Death and dying

Nothing is eternal … except the elementary particles constituting all matter in the Universe1. No proton has ever been observed to decay2, and neutrons remain indefinitely bound within the nucleus of a stable atom, barring extreme conditions such as stellar fusion3.

Every living organism, planet, solar system, galaxy, black hole, and probably Universe, exists only for as long as its life forces sustain homeostasis against the wearying assaults of time4. For the dying entity, death entails cessation of existence; for its constituent atoms and their elementary particles, death results in redistribution; for all entities with which it interacts, its death disconnects it from them.

What is it about an extinguished human life – tragically or sadly for a lost love, mercifully or belatedly for a vanquished enemy – that seems distinct from the loss of life for any other impermanent entity? Other mammals have capacity to grieve5, but no other living organism buries its dead6. Perhaps only humans are capable of contemplating their own mortality.

We each know that we will someday breathe our last. Time-bound and final, death stands between our destiny and unknowable eternity. Death demands a binary answer: to be, or not to be7. And yet the body struggles on, heedless of the mind’s deliberation. The 13ᵗʰ century poet and Sufi teacher Rumi, recognising that dying precedes death, saw the spiritual possibilities of that spell between life and death, which can last a lifetime, in bringing about a divine unity of mind and body.

Oh, the life of lovers consists in death:
You will not win the Beloved’s heart except in losing your own.8

• At least 17 kinds of elementary particles make up all matter and radiation in the Universe.
• The Super-Kamiokande Experiment in Japan sets a lower limit on the lifetime of a single proton at greater than 1034 years. Even if a proton eventually decays, over an unimaginably long timescale, the quantum information and energy of its constituent particles remain, perhaps decomposing to weightless gluon and photon force-carrying bosons.
• Most atoms have undefined lifespan. For example, every atom of 12C, the stable isotope of carbon, has three quarks and their binding gluons making up each of its 6 neutrons, and its 6 protons each with an electron. The quarks, gluons and electrons are elementary particles in the sense of each being indivisible, making them susceptible only to rearrangement, not annihilation. Amongst the atoms that do have finite lifespan, radioactive isotopes have unstable atomic nuclei which decay with a measurable half-life – the time it takes for a quantity of the isotope to diminish by half. For example 14C, a radioactive isotope of carbon with 8 neutrons and 6 protons, decays to stable 14N, with 7 neutrons and 7 protons, over a half-life of 5,700 years.
• Nothing exists free from all dependence on everything else, and hence in a state of everlasting permanence.
• Primates and elephants interact with their dead and dying in ways compatible with grieving.
• Mortuary rituals are known from 120,000 years ago, with Neanderthals of the eastern Mediterranean mourning their dead. Funerary practices first appeared 78,000 years ago with symbolic burial of Homo sapiens in East Africa, and of Neanderthals in western Europe by at least 60,000 years ago. The earliest burials by ritualistic disassembly and mummification of the body date from 5050 BCE in the Atacama desert of South America, some 4,000 years before it became a defining custom of Ancient Egypt. Modern cultures maintain relationships with departed souls by many structured means of remembrance, including gravestone inscriptions, memorial days and altars.
• Shakespeare’s Prince Hamlet, in existential crisis, falters between weariness of life and fear of the unknown (The Tragedie of Hamlet 1623, Act III, Scene 1):
  “To be, or not to be, that is the question:
   Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
   The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
   Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
   And by opposing end them.”
  We may wish to end our suffering in death’s sleep, but then …
  “in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
   When we have shuffled off this mortal coil”.
• Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī, c. 1264 Mathnawi Book 1, excerpt translated by Reynold Nicholson. The quoted couplets form part of a longer reflection on the meaning of a parable about a merchant and his caged parrot. In Rumi’s story, the merchant, preparing to embark for India, asks the parrot what gift she would like him to bring back to her. She, who loves her master for his kindness and also for his cruelty, requests only that he inform her fellow parrots over there about her captivity. During his travels across the Indian plains, he duly encounters a flock of wild parrots. When he delivers the message to them, one amongst the flock trembles and falls dead at his feet. The merchant repents of his action; but then, what was the use of remorse after the event? He returns home and relates back to his parrot how the wild one had died of sorrow, at which news she too succumbs and falls, immobile and cold. The merchant, in burning grief at the loss of his pet, opens the cage to cast out the body, whereupon the parrot jumps up and flies free. From a lofty branch, she explains to the amazed merchant that her wild relative’s death was a gift of counsel: to achieve freedom of spirit, she must die to the worldly ties of selfhood.

C.P. Doncaster, Timeline of the Human Condition, star index