By William C. Shelton

This article was first published on July 6, 2011.

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville Times belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville Times, its staff or publishers)

The most important thing that I know about life is that it is finite.

I will die. You will die. Everyone we know will die. Even the stars will fade away, one after another.

But while we live, there is ample time for loving, learning, joy, and making a difference. The potential to love and be loved is all around us. Joy awaits us in so many moments, if we but embrace it. Injustices that we encounter are opportunities to do great deeds and make a difference.

Yet so often we do not seize the finite time that is given us. We are petty. We speak falsely. We don’t show loved ones how much we care. We unnecessarily endure mistreatment.

Those of us who believe in a god, and those who don’t, talk about life after death. We speculate as to its existence and form while we squander our precious gift of life before death.

I think that we waste this gift because we forget that life is finite. We imagine that we will always have time to right wrongs, say what needs saying, find delight in the now, and pursue our dreams.

Long ago I experienced the certainty of imminent death—the acceptance that no amount of resistance, bargaining, or denial would prevent my dying within a few moments.

And then I didn’t die.

But I was changed. My many self-deceptions became transparent and unnecessary. Others’ faults became trivial, and their virtues, obvious. What was most important to me came into sharp focus. The urgent but trivial faded.

That lasted maybe a week. Conducting the daily routines of my life evoked my routine responses of patterned thought, feeling and behavior.

It is difficult, for me at least, to change myself without changing the personal world in which I live my everyday life. And that world is embedded in a culture that encourages and reinforces a collective amnesia about death, an unconscious accord to deny that our lives are finite.

The fear of death is universal. If it were not built into our DNA, we would not have survived as a species. But our ways of coping with death and dying have changed.

Until the mid-20^th Century, Americans’ exposure to death was commonplace and how we dealt with it was different from what we do today. Families whose children all lived to adulthood were rare. Diseases ravaged populations. Death in the workplace was routine.

People usually died at home. Loved ones prepared their bodies for burial.

Rather than being “shielded,” children were present for a dying loved one’s farewell and for the family’s discussions of plans, expressions of fear, and grieving of loss. Children learned early that death is inevitable, grief can be discharged, and dying can bring people together, instruct them, and enrich their relationships.

Antibiotics and inoculations have eliminated entire diseases. Changes in workplaces and health-and-safety regulations have greatly reduced on-the-job accidents.

Most people die in hospitals. Their bodies are whisked away to embalmers where they are made to look as if they are robust, but merely taking a nap. Children are “protected” from awareness of their own mortality and, therefore, of the implication that we should live fully in every moment.

Now people don’t die, they “pass away.” When I was a child it was the middle class who said, “pass away.” The rich and the poor used the more forthright “died.” Today, the euphemism seems to have infected all.

By pretending that we’re going to live forever, we not only fail to live fully. We trivialize death.

In an action movie dozens of people die in two hours. In a video game a player kills them in a few minutes. They get shot, they stop moving, and the action continues. In life, those who are shot rarely die quickly, quietly, or inoffensively. And watching them die changes you forever.

Sometimes I hear an annoyed acquaintance lightly say to someone, “I’m going to kill you,” and I writhe inside. I doubt people would say that so lightly if they had actually seen one human kill another.

I spent some time in Mexico where, on All Souls’ Day, they celebrate el Dia de los Muertos—Day of the Dead. Adults give children skull-shaped candies and bake bone-shaped bread. They have picnics where their loved ones are buried. They dress up as skeletons, dance, and party late into the evening.

Rather than being ghoulish, the Mexicans are taking delight in being alive. They are practicing a form of memento mori. This Latin phrase meaning “Remember your mortality” is the name of an art genre that goes back to the Romans, medieval Christians, and New England Puritans.

Our contemporary culture does not tell us “memento mori.” It tells us the opposite. You and I must say it to each other. And we do that as much by encouraging each other to live truthfully, joyfully, and completely as by reminding each other that the time we have to do so is finite.