The Wrong Way to respond to Death Anxiety

I watched a short video real this morning on Instagram. A Jewish man was talking, visibly upset, about his discomfort in the choices he has for what happens to his body after he dies. Burial unsettled him: being placed in a box, lowered into the ground. Cremation was worse. For him, it called up the Holocaust. At one point he said it outright: "I can't deal with this decision!"

When he was finished, the host moved straight into solutions, offering him other disposition options he might not have considered.

I understand the impulse. When someone is in distress, it feels generous to hand them something useful. But more options don't resolve fear that's rooted in identity and history. They're not the same kind of problem.

What actually helps is understanding.

Here's what I wish someone had said to him: "It's not uncommon to be freaked out by what happens to your body after you die. That feeling deserves to be acknowledged before anyone tries to solve it. And the way through it usually isn't a new menu of choices. It's learning more, from someone who actually knows that part of the landscape."

In his case, that might mean talking to someone in his own Jewish community who performs Tahara, the practice of preparing a body for burial, including placing him in a casket. People who do this work carry real, specific knowledge, not just about procedure, but about how a tradition has made peace with mortality over generations.

This isn't only true for Jewish tradition, or for this one man. Anyone who feels unsettled by after-death care can find their way through it the same way. A funeral director can be that person to talk to. So can a death doula, a home funeral guide, or an elder in your own community who's sat with this before. The specific path matters less than the principle:

Understanding loosens fear's grip in a way that simply being offered alternatives never will.

In my own work I have talked, either one-to-one or in a workshop setting, to people before they die about what will happen to them afterward. Almost without exception, it gives them comfort. I have literally seen their shoulders relaxing. It's not because I've removed the weight of mortality. I haven't, and I can't. But it's because awareness changes how that weight feels to carry.

If there's something about dying that unsettles you, a choice you haven't made, a fear you haven't said out loud, consider finding someone who actually knows that part of the landscape.

What part of dying have you never asked anyone about?

Willow's Educator Directory lists Willow EOL Educators™ across a range of backgrounds and specialties, and one of them may be exactly the person you need to talk to.