Practicing Death

We die as we live.

If our days are filled with anxiety about what may or may not happen, regrets about what has already happened, jealousy about what others have that we don’t, or anger about how we’ve been treated, then one day, one of those days will be our last day. Our dying day. And if that is how we spend our life, then that is how we will meet death.

On the other hand, if we practice letting go, receiving help, sharing kindness, loving freely, and moving with life’s changes, then one day, when our last day arrives, that is how we will meet death too.

We die as we live.

I have found that practicing death allows us to live more fully.

Life is constantly moving. Water flows. Air moves. Trees grow. Seasons change. People arrive and people leave. Birth, death, rebirth. Everything in nature participates in this flow, yet as human beings we often resist it.

We hold on.

We cling to painful memories.

“I can’t forget that.”

“I’ll never forgive him.”

“I refuse to believe that is true.”

We tighten our grip in an attempt to protect ourselves from being hurt again. But what often happens is that we continue experiencing the hurt over and over because we refuse to let it move through us.

You can feel it in the body. The jaw. The throat. The neck. The shoulders. The gut. It races through the mind. Our bodies know when we’re holding on.

Have you ever floated down a river in an inner tube? You naturally go with the flow. Sometimes the water moves quickly. Sometimes it slows down. Sometimes you’re floating through sunshine and sometimes through shade.

Then imagine seeing rapids ahead.

You become afraid, so you grab a branch hanging over the river.

At first it feels like safety. But the tighter you hold on, the more uncomfortable it becomes. The river keeps pulling. Your tube keeps tugging. And now you’re stuck, staring at the very thing you fear.

Life works the same way.

Sometimes we become so focused on avoiding pain that we stop participating in life. We stop moving. We stop flowing. We stop living.

I reunited with my high school sweetheart after thirty years apart.

It was glorious. After all those years, here was the love of my life again. My best friend. My person.

As I settled into the joy of it all, a thought suddenly struck me.

He could die.

Just like anyone else, he could die tomorrow.

The realization hit me hard. I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to imagine life without him. The fear was immediate.

Then I decided to do something unusual.

I decided to practice.

I entered a deep meditation and allowed myself to imagine receiving the news that he had died. It felt terrible. I felt helpless. There was nothing I could do to change it. Nothing I could do to bring him back.

I cried. I allowed the grief, fear, sadness, and helplessness to move through me. Not because it was happening, but because it could happen.

When I came out of the meditation, something had changed.

I wasn’t less in love with him. I wasn’t detached from him. I was more present with him.

I realized that if the day ever comes when he dies before me, I will still be shocked. I will still be heartbroken. I will still grieve. But I will have already visited that place once. It won’t be completely unfamiliar territory.

And perhaps most importantly, it reminded me that today matters.

This day.

This conversation.

This walk.

This cup of coffee.

This ordinary moment together.

Practicing death didn’t make me focus on losing him.

It helped me focus on loving him.

For more than seven years now, that practice has reminded me that any day could be our last day together. And because of that, I cherish the days we have.

This is why I have come to see practicing death as an antidote to anticipatory grief.

Anticipatory grief is often a form of gripping. We are afraid of losing someone, losing something, or losing the life we know. So we tighten our grip.

But a clenched heart cannot fully receive love. It cannot fully give love either.

When we practice death, we gently allow ourselves to imagine what we fear—not to torture ourselves and not to dwell on tragedy, but to make room for reality.

What if this person dies?

What if this chapter ends?

What if life changes?

We allow ourselves to feel the fear, the sadness, and the helplessness. We notice where it lives in the body. We breathe. We soften. We offer kindness to the places that hurt.

And then something remarkable happens.

As we release our grip, we become open to the possibility of peace in our days.

Practicing death is not really about death. It is about loosening our grip on what we cannot keep. It is about allowing life to move, again and again. It is about staying open to love, even when we know loss is part of the bargain.

Because in the end, practicing death is really practicing life.