Lily Furniss

Completed at UNC Asheville in 2018 as a solo exhibition and research thesis. Each person drawn was asked the following questions:

Do you fear death or dying? Why or why not? What aspects worry you or comfort you? Do you believe in an afterlife? What are you doing to combat feelings of existentialness, dread, and mortality? Any personal experiences that you would like to share about someone passing away or a time you felt close to death? 

CW: statements mention sensitive topics such as suicide and drug use

“I’m not afraid of death because of my brain condition and how it interprets stress. In high stress moments, my brain tends to lower my blood pressure and I get a sense of calmness. I try to avoid situations that lead to death but I avoid death mostly because I feel obligated by my relationships to other people.

If I were on my deathbed, I would feel no fear and feel ready. I feel like I have a finite time on earth but it doesn’t scare me. I have no control over parts of mortality, and if I do, it’ll probably be too late. Just let it be an external force. I have a hard time with deaths around me because it is hard to relate to everyone's feelings. People as a result can see me as cold or unattached. But in reality, death just doesn’t bother me. I’m skeptical about death because the process of stopping existence entirely seems a little impossible but other possibilities seem odd too. We are already dying as a process, bacteria is nibbling skin. The human body is a collection of dead bits when you think about it, like your hair. This leads me to feel a detachment to the body. It’s just a vessel.”

“I don’t concern myself as much with death as I do with cherishing and utilizing the time that I have while I am alive. The reason that I put so much effort into my exercise, diet, and lifestyle is because I never want to look at myself on a day-to-day basis and feel like I’m wasting my time. It’s a constant balance between feeling like life is inherently meaningless contrasted with empowering myself to build my own platform for my existence. If I must exist - and I do, and I’m here - then I have to spend that time usefully lest I go mad in the absence of any tangible meaning or direction. If I do nothing with my life, I fear that will want to just sit around watching TV all the time like my parents. I would be seeing a product of someone else’s work on the screen rather than my own.

Now that I actively pick up new skills or create something special for myself every day - music, writing, podcasts, films, practice a language, play a new sport, cook - I can’t remember what it felt like to live otherwise. Since then, I’ve seen luna moths everywhere. The night my grandmother died back in 2006, I saw a figure of her body on my porch and a luna moth in the same place the next day. I’ve luna moths since then in broad daylight in places too coincidental to be anything other than fate: the window of my dorm room, a church door on Mother’s Day, a tattoo on the night of my first performance. I miss her a lot. Losing someone you love is the worst aspect when it comes to death. When I committed myself to making art, I started seeing luna moths every week instead of every two to three years. Something connects us to one another, and when I see the moth, I know that I’m fashioning meaning from the world around me and finding happiness in it. That makes life fun, and it’s why I focus on the joy and creativity of being alive now instead of the death that will take us all someday.”

“My point of view of death has changed over time. The closest I have been with death was under anesthesia twice in one year for surgeries. It took me a long time to wake up and the doctors were afraid that they gave me too much. I think going through traumatic physical experiences has made me less afraid of death because I’ve been so close to it. At this point, I’m not as afraid of myself dying as other people dying. I don’t want to be without certain people in my life. As I have gotten stronger physically and mentally, I have continued to feel at peace with death. I love writing and music and those have kept me driven even in the midst of the worst. However, I still don’t feel like I have affected people as much as they have affected me.”

“To me, death is not the end of life. Since I believe in the Buddhist concept of reincarnation, I believe there’s an afterlife, but not the kind to sit around in Paradise doing nothing. I believe that once you die, you reincarnate into another body and you get to start again. I’ll be living this current wonderful life patiently waiting for it to end and then start another. Perhaps I fear losing my identity, but I’m not afraid of dying, since death is only the beginning of a new chapter in eternity.”

“I think I contemplate death more than most people. To me, it’s the nothingness that comes with death that I fear most. All my life milestones and relationships with other people would cease to exist and my consciousness would disappear. But I guess I have always been an anxious person, even as a kid. I have a memory where I was seven years old and I was just lying naked in bed, somehow convinced that I was going to die once I fell asleep, and I was reflecting on if I had a good life. It’s pretty ridiculous thinking about it now that I had these thoughts so young. I’d like to think I’m not as anxious of a person at this moment in time, but It’s always those moments of quietness and isolation that can spark these intense feelings and reflections.

 When my grandfather died, someone who I saw at least every month, I was utterly unprepared to deal with my feelings of loss and the feelings of those around me. How do you process grief? How do you comfort devastated people around you? I had so many questions. I decided to embark on a project that would combine turning to close friends and my art. I think it’s been good to provide this comforting space where my friends can just open up and feel free to be vulnerable. The questions I ask are always jarring to them at first. Not many want to speak openly about such an ‘intense’ subject like death, but once the interview is over, I think they walk out of the interaction happy they did it and relieved that they can put those feelings into words. Now that I am nearing completion of this project, I feel much more calm about the aspect of death.”

“It's a hard thing to articulate, but I think the physical process of dying is what makes me the most anxious. I can't shake my belief that, once you die, there's just a void. Cognitively I know that such a fate is a scary, and I know that logically my body would have some kind of physical reaction to that fear, but I don't react to it the way I'd expect. It's difficult. I’m anesthetized to it at this point. When I was little, I thought about the concept of dying often and would react by getting super catatonic, coping by locking myself in my room, reading for hours. I feel more removed from that reality now. I can't react much anymore. If I think about it enough, I can re-enter that state of hopelessness and desolation, but usually it has to be accompanied by other existential questions, like whether or not my actions in life amount to enough to make my life "worth it."

The numbness I feel is kind of a defense mechanism I suppose. There are things that one can do to distract oneself for a while, but the inevitability of death is still there. Both pondering it and not pondering it feels like putting a Band-Aid on a broken arm - death exists regardless of my reaction to it. The things that give me peace in place of desolation are enjoying my consciousness while I have access to it, and connecting with others through empathy and art forms like music, which provide purpose and meaning. Another thing that comforts me is our shared understanding that we're all going to die. We all know it’s coming. Fear of it is valid, but we need not fear alone. Until then, I'll just hope it's not particularly painful.”

“For the longest time, I did fear death. However, up until a year and a half ago my view changed when I attempted suicide. I’ve dealt with death before. A friend from high school died in a car crash when I was 15 years old and this was my first real experience with death. It was an open casket funeral. I came across the many-worlds theory, the idea of many worlds existing at the same time. If this theory is correct, your consciousness will attempt to travel to another similar world in where you are at the minimum, alive. This is called quantum immortality.

This has helped me cope with the expansiveness of death because there is no such thing as a premature death. However, there can be such things that are life halting like old age, or some upper being deciding that a death will be my last. As in, all of the similar worlds and scenarios run dry, a final death. In a way, I’m not worried about an early death because I get infinite chances but I feel worried when I get old. I wouldn’t say that I am fearful but I am ambivalent of what happens after all my scenarios have run their course.”

“I don’t fear death really. Though getting there seems pretty rough if we’re being honest with each other. Your body takes a beating. From working at a funeral home, I’ve seen a lot of dead bodies, and none of them look good or pretty regardless of the factors of age or disease or trauma. There’s no such thing as a pretty dead body. Nobody looks good at the end of their death. Once you’re dead you’re dead, you don’t have to worry about anything. It’s comforting to me. It’s like not having been born. You cease to exist so there is not a lot of strife. Dead bodies are interesting because they are both people and dead objects. You revere their humanity but there is no life anymore. You can feel okay about bending their wrists and sewing their mouth and being hard on them when putting clothes on. I wouldn’t treat you the way I treat a dead body.

I pick people up when somebody dies like a hospice home or hospital and then I assist with funerals from putting them in the casket to the burial itself. I assist with casketing and cosmetizing. I assist with people getting dressed and makeup so the families are comforted when they see the person and not horrified. The family has a clear image of how they want the person to be presented, so I try to do my best. I often look at photos when they were still alive. If you can, you get the family to bring their favorite lipstick or nail polish. Sometimes the family is not happy because it’s hard to make the people look alive or sleeping. Most of the time they are happy though.

I would personally rather be cremated. I’m partial to a method that’s legal in a couple states right now called alkaline hydrolysis. This practice was popularized in slaughterhouses and has also been used with taking care of dead pets. The body is put in a pressure vessel and is then filled with a mixture of water and lye. It produces less carbon dioxide. The results are the same as cremation, but instead of ashes, you have liquid. The waste you create is safe to put in a city’s water system. It’s a cool process. If more people knew what was involved in the embalming process, even though as respectful we are towards the body, I think they would not choose to be embalmed. Your grandmother doesn’t want strangers to see her naked. It’s very invasive. Our reverence to the bodies of the dead doesn’t come out of nowhere. It comes from deep inside of us because we still see ourselves when we look at a corpse.”

“My stance on death depends based on my current mood. It is a situational thing. It can change day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute. When I am motivated or excited about something I do not want my life to end prematurely. I have something or someone to live for. When my life becomes monotonous and I become apathetic I do not fear death as much. I guess such moments where I do not fear death are those when I experience those moods of apathy and detachment to material things, people and obligations. My stance on death is heavily shaped by my depression and Asperger’s. It is heavily shaped on my feelings of being useful or not, or simply just a burden. Feelings become overwhelming and overstimulating so I tend to detach myself from the rest of the world.

I often end up thinking and basing my actions around my understanding that a person is so insignificant on a global scale. You’re just one person. If it takes so much effort to live what is the point in continuing to put in that effort if I am likely to make little difference in the world? Why continue living if I am constantly in pain and those instances of pain will always be greater than pleasure? Am I supposed to live for self-satisfaction? I do not normally act with this goal in mind. Do I live to help others? I certainly try to help people but I do not find it a sufficient argument for living. It’s not something that makes me no longer fear death. I have grown up fearing attachment and settling for detachment and now I do not really fear death.”

“I’m not sure if I fear death yet but I do fear the shortness of life. I have more of the fear of not living than the process of dying. Death is inevitable. I fear how I will die because I don’t want it to be something painful. I will be comforted if I go peacefully. I believe in a higher being because of my Christian faith but I’m still not sure if there’s an afterlife. Having my friends and family brings me comfort when it comes to processing my own mortality. Right now I’m just out here enjoying life as best as I can.”

“I don’t fear death, but I fear how I am going to die. Dying is scary but death itself is not scary. I think you need to differentiate the thinking between the two. There is also “good” timing and “bad” timing when it comes to death, I think. Death itself is craved sometimes because the nothingness is appealing to me and I would no longer have obligations, commitment, connections, guilt, or just any feelings in general. You don’t have a chance to regret anything, but when you’re in the midst of dying, since you’re not dead yet, you have a moment to analyze. When I think about dying, it’s suicide because it’s the closest encounter I have had with death. Death is inevitable regardless. Suicide is an option for me personally. Being as selfless as possible without losing oneself helps me keep going. I don’t want to feel like a waste. I don’t want to die thinking I was a horrible person or leave people with a terrible taste in their mouths. I think that’s why I am trying to go into politics and run for office. I want to make a difference.”

“I don’t fear death really. Everything about my life just suggested that I shouldn’t be. I guess this is a weird story that most people don’t know, but my family in Puerto Rico owns a funeral home so I kind of have been desensitized to the idea of death. I’ve been inside the home itself. When you see somebody lying there peacefully, it just doesn’t seem so scary. Media depictions always make death seem so graphic and gruesome. Obviously, there are gruesome ways of dying, and that can be scary, because you might be aware of the pain while it’s happening, but it isn’t death itself that is scary.

Also, I grew up with a lot of animals, and their life span is a lot shorter than ours, and I was present for all of their passings, so it’s kind of like you get used to it, even though you don’t. Yeah, and when my pets died, like my dog for example, my other dogs were sad for a while, but they went on with their lives. I don’t think animals fear death on a regular basis so I feel like I don’t need to either. And, I’m not in everybody’s face about it but I am pretty religious, so to me to fear when I am going to die is not important. Whenever that moment is, it has a purpose and has perfect timing regardless what we think. It just seems like a part of life and when it’s time to go, it’s time to go.”

“I’m very open about my opinions on death. It’s kind of a duality because there can be good things about acknowledging it. I fear it in some ways but in other ways I find it comforting. I fear it because I am afraid of not accomplishing enough before I die. Also being conscious about the inevitability of your life's end stresses me out. I don’t really believe in an afterlife either. I mean, there could be one but probably not in the same way as hell or heaven. I don’t have too much of an interest in the concept of afterlife though. I don’t care enough to be thinking about it all the time every day. 

The best way to combat those feelings of existentialism is mostly just expressing myself through my artwork. Knowing that death is inevitable, art is a way to leave marks or impressions to take advantage of the time that you're here and make use of your existence. As greedy as it might sound, it's what you maximize from what you reap from living. Art is a benefit and helps you gain insight from the world around you while your living. It’s therapeutic. Every piece of art I do isn’t for the sake of immortalizing, but it’s the way I address my issues of fearing death and emotional fears in general. In a general sense, I do think you should be doing the most that you can in the smartest way possible. That’s subjective, I guess. Someone else’s ideals are different than mine but we are all in a search for fulfillment.”

“I want to say yes I fear death. There was definitely a point in time where I feared death more because it seemed like it was approaching, but I think that was more worry about the idea about the process of dying than thinking that I was going to die. I can’t really imagine what would kill me any time soon. Sorry, I didn’t realize that this was going to be such a hard question to answer. I think I fear the process; we lose control over what happens. There’s the fear of the unknown and I think that’s what upsets people. I believe in an afterlife but I have no idea what that would be. I have been conditioned to believe in heaven but heaven sounds boring to me.

My favorite movie, Beetlejuice, states it well saying that it’s all very personal what happens to you after you die. What happens to you is going to be different than what happens to me. Maybe whatever you want to happen happens when you die. Sometimes I believe in nothing but sometimes I believe in reincarnation in a literal sense. Your body decomposes and you become part of the plants and the earth. Still, our spirits can’t be destroyed. Because energy cannot be created nor destroyed, right?

One time I almost died. I had a really bad feeling about what I was going to do, did it anyway, and everything went black all of a sudden. My friends were trying to get my attention. They said my eyes were open, yet I couldn’t see them. I could feel myself going and I was fighting to stay. Maybe I wasn’t about to go but something was very wrong. A few months later I had a friend who overdosed while I was sitting on his lap. His lips were blue and his skin was ashen white. I ran to get his roommate because my phone was dead then proceeded to do CPR and mouth to mouth - literally mouth to mouth, no mask - while his roommate called 911. He woke up as the paramedics arrived. We got into a lot of trouble after that. I still see him around from time to time but we don’t talk or really acknowledge each other.

I had surgery over this past summer after my dog had just passed and I saw him in my dreams. I feel like he reached me in spirit form, saying it’ll be okay, but I also feel like that’s something people say to themselves just to feel less scared. I’ve had supernatural experiences before but I also recognize that people may be thinking these things are supernatural as some sort of coping mechanism. Also, what is with the association with death and orgasming? Like orgasming is supposed to be your closest encounter with death? That sounds like bullshit.”

“I don’t fear the moment of death that much, but since I don’t have a confirmed belief, I fear what comes after. I worry about the afterlife, if there is one, where my consciousness goes after your heart stops beating and your brain stops working.

 I fear dying prematurely, I fear the impact that a premature death would have on my family. I fear the pain that comes with death, and there are some painful ways of dying like being tortured or drowning that seem pretty terrifying to me. So, I guess you could say that I fear everything around death, both what comes before and what comes after but I am not that afraid of the act of dying itself. I hope that makes sense.

Something that troubles me around death is remembering that everyone that I will know will die, including myself and that it can happen at any moment. I worry about not mattering in the grand scheme of things. I worry about not having contributed to the wellbeing of others before dying. I worry about not accomplishing my dreams of traveling the world and finishing writing my novels. That kind of worry of that can keep me up at night.

I am a Young Adult Fantasy and Science Fiction writer and as such I study young adult fantasy and science fiction. Transcribing my  ideas of death on paper helps me get a grasp on what I think about it. The idea that comforts me the most is the personification of death as an old friend who takes you where you’re supposed to go when it is your time. Consuming media where death is portrayed as less of a terrifying thing than a fact of life is beautiful in a way, because it helps you come to terms with it, if only for a moment. I feel like sometimes, especially in really intense films and books, death is associated with suffering and that what makes it scary. Suffering is really what people fear when you get down to it.

I got into a car crash when I was sixteen, and I feel like that’s the closest to death I have ever felt. Car crashes have always been a deep set fear of mine since my cousin died in one, and I have always been nervous around driving because of it, but now I hardly ever drive and that is essentially the reason why. I remember seeing yellow lights and then I was sitting in the smoking metal hull of a dented volvo, screaming. It was surreal.”

“I’m scared of the nothingness that comes with death. I’m scared of not doing everything I want to before I go. That’s pretty much most of my thoughts on it. It kind of comforts me that if the end is truly nothingness, at least I won’t be aware that I am dead and have regrets. It worries me that I might leave the people that I care about. I can’t imagine what its like to lose my friends or family, so to inflict that same pain on them leaves me a little sad. I say that I don’t take offense to things or claim that I have thick skin but I am very sensitive and feel a lot. I like to think that other people are that way too. We may not have any reason to be on this earth but caring about others close to you and their feelings is one of the best things to come out of our existence. That’s how I combat those feelings of existentialism”

“I fear cutting things short because I have a lot yet to do and want to have a positive impact on the world. So, dying early would mean I’ve consumed too much and not produced enough. But I don’t fear what happens after I die because the universe will continue to exist afterwards. The best I can hope for is to stave off death long enough to leave something behind. I want to be remembered leaving the world better than how I found it, whether that impact is physical or emotional. I don’t think it’s worth my time to believe in an afterlife or worry if I will still be conscious after I die.”

“I don’t fear death because of how my parents always talk about it. It’s just something that happens in life and everyone goes through it. You don’t have to fear something that’s just a part of life. Close people around you die and it’s okay to stop and mourn but life goes on and you just have to keep going. I have a grandma who is in her 80s and has dementia.  About two or three years ago, we started making funeral arrangements like doing things like finding a funeral home and finding a tombstone and calling family members about it. Her gravestone is already on the riverside cemetery.

My aunt and cousins came to visit me and felt weird about being in the graveyard and seeing the tombstone all ready. I was perfectly fine with it though. My mom even took my grandmother to pick out her own casket. My parents and grandparents are from Haiti so my mom took my grandma to see the caskets she learned stuff like white caskets are for children, for example. My mom showed my grandma the graveyard and my grandmother remarked how nice the graveyard is. The graveyards in Haiti are not as nice. It’s all very expensive for the living though. Like finding all these things necessary for the funeral service.

I guess I don’t believe in an immediate afterlife. I’m a Jehovah’s Witness so I believe when you die, you don’t go to heaven or hell. Nothing happens to you. In scripture, it says your thoughts perish.  I think of death like sleeping. Much like how Jesus resurrected Lazarus, God will do that on a much larger scale in the future.  I guess since I can die tomorrow or at any point, I just try to enjoy life, I don't mean in a party all the time kind of way, but I try not to bring myself to think about stressful things all the time. I think I am so calm because I take my life one day at a time.”

“Yes I fear death because I don’t want to not exist and I don’t believe in an afterlife. I want my corpse to be fired in the Anagama clay kiln. I want my body to be melted onto a bunch of pots and I want them to go to people who love me. Art is more valuable when you’re dead right? I just want be remembered to people as a fucking weirdo who melted his corpse onto a bunch of pottery. I don’t really fear the pain of dying at all just like not existing, like what the fuck? I have existed my entire life, y’know? I have never not existed!

But maybe I won’t care when I am dead? I try not to think about it, but I like to come up with morbid plans with my corpse. I deal with stress with humor a lot of the time and I think incorporating my corpse with my art would be a fun thing to do. If ghosts are real I want to haunt the ceramics studio that I will be teaching in. I want to be a helpful poltergeist. I would to like to scare the shit out of people who don’t clean. And I would like hang out in the kilns while they are firing and make sure that everything is okay in there. And I would like to walk people home from the studio at 2 in the morning because that’s some spooky shit.”

“I fear death a little bit. Mostly because, sometimes, I’m afraid that death will come too soon and that I have not lived life to the fullest, and I know that sounds really cliché. I think I’m an atheist, but the notion of a complete end still worries me. I’m not super religious, but I still have an admiration and even awe that, possibly, someone you don’t know could still love you, and is waiting for you on another plane of existence. Religious groups, however, regardless of intentionality, have arranged the afterlife in response to the fear of death. They have that comfort because you’ll still have everything when you’re alive, but that doesn’t seem very realistic to me; not that I have anything against belief itself, but being dead is something entirely different than being alive, you’d think that’d be a given. I just try to live my life, be with my friends, chill the fuck out, and not be drafted in World War III. Right now, the biggest fear for me is having some missile coming down on our country.

When I was younger going into middle school, people would kind of talk about how this kid came into the entrance hall armed with a shotgun and shot at the ceiling, but his gun jammed, thus preventing casualties. A year later, I went to that very school, and now, my younger brother goes there too. I think about him a lot, and he was six years old at the time of sandy hook, so the potential reality of losing him to something that is completely out of my control is almost undeniably tangible. I guess I also have had a near death experience. When I was in preschool, some kids pushed me onto a heater or A/C unit, and it ended up cutting my forehead open. The blood came out pretty heavy, but I got stitched up at the hospital. I still have the scar, right in the middle of my forehead. I can’t remember the context surrounding those kids pushing me, nor their reason. I think people, even kids, are just cruel sometimes.”

“No I don’t fear death. Death is a process of life. Fortunately or unfortunately how you may look at it. I found in my experience as a hospice nurse, if you live well, you die well. Everybody is going to have regrets or leave people behind but your overall satisfaction in life relates to how you deal with death. That goes across the board regardless of spirituality. I think living well has to do with being honest with yourself and living your best version of your life. I am a Christian and to me, death is part of a process of this world and I don’t fear it because I trust God. I don’t think this life is all there is.

There are two things that die. One is the body and one is the spirit. I have seen people whose spirit is not ready to die but there body is and they lived beyond they should have. I have seen people whose body is in a state of decline but there spirit was ready to die and they would die before they should. Of the two, the spirit is stronger than the body. Our bodies are wonderful mechanisms that have a wonderful biology and chemistry going on but they are fragile. Almost everybody in the process before death will talk about seeing friends and relatives that are already deceased. Maybe not ‘see’ exactly but they identify more with them.

Also to keep in mind, I don’t hold a lot of stock of near-death experiences. Studying the delicate balances of the brain, when you’re a state of dying, the homeostasis will deteriorate and that will affect hallucinations or perceptions of reality and a lot of people don’t take that into consideration. I think it’s a normal phenomenon of deterioration of the biological soup of the brain. Aging is more difficult to talk about. As I age, I want to keep fewer mirrors in my house. My aunt once said that death isn’t hard but getting there is.”

“I don’t think I fear death or the concept of death because everyone has to die someday. I think the logistics of dying scare me the most, like I don’t know where and when I’m going to die. Yeah, it’s something I try not to think about a lot. With the whole gun violence thing going on and the fact I lost someone on campus somewhat close to me, it’s made me think that everything is temporary, including us. Over spring break, I booked a last minute beach trip and everyday I sat out on the beach and looked at the water. Every time I’m around water I feel more present because it attacks all my senses. Like I am here and in the moment. And I try to tell myself that’s all that matters. It’s when I’m at my most calm and am not constantly worrying about my place in the world.”