ABSTRACT
When we grapple with the finitude of life, we also hold the awareness of death, this mysterious event that we know will occur, but can only imagine. Nightmares can place us on the psychic threshold. In our dreams, a pumping heart may signify how close we are – but when we awake with a start, even when the chase ends and the intruder is barred, even as dread loosens its grip, we know that death has been near. We contain in consciousness the ether of death’s permanence, but we cannot hold it as a reality, as death is an experience that cannot be lived. “Death is, universally, the only human event that we are unable to speak about from direct experience; by virtue of encountering it, we lose the opportunity to report back” (Frommer, 2005, p. 488). As mortals, we only “know” death through loss, through the obituaries that are written, the lives that peel off from ours, the memorials that mark our pain.
