How to Die and Stay Alive

Ora Ruven

I have nowhere to flee from the state of the body that is about to meet death. And where is the soul? The soul is what examines the body and death. The soul will never meet death, because the moment death is here, the soul is already gone. This equation removes from me entirely the fear of death. So I remain here with the body. And it grows weaker, slackens, goes on and on.

We are used to looking at our bodies and judging how they look. Young and beautiful, black or white, an old wrinkled body�€� But I think about the parts of the body that stop working with me: the eyes that need different kinds of glasses, the hearing that makes me fall silent in conversation because I did not catch what was said, the knees that ache when I walk, and the frayed memory that makes me search for where I wrote things I wanted to remember.

And I think about the look of the old body. When it was in full beauty many eyes turned toward it, and I felt a little like a peacock with a fine tail. Then less. Then not at all. A loss one must come to terms with. Until the old body becomes invisible. People do not want to see it.

But my grandson comes and teaches me about the old-age �€œmuscle.�€� That muscle does not appear in anatomy books; the muscle is this skin along the upper arm that women take care to cover with a sleeve. The little boy comes to me laughing, shakes the loose skin at the bottom of my arm and says, Grandma, here is your old-age muscle! The child is free of the revulsion this wasting flesh arouses in the adult world; he marvels at the wasted flailing flesh as he marvels at a chick breaking out of its shell �€” in his eyes there is no difference between the two wonders.

And what will my grandson do after my death? I want to offer him a sitting corner at home where he will �€œsee�€� me �€” my death mask and beautiful pictures of me �€” and remember me, and not go to memorials at cemeteries.

Ars moriendi is a fifteenth-century guide for those who were dying of the Black Death; it concerns purification of the soul in order to reach heaven. My video also offers preparing for death through celebration of life �€” not weeping over death but preparing for it, going to die properly: that is purification!

Sackcloth and ashes

�€œAnd Jacob rent his garments, and put sackcloth upon his loins, and mourned for his son many days.�€� (Genesis 37:34)

In Jewish tradition mourners wore sackcloth and threw ashes on their heads. Sackcloth is the lowliest of textiles �€” cheap, crudely woven �€” and not used for clothing at all but for storage. Wearing sackcloth in mourning presents the mourner�€™s lowliness toward death. Its color recalls human skin, and its weave allows it to be torn apart easily by pulling threads outward. The more I worked on designing mourning garments for celebrating death, the more I felt that sackcloth is us: the organic body, slowly unraveling, wrinkling, collapsing, until we become a row of bones. In this metaphorical spirit I was caught in the obsessive magic of pulling threads from the sackcloth. Pulling threads that thin and disintegrate the fabric, and pulling threads that gather and wrinkle it �€” these became my shaping tools.