The Science of Living and the Art of Dying

Abstract

If sex and death are the two most powerful subjects in our daily lives, sex has been comprehensively exposed in our culture, but death still struggles to get a thoughtful audience and is often ignored or denied. Living mostly requires scientific knowledge but dying is an art in the sense of needing the application of imagination. The author presents her own experience of sudden family deaths from a young age and considers herself a ‘death passionate’. She believes that true awareness of death, including one's own, is life‐enhancing and can inspire great creative acts, while unprocessed grief can result in violence and tragedy. A good death, she argues, requires a life lived fully, without falsities, and our real legacy is the human, and artistic, one reflected in the lives of those we have loved and those we have worked with. The article is accompanied by a photograph that stages the author's own ‘deathbed scene’, taken by the author's son, a professional photographer.