What Really Matters at the End of Life

One key emotion that comes up in, and resonates with, the fall is grief – a deep feeling of loss, of letting go, or the sense of inability to let go. While grief is not a fun emotion, it is healthy, normal, and worthy space and time for feeling and acknowledgement. While we often correlate grief with death, we may feel grief with any passing – even the end of an era that we welcome or when we are excited about starting something new. For example, getting started at the college that you worked hard to apply to and get accepted in… but now you’re away from your old friends, family, and don’t have the same structure and support you used to have. Or, you are a new parent and have a sweet, cuddly baby… but you miss your freedom, sleep, and some sense of identity that you had before you became a parent. Grief can stand beside and betwixt excitement and joy.

In our grief, we are reminded of what truly matters and our values crystalize. B.J. Miller’s Ted Talk “What Really Matters at the End of Life,” is a beautiful call to think about death (and, by extension, any passing) a bit differently so we can live our lives fully. The talk does not downplay the pain of loss, but it does raise questions about parsing out necessary versus unnecessary suffering, accessing loss to mediate regret, and exploring pleasures of the senses and play to feel alive.