A death day

Do you know the date of your death?

It’s a morbid and somewhat silly question, I know. In Thomas Hardy’s rather dire novel, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Tess considers the strange idea of her “death day”.

The logic follows that we spend our entire lives knowing and celebrating the day of our birth – our birthday – but, unbeknownst to us, we have all lived through the anniversary of our death many times. We will never know this day, but those who love us, who live on after us, will. Hardy evokes the strange chill of this notion by describing one’s death day as “a day sly and unseen”.

My grandma died two months ago on a day sly and unseen. And now, our family will remember that date – 6 February – and mark it on our hearts as we remember the woman she was.

The hit Netflix show One Day popularised Hardy’s “death day” concept and plays with it as a plot device – spoilers, one of the characters dies on a special anniversary, thus merging a date that was once remembered as sweet and tender with a date that is now recalled with pain and regret.

Entering Easter, Christians around the world remember and celebrate a death day. But, unlike our death days, it was not sly and unseen. The person who died not only knew the date he would die but walked into it with courage and conviction.

As is captured so well in One Day, death is tragic and profoundly painful. How can a person be so loved, so needed and cherished, and then suddenly, not be there?

Easter answers that everlasting question with the claim that one death changed the world and made our deaths mean not just the end to a life, but the beginning of eternity.

This column was first published on Facebook. 

Image source: Fair use, Netflix TV.