Ordinary Death

Anyone catch the final episode of John Adams on HBO this weekend? I thought it was, at times, brilliant. And I experienced one of those blissfully rare moments when art informs, educates, and enlightens. This particular episode put death in perspective for me.

I've always struggled to grasp death as a reality. It's part of life, yes, but it's also part of human nature to struggle with the concept of death. I've found it odd and terribly sad finally reaching an age when you begin to understand it; when grandparents push into their 80's and start dealing with "the end" every day, and you realize they're as alive as you are just old, tired, unable to keep up, keep at it anymore.

Death is terrifying. It's surreal.

And yet in this episode, death is ordinary. Two brilliant extraordinary men (John Adams and Thomas Jefferson) who inspired, willed, and created our democracy and free world simply grow old, and die. I'm not doing justice to the beauty of their deaths as portrayed on screen, but my point is that for the first time I got it--I understood the idea that death is something we all face. It's inevitable. It's ordinary.

By watching the deaths of of the most extraordinary men in our world's history I felt calm. I realized,

No matter how ambitious we are, no matter how much we achieve, no matter how strong willed and determined to make change, to better ourselves and others--no matter how extraordinary we may be, from John Adams to Barack Obama, we will all die an ordinary death.

It puts things in perspective. It slows things down a bit yes?