Lesson from Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Now I realize that it's been a while since I've posted anything. And by a while, I mean many eternities, if you were measuring time based on the lifespan of a goldfish. So obviously I expect few people will read this, given that the world has undoubtedly moved on to reading blogs that are updated with something resembling regularity.

I also realize that Buffy isn't a canonical book of the Bible. But really, who's going to call me on it?

A few months ago, I bought the complete Buffy the Vampire Slayer series on DVD and started watching it. This wasn't some kind of nostalgia for the halcyon days of my youth or anything -- when the show first aired, I never watched it. But I caught a few reruns when my cooking show got cancelled, and I was hooked! Lo and behold, Buffy the Vampire Slayer was not the over hyped show that I thought it was! The actors are skilled, the plots are good, and the scripts are amazing. It's truly, truly worth watching (in case you've never seen it).

But I digress.

Yesterday, I watched the episode titled "The Body." In case you haven't seen Buffy, and don't want me to spoil it for you forever, please stop reading now.

This is the show where Joyce Summers -- Buffy's mom -- dies suddenly. It's pretty heart wrenching, especially since she'd recovered so well from her earlier illness. Watching this show, you keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. When is the monster going to attack? Is this all some kind of evil demon plot of false memories? Will it turn out that Glory, the evil goddess of the demon realm, killed Joyce to get at Buffy? Will vampires take advantage of the situation and try to kill Buffy?

Barring one undead incident in the morgue, nothing like this ever takes place. Nothing terrifying jumps out of a closet, or turns out to be hiding in the house. There is no demonic element to Joyce's death. There's just the relatively common-place aneurysm.

But you keep waiting for that moment, for that other shoe to drop. In the end, you realize that the most horrifying thing of all is not monsters or demons or unexpected plot twists, but the sheer reality of death itself. Even while Buffy battles with a vampire in the morgue, her sister Dawn stares at her dead mother, riveted and frozen, uncaring of everything else that's going on.

Death is the horrifying thing.

For all the killing that goes on in the show -- dead vampires, demons, various unholy creatures, unfortunate bystanders -- you don't ever really think about death. It doesn't so much touch you as it is something that happens. Death never really has consequences.

It made me think about how we don't really understand it, and how we as a culture go out of our way to avoid really thinking about it. Many times, we circle around the question of death: we use euphemisms, we discuss the aftermath in platitudes. Other people's pain is uncomfortable and incomprehensible because we don't want to face those issues ourselves. We say things like, 'he's at peace now,' or 'she's gone to a better place.' For some people, death is even something glamorous, something to be almost courted or dared. But do we really know what happens after death, or what occurs during those final moments?

As Christians, it's tempting to say we know what death is, what it means. God has told us in the Bible. We've heard stories of Saints. There are various interpretations of what happens to you after death, which of course vary depending on what kind of a life you lived, but in Western Christianity they all involve some sort of uninterrupted continued life that goes on forever.

We go to heaven or hell or purgatory-then-heaven, and we used to go to limbo which as it turns out has been officially debunked. From heaven we can look down on the world and see it's goings-on, we can worship God and, some people believe, pass along requests for intercession if we're close enough.

But there isn't a concept of life stopping. There's no concept that there might be nothing, even for a little while. Or that, when we 'wake up' in the afterlife God might have made us significantly different that we used to be simply by removing all our faults. We believe in a continuity that outlives the body. Even Buffy tells her sister, face to face with the body, that it 'isn't here: she's not here anymore.' We envision some sort of departure, and those of us who share the Christian faith tend to believe that the thing that departs you lives on.

We celebrate elaborate funeral rituals that express our beliefs about death. But, in the end, isn't death the final mystery? How could we ever know what lies behind it, what God has in store for us? Our faith isn't about knowing. It's about trusting.

But it's really really hard not to know. So, of course, it's only natural that within the framework of faith we try to explain it to ourselves. I think part of the reason so many of us find death scary -- even when we see it on a fictional show -- is because part of us knows that we don't really understand, no matter how strong our beliefs are. I know I feel that way. And maybe we're not supposed to understand. It is a great mystery, after all.

On the show, Anya (who is a thousand-year-old ex vengeance-demon) says it best: "But I don't understand! I don't understand how this all happens. How we go through this. I mean, I knew her, and then she's, there's just a body, and I don't understand why she can't just get back in it and not be dead anymore! It's stupid! It's mortal and stupid! And, and Xander's crying and not talking, and, and I was having fruit punch, and I thought, well Joyce will never have any more fruit punch, ever, and she'll never have eggs, or yawn or brush her hair, not ever, and no one will explain to me why."

I think maybe at this time of year, when we're thinking of eternity and the end times and the world to come, and we're waiting for Jesus to come, and about to start pondering the miracle that is new life and the Incarnation, that this is a time to think about death and what it means to us. For all that we can't comprehend it, as both an end and a beginning, it is the fundamental human experience that we share with every living person.

And, through the miracle of Christmas, a mystery that we share even with God.