Dying to Live: On Alua Arthur’s Briefly Perfectly Human

In Briefly Perfect Human: Making an Authentic Life by Getting Real About the End, Alua Arthur, a well-respected death doula, uses the finality and weight of death and dying to remind us how to best live our lives, and prepare ourselves for when we no longer can.

As someone who is simultaneously obsessed with and afraid of death, dying, and being dead, Alua formally introduces us, asking us to hold death’s hands in ours, smile knowingly, and with an open heart that is as nervous as it is understanding. I thought this book would be a trigger for me, and that I would find myself trying to balance a schedule as a full-time student and mother, along with back-to-back-to-back therapy sessions to help me find stabilization. But through Alua’s effortless charm, imperfectly vibrant path through life, and her bravery to accept that she does not know everything there is to know about life or death or life after death, and that it is okay to be afraid and it is okay not to know, I felt strengthened. I felt motivated to re-evaluate myself, my choices, my wants and needs, not against the beating of the drum of death, but on beat with the metronome of temporary living.

Arthur begins with a near-death experience in Cuba, where, in her mid-twenties or early thirties, she is nearly hit by a taxi in the middle of the day while far from her loved ones. This inopportune brush with accidental death forces Alua to consider what her death will say about the life she lives, or, perhaps even worse, what it will say about the life she refused to live. Although she still spends years trying to run away from her own footsteps, she eventually decides to do what she was called to do, and follow that calling to a new beginning. With tears, fears, and lonely nights, Alua brings the reader through the pain of choosing to fall out of love with depression and our innate desire for forced complacency, and instead choosing to fall in love with creating a life well lived, regardless of when and how we die. Ironically, of course, this love is found in her new career as a death doula.

A death doula is akin to a birth doula, and acts as a guide for clients and their loved ones (if they are so lucky) to death through intentional conversation, grace, patience, and an overabundance of celebration for all that we have experienced and learned and lost. As she works with racist clients, young clients, clients in fear, clients in denial, and clients stuck in the ether between acceptance and delusion, Alua becomes actively involved in their journey towards the end. As she works with her clients to address the feelings and the business of death (wills, rites, funeral arrangements), Alua reminds us of the importance of purposefully creating a life with living, taking up space as our authentic selves, and being present with the best of our intentions, not because we will die, but because we are not dead yet, and there is impossible power for us to find there.

Reading this book taught me four things about myself:

1. I have not lived a life worth living, as I spent so much of my life on autopilot.

Like Alua, I spent the first twenty-five years or so of my life doing what was asked, suggested, or told. And in the brief moments of rebellion, when I moved out for no reason,
adopted a cat who hated the idea of love, or got tattoo after tattoo after tattoo, I was responding to the frustrating limitations and lack of control I had over my life. Whether for myself or for my idea of myself, I was existing in a life that was beautiful but not really mine. It wasn’t until I hit rock bottom, emotionally, financially, spiritually, etc., that I realized the true value in living my life for me and despite the fear and anxiety I hold within myself. And it wasn’t until I read this book that I started to put it into practice instead of leaving ideas on a Pinterest board. As a result, I joined a virtual Dungeons and Dragons campaign, got better acquainted with the Bible, and took my son on a theme park adventure.

It is not perfect, but it is better, and that, in and of itself, is close to perfect.

2. Everyone I love, have loved, and will love will die one day.

I cannot control when it happens, or how it happens, or where I will be when it happens. I might be beside them, in a fight with them, or miles away, none the wiser; but what I don’t want is for them to leave me without knowing how much I truly adored them and their presence in my life. Even those who turned my love for them against my betterment, the love I had for them, albeit unrequited, taught me something about myself and my place in the world; and for that, I will always be grateful, vengeful in parts, but still grateful.

As Alua suggests, and in active resistance to the unpredictability of life and death, I want to spend more of my time in love and loving others, being sure to leave more honey than vinegar in everyone’s cups. I want them to know that I loved them and that they were loved. I want them to know that I will miss them, and that they are worthy of being missed. I want them to know that they matter, will continue to matter, and as matter can never be destroyed, forgotten, or replaced.

Even if we don’t talk every day, or fistfought the last time we saw each other, I see the importance of treating those I care about with love, even from a distance or gritted teeth, because I don’t want them to leave without me knowing that they knew that I loved them.

3. I am going to die, and dying is okay, and death is also okay, even though I do not want to die.

Unfortunately, death is a part of life. It will happen. I cannot control when it will happen or how it will happen, or the kind of music I will be listening to when it happens, or how dirty my ears will be when it happens, but it will happen. One beautiful thing about life, as Alua constantly reminds us throughout her book, is that even though I cannot control my death, I can control the life I live before then, and that is a powerful form of resistance I am working on valuing better. I can control the way that I show up in their lives and the way I allow them to show up in mine. We are the memories we leave behind, and I want to be remembered fondly. I want people to remember the laughter I brought, the jokes that didn’t land quite right, and the way they made me feel.

4. I want to be happy.

In “Wilson’s Heart,” the season four finale of “House, M.D.” House and his team realize that Dr. Amber Volakis, who is presently in a medically induced coma, is going to die due to a series of unfortunate events that were out of her control, and the flu. Dr. Wilson, her love, wakes her up from the coma and tells her that her organs are failing, that there is nothing they can do, and that she is going to die soon, right there, in that hospital bed. Heartbroken, incompetent, and incapable, as we all are when our loved ones are dying in front of us, Dr. Wilson lies beside her in her last moments and asks her, “Why aren’t you angry?”

And Amber says, “That is not the last feeling I want to experience.”

Alua’s insistence that we live life intentionally forces me to ask myself how I want to live my life, in action, and in feeling. I don’t want to be angry. I don’t want to be bitter, hurt, and stuck. I don’t want to be a victim of my unwillingness to heal. I don’t want to stand firm and stoic, refusing to let light in, even when the dark feels more comfortable. I don’t want anger, resentment, depression, anxiety, hatred, disdain, apathy, etc. to be the last feeling I experience and give to the world.

After years of making my sadness my personality and defining quality, refusing to be an active participant in my own healing and restructuring, avoiding the toughest parts, and using writing as a way to scream at the world for happening to me, I have decided that the last feelings I want to experience are elation, fulfillment, pride, and love.

In Briefly Perfectly Human, Alua Arthur asks us to sit down with death and have a heart-to-heart about what it means to have lived, to keep living, and to live a worthy life. I highly recommend this book because not only will you fall in love with Alua, but you will fall out of love with anxiously trying to control what is, through its design, uncontrollable, and find peace there.

 

Jamilla VanDyke-Bailey (@alli.maj) is a pro-black feminist poet and essayist and MSW student. Her recent flash creative nonfiction, The Baily Boys, was recently published by Pallisades Review. And her poetry chapbook, than we have been, (Weasel Press, 2022) and her full-length book of poetry, the womxn, (Finishing Line Press, 2023) are currently available for purchase online.