ stories continue in another place after death and atheists and agnostics who don’t (Vox was unable to confirm or deny anything). The topic might be insurmountable, but there wasn’t a shortage of topics to explore.
Writing about death can be difficult because of lingering questions — writers like to wrap things up at the end. Despite the unsolved mysteries, the stories are satisfying: Justin O’Neal, a 30-year-old mortician, builds a life of helping people in grief; friends and family of teens who died tragically young stoke their memories with the thoughts and photos they had recorded; Lisa Britt, the woman who received a donor’s heart when she was in college, now has two young children.
Death happens, but it doesn’t stop life.
