Day 37: The Moment of Death

I'm obsessed with death. We all are, I know. You can trace the root of our nation's love of beauty and youth to a very simple fear of death. But I'm obsessed more than most. It's not that I'm scared about dying; for a healthy 20-something year old, I feel as comfortable as I can about dying someday. I am obsessed with how we try to trick ourselves out of realizing we are going to die someday. Our brains work so hard to keep that realization from the forefront of our attention. If we really grasped the concept of death, we'd be immobilized: we'd recognize how futile our actions were when compared to the immeasurable magnitude of human existence. So we block it from our minds, and don't give it thought unless we have to; when a loved one dies, during times of national tragedy, or in those rare moments when comedy reminds us of our own mortality (I'll explain my theories on death and comedy another day).

Anyway, I will be watching a lot of docs, all that I can find, on the topic of death, dying, and dealing with it. Today I watched "Moment of Death" by National Geographic. Its goal was to examine those last few moments before death sets in, and what happens to the body in a physical, mental, and spiritual sense. Multiple interviews with survivors of near-death experiences provide information about what we see right before we die.

What I learned: A nice little chunk. The old-wife's tale about heads being cognizant after being decapitated seems to be true: they can continue to blink 7 seconds after being separated from the body. Old timey mortuaries used to be less focused on preparing the dead for burial and more about giving the bodies time to come back to life. Since there were a lot of cases of people just being in undetectable comas, they would tie bells to the bodies and if they woke up they wouldn't be buried.

What I liked: The subject matter. Like I've said, I'll be interested in anything death related forever. The film raised the expected questions when one is dealing with death: do we have souls, how society's view on death has changed over time, the legal right-to-die cases, etc.

What I didn't like: I didn't get much out of the personal testimonies about near death. This kind of stuff happens all the time, so hearing a select one or two stories did not stir me much.

Overall not the best death doc I've seen but it got me excited to see more in the future.

This is what I found when I typed "death" into google images. 

The doc is on Netflix.