The Death Issue

Volume 9 Issue 2, September 2009

We live in a culture obsessed with death. We see it on prime time television, often romanticized and fanaticized in the form of brutal murder or a dismembered hospital patient. It is hidden in our inherent fascination with immortality—in our celebrated health food miracles guaranteed to ward off disease, the number of zombies and vampires in pop culture, our life support systems, our spiritual afterlives. It is in our newspapers—reports on international war, new studies on cancer, the AIDS epidemic, the American health care debate. In this culture of death that seems to permeate every aspect of our lives, I was interested to find out what kinds of submissions would come in if we presented an open call for writing and art on the theme.

What first struck me about using death as a theme was how much of a unifying factor it is. Simply put, every living thing dies. In many ways, death is the most natural, and most basic, characteristic of life. Because of this, the way people respond to death says everything about their context in life. An issue of Blueprint with submissions from Wilfrid Laurier students and Kitchener-Waterloo community members is extremely different than an issue reflecting on death would be if put together in Colombo, or Tehran, or Warsaw, because of differences in cultural, social, and political contexts. For example, several of the pieces we received for this issue are reflections on the loss of a grandparent. This indicates, I think, the privilege in which we live. Our access to resources, public healthcare, and the lack of violent civil unrest in our society all contribute to our relatively high life expectancy. In other words, other than some tragic exceptions, most people who die in our community are seniors. What might it say about a culture, a community, then, when an ancient burial site is dug up to create a mass grave (see page 11), or when a vampire becomes an almost viral image in popular culture (page 12), or when a law is implemented that demands the slaughter of hundreds of animals (page 9)?

Surprisingly, the main cultural gleaning I took away from reading our submissions on death wasn’t morbid or depressing, but joyful. To me, this issue is as much a celebration of life—of history, culture, and family—as a reflection on death. After all, without the certainty of death, what does it mean to be alive?

Erin Epp
Editor-in-Chief