Living the Secular Life_New Answers to Old Questions

by Phil Zuckerman

  But not everyone buys it. Walter and Mildred are but two examples of secular individuals who can and do accept their own mortality—and there are millions of others just like them. For example, according to data from the World Values Surveys, 67 percent of Hungarians, 64 percent of Armenians, 61 percent of Germans, 55 percent of the French, 53 percent of Norwegians, 49 percent of the Japanese, 42 percent of the British, 39 percent of the Taiwanese, 37 percent of Argentinians, 36 percent of Australians, and 27 percent of Canadians do not believe in life after death. That’s just a handful of random countries—but already they include many millions of people on planet earth today who accept that death is the end. And although a majority of Americans claim to believe in life after death, tens of millions of us don’t. In fact, approximately 25 percent of Americans don’t. That’s a heck of a lot of people—one-fourth of the nation—accepting their own finiteness and the inevitable, unavoidable finality of their very being. For such men and women, promises of or belief in an afterlife are empirically unsubstantiated and manifestly implausible.

  But that doesn’t mean that death doesn’t have to be confronted or dealt with. It does. Not our own death, per se. But certainly the deaths of others.

  Caring Daughter

  The death of a family member, spouse, or friend is generally the most painful experience humans are forced to endure. And when it is the death of a close relative, such as a parent who requires our immediate care, it is not only draining emotionally, but it can be physically and financially taxing as well. This is one of the times when being a member of a religious community can really help. But secular people often must go it alone.

  Lupita Portillo’s father, Juan, was from New Mexico, and that’s where Lupita was born. Lupita’s mother left the family when Lupita was a baby. Subsequently, in an effort to make a clean start, Juan moved with Lupita and her two older half siblings from a previous relationship to San Jose, California. He never remarried, and thus did the best he could, raising his children as a single parent. He was a deeply religious man. “A true believer,” Lupita recalls. He prayed every night, and he cherished the crucifixes and pictures of the Virgin Mother that adorned the walls of his bedroom. But despite the comfort of his faith, he was often depressed. The loss of his wife pained him, the burdens of being a single dad were plenty, and he thus turned to drinking, which hindered his ability to hold down a job; he made an on-and-off living as a part-time janitor and gardener.

  Although Lupita could appreciate the piety of her father and older siblings, she was never religious herself. By the time she was a sophomore in college, she was a full-blown atheist. Shortly after she graduated with a degree in political science, Lupita’s father was diagnosed with cancer. For the next several years, he endured surgery after surgery, struggling to hold the disease at bay. He was often tired, or unable to eat, or both. He became forgetful. Additional health problems began to accrue. In the meantime, Lupita started law school down in Los Angeles. So tending to her father became more difficult, given that she was now 350 miles away.

  Her older siblings did not step up to help. “For some reason, my siblings—who were very religious—were never really active in the caretaking responsibilities. And even though they were more local than I was at this point—I tried so hard to get them involved in the caretaking—they just wouldn’t. So I would literally drive up six hours, sometimes in the middle of the night, to be there to take care of him, or to take him to a doctor’s appointment, or to the Social Security office, or whatever.” His health declined further, and Lupita eventually put him into an assisted living facility and then a convalescent hospital.

  She was continually driving back and forth between Los Angeles and San Jose, struggling to get through law school, cultivating a new romantic relationship, and yet always wanting to do right by her dad. She kept asking her siblings—who were financially stable, had homes of their own, and had spouses to help—if they could share some of the burden, but they would not. “They had time to go to church on a regular basis,” she notes, “but not time to help me out or tend to their dying father.”

  After Juan died, Lupita carried out his wish to be buried in his small hometown back in New Mexico. His death was very sad for Lupita. She felt a real loss. And yet, given that she had been losing him slowly and steadily over the course of the past few years, and given that he had been so unwell for so long, she also felt some relief; he was finally at peace. So she actually coped with his death relatively well. Her siblings, however, were a different story. “They were a wreck. I was the pillar. I dealt with everything. All the arrangements. Okay, I was grieving, I was very sad—but I was also doing what needed to be done. But not them. For example, when we went out to New Mexico for the funeral, Miguel was having a major breakdown. He was literally freaking out. He thought he was talking to God and that God was telling him all this disturbing stuff. He came banging on my door at the hotel, claiming that he was having all these visions. He was really having a breakdown. They had a much harder time emotionally than I did.”

  Of course, as a sociologist, I fully understand the frailty of argument by anecdote. I know that it is impossible, from Lupita’s story alone, to derive any grand conclusion about the benefits or demerits of secularity or religiosity in the face of a dying parent. Just because Lupita happened to deal with her father’s death more actively than her religious siblings does not mean that this is always the case in every family. Of course not. And I am sure there are countless secular individuals out there who have failed to help out with a dying parent, while their religious siblings did everything. But Lupita’s story struck me, and I have included it here, because it is a story that I think is rarely trumpeted: secular people can and do assist and aid in ways similar to the religious. And this underscores a broader point, namely, that secularity and/or religiosity often has nothing to do with how decent or moral a person is, especially during times of pain, loss, or death. Religious people, like Lupita’s siblings, can believe in God and confess their sins and do all that their faith requires of them in terms of rituals, prayers, genuflections, and donations, and yet simultaneously fail to help or assist a dying father. And nonreligious people, like Lupita, may not pray or study the Bible or go to Mass, and yet they can clearly exhibit the best, most loving of human potential nonetheless. Clearly then, the impetus and ability to care for a dying loved one can have secular sources or motivations.

  A second aspect about Lupita’s story that merits emphasis is that she was able to cope with her father’s death better emotionally than her siblings. She was in a much better frame of mind psychologically. This is quite counterintuitive, if you think about it. After all, if her religious siblings honestly believe in life after death, then for them there is the nearly certain expectation that their father is doing fine up in heaven, and they’ll be with him again in the not too distant future. So what’s there to freak out about? And Lupita, given her lack of belief in an afterlife and her strong conviction that she’ll never see her father again—in this life or any imagined other—should be the one truly devastated. As an atheist, she doesn’t believe that her father exists anymore, and she doesn’t believe she’ll ever be with him again. Shouldn’t she be more emotionally devastated than her religious siblings? And yet, as we have seen, she handled his death with much calmer acceptance and maturity.

  I wondered about this, and I asked her why she thought she was more emotionally okay with her father’s death, even though she believes that she will never see him again, whereas her siblings, who believe in an afterlife and believe they will be with him in heaven, were so distraught. “Yeah,” she says with a sigh, “I try to wrap my head around this all the time. I don’t know. I did grieve, and I was sad, and I thought about my dad a lot after he passed away—but his death also made me just think about death a lot, in general, and what it made me think is: This is just it. This life—this is it. For me, when you are dead you are dead. And I think losing my dad, when he died, I think that was th
e first time that it made sense to me. This life is it. And I’m okay with that. This is life. There’s death. There is an ebb and flow. Life and death. Happiness and sorrow. That’s life.”

  Lupita’s story, though hers and hers alone, is nevertheless illustrative of how many secular people confront mortality: with capable sobriety, levelheadedness, deep grief, and ultimately acceptance.

  Secular Funeral Officiant

  Lupita’s father’s funeral was traditionally Catholic. Indeed, most funerals today are religious in nature. And that’s how most people want it to be. But not everyone. For example, Lupita doesn’t anticipate a religious funeral for herself. And we are seeing that more and more Americans are also expecting to have nonreligious funerals; according to the American Religious Identification Survey, nearly 30 percent of Americans do not expect a religious funeral for themselves. What will they do instead? They’ll probably have some sort of a secular memorial—a gathering of friends and family, perhaps at a funeral home, or maybe at the beach, or maybe in someone’s backyard, where their loved ones will share memories, listen to music, perhaps watch a video presentation of old photos and home movies. If their loved ones want the service to have a more organized form and structure, they’ll hire someone like Quincy Risskov, who specializes in officiating at secular memorials.

  Quincy, age fifty-six, lives in Buffalo, New York. He is married and has two sons. His wife is a part-time writing teacher, and he is a part-time museum docent. As he says, “There are no more full-time jobs in Buffalo.” Quincy also serves as a nonreligious wedding and funeral officiant. Since many states won’t allow an atheist to officiate at certain life-cycle rituals, and since many states also require that ceremonial officiants be some sort of clergy, Quincy went ahead and got ordained online, via the Universal Life Church. Given his charisma, his talent at speaking thoughtfully in front of crowds, and his very pleasant Web site, he frequently gets asked to solemnize various rites of passage.

  People—even the most ardently secular—still want, need, and enjoy structured moments of reflection, recognition, and consecration. At such times—births, weddings, funerals, and so forth—they want to stop and take in the moment, feel the significance, relish the beauty and poignancy. They want to hear words of inspiration, guidance, or comfort. But they don’t want these to be religious in nature. For instance, most secular men and women don’t want to hear at a wedding that “God has joined these two people together.” But they do want to witness an exchange of heartfelt vows, or hear words of wisdom concerning commitment, or hear good poetry. And when it comes to funerals, most secular people don’t want to hear that the deceased is now “in a better place” or is dwelling in the House of the Lord. They don’t have a need for prayer. Or forgiveness of sins. But they still yearn for a meaningful, authentic ceremony that allows them to come together and be a part of a ritualized gathering that marks the occasion as special, set apart, sincere, heartfelt.

  Such rituals and rites of passages usually need a leader—someone to officiate, to set the tone, designate roles, offer words, lead songs, be at the helm. Thus Quincy. The son of an agnostic father and a nonpracticing Christian mother, he first got into officiating at funerals when his brother died back in 2004. “My brother had a lawn business, and in the process he developed a lung disease that took his life when he was forty-nine years old. The pastor that had married my brother and his wife had passed away prior to my brother’s death—and that pastor was literally the only religious clergy person they had ever known. Because they didn’t go to church. My brother was agnostic and his wife is also a secular person. So I stepped up.”

  Since that first funeral, Quincy has officiated at many others. In such work, he first meets with the relatives of the departed—talks to them about their loss, asks them how they want their loved one to be remembered and honored, makes suggestions for the kinds of things they might want to include in or contribute to the ceremony, and so on. After such consultation—which involves a fair degree of counseling as well—he tries his best to respect and implement the wishes of those he has met and consulted with, weaving their words, memories, and reflections into the service. He seeks to make each memorial unique, tailored around the idiosyncrasies of the person who died, incorporating music or poetry loved by the deceased, and infused with any other special, personal components those attending the memorial want to have included. But at each service, he also stresses certain common themes, such as forgiveness and acceptance, and he talks a bit about how he thinks people should approach and understand death. “In death, we don’t lose somebody—what we do is enter a new phase of our relationship with them. And that’s the new phase of remembering. And I say during the service that in the days, weeks, months, and years ahead, we’re going to touch or hear or see something that reminds us of the departed, and it is important that we embrace that moment, because those are the jewels of that person’s life. Embrace those memories.”

  In his work, Quincy is clearly meeting the needs of the growing population of secular men and women out there who want a meaningful memorial service that does not invoke God, prayer, heaven, or an afterlife. And Quincy himself does not believe in such things. For him, death is final. So I asked him—if this life is all there is, then what is its ultimate meaning? And what does he say to grieving people who want to understand the meaning of life in the face of death? “Your life is as meaningful as you want it to be. If you feel your life is meaningless because you don’t continue on after life, then that’s the choice you make to live a meaningless life. Some Christians seem to have a deep need to think that this life is a preparation for some other life in the future. And if that helps them, then it is important that that need be satisfied with such a belief. But I don’t have such a need. This life is, for me, full of meaning. I find meaning everywhere—in raising my two sons, in participating in community theater, and in working as an officiant, helping and comforting people during significant moments in their lives. There is so much in this life that I enjoy and love.”

  Funeral Director

  Like Quincy, Audrey Fitzpatrick works with people who have recently experienced the death of a loved one. While she doesn’t officiate at funerals herself, she does spend her days facilitating them. Audrey is the licensed funeral director of a large funeral home in downtown Los Angeles. And her observations of various types of funerals offer some interesting insight into the nature of how secular people celebrate and solemnize the loss of life. And make no mistake—in the fourteen years that Audrey’s been a funeral director, she’s seen all kinds of funerals. They are usually religious in nature. Within a five-mile radius of her funeral home there are communities of Ethiopians, Russians, Armenians, Guatemalans, Thais, Jews, Vietnamese, African Americans, and many more, all containing their own diverse religious traditions.

  However, over the last decade, Audrey has seen a notable rise of people wanting to have funeral services without any religious components at all: secular funerals. “I love those,” she declared. “As a director with lots of experience, I find that the nonreligious funeral ceremonies tend to be much more personalized and that a lot more thought has gone into it being specifically about that person. You get a lot more personal photos, videos, music, and people speaking more freely. There is definitely a qualitative difference between religious and nonreligious funerals. Generally, a religious service already has its own path that it follows, its set structure. Which I do think can be very helpful for a lot of families, especially if that is something they are very used to and have come to expect. They rely on that familiarity. They need it. But when you have a chance to work with a family that isn’t going that route—that prestructured, religious service route—they’re coming at it in an almost more organic way, literally asking themselves, ‘How do I best honor and remember my dad, or my partner, or my friend?’ So it opens up this whole other world of possibilities. I think a lot more thought goes into such nonreligious ceremonies. Sometimes people want specific music played,
or poems read, or they want balloons, or they want to release doves—all kinds of ideas. But it just becomes more free, because you aren’t obligated to do it this traditional way, or say this specific prayer. It becomes completely open territory to create from scratch something that is all about that person. Those memorials where it is just all about that person, and a lot of thought has gone into the details, and people speak so openly—I love that. I always walk away from those funerals with a much clearer sense of the person that has died—who they were, what they cared about, what had meaning for them—than I get from traditional religious ceremonies.”

  Death with Dignity

  One last individual whose experience and perspective I’d like to explore—an individual whose work also involves dealing with death, but from a different angle—is Peg Sandeen, the executive director of the Death with Dignity National Center in Portland, Oregon. Peg has spent many years working passionately on end-of-life issues, devoting her time and energy to helping those who are dying, and actively assisting those who want to die on their own terms.

  For Peg, educating the public about the right to die and legally fighting to help people end their lives as they themselves see fit, with as little pain and suffering as possible, is a personal passion grounded in her own values of empathy and seeking to help those in need. “I believe that everyone should die well. There should be personal choice about dying. I very much believe in personal choice—to the end. As a social worker, when I think about what helps people do well and what facilitates well-being, I know that people succeed and do well when they have choices. When they have options. And so I really believe in extending that to the end of life.”

  Back in 1994, a majority of the citizens of Oregon voted to pass the Death with Dignity Act, which made it legal for physicians to assist terminally ill patients to end their lives. Oregon was the first state in the country to pass such a law—but it wasn’t easy. In 1997, opponents of the act sought to repeal it via Ballot Measure 51, but that attempt was rejected by 60 percent of Oregon voters. The act was then challenged yet again by certain members of Congress, as well as by the George W. Bush administration, but it was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2006. So the Death with Dignity Act still stands.