“That fall there had been some discussion of death. Our deaths. Franklin being eighty-three years old and myself seventy-one at the time we had naturally made plans for our funerals (none) and for the (Immediate) in a plot already purchased … It was just the act of dying that had been left out or up to chance.” (Munroe, 342)
The idea that someone would take time out of their life to plan for the absence of their life seems preposterous to me. It seems that there is not nearly enough time to live life to its fullest as it is, let alone planning for one’s own death. Death is such an unpredictable event that it seems almost impossible to “plan” for in the right way. That being said death seems to be one of the only promises life makes. The narrator accepts the truth of death in such a matter of fact way. When she thinks “that fall there had been some discussion of death.” She says it in such a casual manner that one would think she is talking about something as simple as what dress she should wear to a party. However, this casual sentence contrasts to the emphasis placed on the pithy next sentence stating that it was “Our deaths.” The narrator was discussing. This sentence structure makes sense because the concept of death can be discussed casually more easily than the idea of one’s own death. However, the narrator continues to go on talking about planning her husband’s death in such a casual manner, she even calls it “natural” to plan for one’s death. Although she does acknowledge the unpredictableness of death when she thinks “ It was just the act of dying that had been left out or up to chance.”
In America death is a taboo, it is not something that we are told to plan for as a child in the same ways that some of us plan for big life events like weddings as children. As a culture it seems that we are deeply afraid of death, we don’t want to acknowledge something that has taken so many of our loved ones from us and will continue to do so. We don’t want to acknowledge something that we know so little about.
Coming to Age 