the_art_of_a_good_death ovenbird When I stumbled upon “Vent de Melisse” today, a watercolour painting by Canadian artist Aimee-Rose Philibert, I cried. I’m not sure I’ve ever had such a visceral and immediate response to a piece of artwork. It depicts a woman transitioning into death. She is surrounded by people holding her hands with such tender emotion and presence that it cracked me wide open. The dying woman has more hands than she should and it’s difficult to tell where these hands attach to her prone body. It made me imagine the soul extending outward from her physical form providing endless points of connection in the shape of hands that are grasped and held and cradled by her assembled loved ones. The depth of care displayed is so beautiful that I can only glance at it for a few seconds before I am overwhelmed by tears. A wind moves through the image, blowing back the hair of those present and carrying fallen leaves. There is a sense of transition–the seasons, our lives, so brief and cyclical. Time is a force that moves through the collection of bodies, but the moment of holding is still, like a rock in a stream. Time moves around those who are gathered to bear witness to death. They are subject to it, but also apart from it, as one amongst them moves into timelessness, into eternity. We all deserve a final moment like this–one in which we are held in profound love and carried, gently, into dissolution. And we all deserve the chance to observe death up close. We deserve to sing each other to sleep. The medicalization of death so often denies us this possibility and barriers to accessing medically assisted dying further complicate the possibility of dying peacefully in the arms of family and friends. I wonder if we are truly afraid of dying or if we’re afraid of the lonely and sterile deaths that we are subjected to. Are we afraid of death or of our lack of agency in finding a way to die well? Philibert’s painting makes room for these questions. It opens space for conversations that are necessary and painful and shattering. It made me think of two close friends who are preparing for their own medically assisted deaths and the devastating privilege it will be to hold their hands on their final days. We are so afraid to encounter the dying, but I suspect that has a lot to do with being afraid to encounter ourselves and our inescapable mortality. I want to die as I was born–held and loved and looked upon with awe. https://www.cbc.ca/arts/art-of-a-good-death-oag-9.6971478 251117 what's it to you? who go blather from