Death Clarifies Life—Such a Relief.

Death has played a significant part in this election cycle. Did you know? In my opinion, death bookended a process of dying in itself. 

Champion of the left, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg died. 

And Sunday, 37-year host of ‘Jeopardy!’, the always-apolitical Alex Trebek died. 

In this morning’s New York Times, an article postulating Mr. Biden’s first moves once he’s in office says, “But there is no question that Mr. Biden and members of his party are eager to systematically erase what they view as destructive policies that the president pursued on the environment, immigration, health care, gay rights, trade, tax cuts, civil rights, abortion, race relations, military spending and more.” 

Can you blame them? A new administration wants to put to death those antiquated policies which were promulgated on a people who—by a great majority—didn’t want them to be enacted. The old administration wanted to “bring back” a life and a lifestyle that never really existed in America, but has, for generations, been held up as a perfect example of the American Dream. 

That American Dream was real post-World War II, no question. But it wasn’t an American Dream for every American, for all Americans. It was an America Dream for some Americans. White, middle class, patriotic Americans. 

It’s time for that to change. You know it. I know it. We all know it. And now we have a pair in the two highest offices in the land who know it, too. Phew. 

Actually, it’s time for that American Dream to die, and for a new American Dream which includes all of us and the planet we live on to be imagined, enacted, created. 

When Justice Ginsberg died, there was a loud collective wail heard across this country. Despair was its name. The first woman to lie in State at the Capitol, the current president was rude about her death to the point of assault. 

Why do you suppose Notorious RBG chose to go at that particular moment? 

Some of you will say it was arbitrary. Death happens whenever death itself shows up. I don’t believe that. I believe that we choose our death time like we choose our birth time. 

Of course, dying on the eve of Rosh Hashanah gives RBG the status of a tzaddik. She didn’t die then in order to become a tzaddik—a person of great righteousness, according to Jewish tradition. She died then to remind all of us of our own righteousness. 

I believe she died to point our collective attention unmistakably to the evil—yes, I said evil and I mean evil—in the White House. The evil that we put there. She died to say, “Okay, see truly, really where you are, and make a new choice, America. I believe in your better angels.” 

Now here we are on the day after the always-elegant Alex Trebek has died. 

Forgive me if I quote The Times extensively. It’s too good to gloss over. 

“But there is something especially poignant now about saying goodbye to Trebek because of what his show represented: a place of empirical, uncontested truth in the media. 

“On ‘Jeopardy!,’ after all, there were not alternative facts, only actual ones. They did not change depending on how you felt about them or the person revealing them. Trebek was that rare thing in contemporary media: a voice of simple, declarative truth and trusted authority. But it was an authority he wore lightly, like a well-tailored jacket. 

“On a show that was usually scheduled between the depressing evening news and a night of reality and crime shows, Alex Trebek did more than teach us trivia and betting strategies. He gave us, five days a week, a place to go where it was OK to know things. He was our trusted man with the answers, even in times when reality came to us in the form of a question.” 

Alex Trebek was a truth-teller. Lately, truth-tellers have been in scant supply. 

Facts, Beloved, real, true, empirical facts are not negotiable. On ‘Jeopardy!,’ contestants were right or wrong. Facts have about themselves a certain righteousness. 

Like what? Oh, like more than 10 million Americans who have been diagnosed with Covid-19. And, like wildfires in California and Colorado. And, like systemic racism laced so thoroughly into our country that it seems impossible to root it out. And, like violence and misogyny against women so endemic as to appear normal. 

Death, as it always does, makes life perfectly clear for those who remain alive. These two deaths bookend what will eventually be the death of the devastatingly destructive Trump administration.  

If you are reading this, Beloved, you are amongst the living.

Here’s the question/answer: What are you going to do now? 

Dr. Susan Corso is a spiritual teacher, the founder of iAmpersand, and the author of The Mex Mysteries, the Boots & Boas Books, and spiritual nonfiction. Her website is susancorso.com.