Early each morning I enjoy a cup of coffee and listen to the news on WQXR radio. Recently two items struck me. The first was the lead news story on military and civilian deaths resulting from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The second was an advertisement for a skin cream designed to make the user appear 10 years younger. Both items suggested to me that we are a death-denying culture. Living in such a culture has profound ramifications on the grieving and on those who journey with them.

In a recent counseling situation, my client Joan expressed concern that her brother Joe was behaving uncharacteristically as they both coped with their mother’s death. Typically a “straight-arrow,” this middle-aged man was gambling to excess, consuming unhealthy amounts of alcohol and had contemplated an extra-marital affair. As I spoke with Joan, it became clear that rather than face the aftermath of his loss, he chose less-healthy means to cope. Joe’s worldview had been profoundly altered by his mother’s death, resulting in behavior—perhaps unconscious—that expressed denial of his own death. Making meaning out of death and loss can be depleting work. Caregivers face many challenges in caring for loved ones, can feel disbelief about what happened, and may even fall victim to hopelessness. However, the journey of grief can have another outcome.

Hospice creates an environment for the patient and caregiver to have their hearts filled with compassion rather than fear or hopelessness. Recent world events show how fragile personal and national security can be when beliefs and conditions that form the cornerstones of a society are threatened. What remains unspoken is the idea that those sacred cornerstones often shield us from consciously contemplating our mortality. The response can be self-destructive behavior, aggression, even warfare.

Alternatively, a heart of compassion can emerge when reflection, dialogue and life-affirming creativity are fostered. The advertisement for the age-defying skin cream illustrates the same issue. Human beings create belief systems, some meaningful, others not, to be able to live with the inevitability of death. Life without such buffering systems could be chaotic. The capacity to be in relationship with others is the heart of being human. We mortals have the choice to embrace others or to repel them. Death and fear of death can offer a life-altering opportunity. We can lash out in anger at the unfairness and randomness of the universe or we can embrace our creative energy. Sogyal Rinpoche writes: “When we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are dying with us, we start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from this can grow a deep clear, limitless compassion for all beings.”

Death awareness is one of the true benefits of working with our grief. Such awareness can fill our hearts with compassion for ourselves, for our loved ones and even for those who are different from us. There are two choices that can profoundly impact our existence on this planet—to live in fear of our own mortality or to embrace the fragile diversity of life and celebrate it with joy and creativity. The attention with which you cared for your loved one as a Hospice patient is an embodiment of the heart of compassion. You helped your loved one make meaning from their illness. In caring for the dying person, we acknowledge that death is a part of life and not to be feared. As Thich Nhat Hanh writes: “Enlightenment for a wave is the moment the wave realizes that it is water. At that moment, all fear of death disappears.”