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In an obvious sense, life and death are reverse sides of the same coin. Without life there cannot be death, and without death life lacks its imperative. Death, in this view, is an inevitability.

But death is far more than a mere inevitability: it makes a contribution to life which enables life to continue. At the completion of a life lived well, something of what has been acquired is returned to life and living things.

Our contemporary culture seems to be the only culture in history which doubts that an individual consciousness, concentrated within one particular life, is an ongoing and continuous action contained within the growing overall human consciousness.

From Robert Fripp’s web notes regarding his CD A Blessing of Tears: 1995 Soundscapes Volume II. The music is dedicated to the memory of Fripp’s mother and he ends with these beautiful words:

I have not lost my mother, but I miss her company.

Death makes life more precious. It urges us to live our lives well, because death follows our footsteps and can appear at any moment. What would a life be worth, without death and disease hovering near or far? Isn’t a flower that blooms for a few hours more precious than one that blooms for months on end and whose sight becomes so commonplace as to be forgotten? The ability to live in your body for a thousand years – would that make you happy or miserable?