Stoic Practice: Rehearsing Death and Accepting Fate

Preface: I’ve been putting this essay off for a while. Over the past five months, there’s been a lot of loss and change in my life. All that comes with grief, so I had to walk with this essay for a bit, but I have come to realize that, while these past days haven’t been some grand lesson, they have been a teaching moment. A time to exercise the other lessons of Stoicism and recognize the wisdom in these ancient and modern words.

I grew up with death in the next room. That is not a metaphor. My father managed a funeral home, and for a time, we lived in a small apartment above it. I grew up with the quiet hum of grief moving through the walls. People came to the door in suits and black dresses. They carried casseroles and sadness. It felt normal to me because it was the world I knew. Looking back, I can see how strange it was. A child learning to ride his bike in the parking lot while a family walked inside to say goodbye to someone they loved.

After college, I attended mortuary school and went to Greensboro to work at a funeral home. I learned how to dress the bodies. I learned how to support families. I learned to stand at the edge of the room while people cried or stared into space. The AIDS crisis hit while I was there. I buried friends. Some were younger than me. One of them lived in my home for a while when he had nowhere else to go. I cared for him until he died. It taught me something I never forgot. Death does not wait for the right time. It does not check the calendar. It does not pause because someone is too young or because life is too full.

Those years pressed a lesson into me. Life has an imperative. You must find what matters and give it your time. My friend did that. He managed to still find passion in things right to the end. I was blessed to know that person and to walk with him for much of that time.

You have to ignore the noise that pulls you in a thousand directions. I knew that early, but I have not always lived by it. I still let small things get under my skin. I still forget how easy it is to lose the people and the days that matter most. The clarity that came from living near death fades sometimes, and I drift back into old habits and shallow worries.

The Stoics understood this drift. Marcus Aurelius once wrote that we should live each day as if we were already dead and had returned to life. He meant that awareness of death sharpens the present. It brings us back to what is real. I did not read those words as a child in the funeral home, but I lived the truth of them without knowing it.

I have learned that grief is not only about death. We grieve whenever something ends. I grieved when I lost my job this year. I thought I was prepared for change, but the truth hit me hard. When you reach the age where Social Security paperwork becomes real, you feel time differently. You see that there are more years behind you than ahead of you. You know that none of those years can be reclaimed. It feels like another kind of dying. A quiet closing of chapters you did not expect to close so soon.

My mother’s death occurred during this already unsettled time. I was able to be with her at the end. I sat beside her as she took her last breath. It was peaceful. It was gentle. It was also one of the hardest moments of my life. So much around me was already shifting. The ground was not steady. I needed her steady grace. She had given it to me all my life. This time, the roles changed. I had to bring my own steadiness. I had to be the calm one when everything felt uncertain.

During all that, I learned that a close friend had reached a breaking point. Life had drained him. He told me he needed to step away from everyone and everything. He wrote me a brief letter. He said he needed to live alone for now and could not let anyone close. I understood it, but it still hurt. It felt like another loss. A living grief. I want him to find his strength again. I hope he lets me walk with him once more, but for now, I must let him go. That kind of grief does not come with flowers or a funeral. It sits in the room like an empty chair.

Next week, I will deliver a eulogy for another friend. I have been thinking about her life and the people who loved her. Another death. Another reminder that these transitions never stop. You learn to absorb them, but you never learn to ignore them.

Death is real, and so is the grief it leaves behind. It is as much a part of life as birth. It hurts to lose someone. It hurts to imagine our own ending. But the deaths of our friends and family can teach us something the Stoics understood very well. Mourning reminds us that our days are limited. When we accept that truth without fear, we see life with clearer eyes. We stop wasting time. We cherish what we have. We quit pretending that everything will last forever.

The Stoics practiced rehearsing death to reach that clarity. They reminded themselves that life is brief and unpredictable. They pictured the day when it would end. They did this not to be morbid. They did it to wake up. Seneca wrote that a person cannot live well unless they confront the truth of their mortality. He said that life becomes longer when you understand how short it really is. That line feels true every time I revisit it.

The practice itself is simple. You sit quietly and imagine that this day could be your last. You imagine the conversations you would want to have. You imagine the things you would stop worrying about. You imagine letting go of old grudges and old fears. You picture the people you love and consider how you would treat them if you knew your time was short. You do not picture the details of death. You picture the reality of time. You feel the weight of it. You let that weight guide your choices.

Modern Stoics say the same thing in a different voice. Massimo Pigliucci has written that rehearsing death clears away the clutter that keeps us anxious and distracted. He calls it a way to return to ourselves. I see the truth of that each time I practice it.

It sounds heavy, but it creates freedom. When I rehearse death, I feel less anxious about the small things. I feel less irritated by the petty frustrations that come and go. I feel more grateful for simple moments. I see my own life with more honesty.

This morning, I walked for an hour in the cool quiet of the breaking day. The sky slowly shifted from dark to light. There were few cars. Birds were waking up. I could feel the air change as the sun rose. I knew I had a full day ahead. Breakfast with a group of interesting people and a speaker, the Dean of the Medical School at the University of South Florida. A job interview with a clean energy company that is trying to make the world better in meaningful ways. It was a good morning. Mussorgsky’s “Great Gate of Kiev” was playing on my headphones.

And as I walked, I felt something else. I do not have an infinite number of mornings like this. I know I will not always be able to walk this far. I know the people I see today will not always be here. I know I will not always be here either. Strangely, that thought did not make me sad. It made the moment feel richer. It made me grateful that I could feel the cool air on my face and hear the hum of the city waking up.

The Stoics said that rehearsing death teaches us how to live. They were right. When you accept the truth of your own ending, you begin to live with more intention. You stop drifting. You stop wasting your hours. You stop pretending that your life is something you can hold forever. You start living as if each morning matters, because it does.

It gives shape to our days. It sharpens our choices. It reminds us that every moment is a gift, not a guarantee. When we turn toward this truth instead of away from it, we meet our life with more honesty and more courage.

I have known death since childhood. It has walked beside me in many forms. It took friends in their younger years. It took my mother after a long life. It took jobs. It took dreams. It took the presence of people who chose a lonely path for a while. Each loss taught me something. Each loss asked me to adjust. Each loss asked me to step into the life that remains. Each loss was a rehearsal for my own death.

Rehearsing death is not about fear. It is about freedom. It frees us from denial. It frees us from delay. It frees us from the idea that life is something we can stockpile. We get only today. When we accept that, we can finally live it.