Fear of death is less of an annihilation than it is of absurdity. Death comes too soon – it will seal the emptiness of my life before I can make sense of it, before I can complete some last desperate attempt to give it meaning. The resources of spirit that are released in the integrity stage of mature life can give me the strength to affirm a meaning in my life that transcends my own death. This need not mean that I welcome death. It need not mean that my final years will not know doubts or regret or fear. But it means that these are not all. With the resources of personal integrity, the completed strength of mature development, I can affirm that, ultimately, death shall not prevail. It is in such “final consolidation” that death loses its sting. For the sting of death is not the loss of life, but the loss of meaning.
Evelyn Eaton Whitehead and James D. Whitehead
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