There are four stages of death that any human being experiences and those are; social, psychological, biological, and physiological. The first death is Social, a symbolic death of the human being in the world he or she has known. The human being’s social contacts often diminish. This occurs in the post-retirement phase when you turn sixty when you finish all of your obligations at work and home. The first disengagement happens at work. As you age, the institution or organisation where you work gently fires you from service and sends you home to finish living your best life possible. The second social disconnection takes place in society. You are frequently cut off from people when working for the government or a private company as well as your neighbours and community. The third social disconnection happens at home. Children migrate out of their homes when they settle into adulthood. The parents are consequently left behind. This will keep you confined to your house. The world as you have known it is gone. Your world gets smaller, mostly confining you to home since you suffer from serious ailments if you have any.
The second death is Psychological. It is the dying of your own personality such as losing memory (amnesia), Alzheimer’s disease, language disorder (aphasia), reading disorders (dyslexia). This is usually caused by the dying process. The disease process often fosters personality changes biochemically. As these signs of decline take place, you slowly withdraw from the world and into yourself.
The third death is biological. You become immobile as the internal organs one after another fails. This is when the organism as a human entity declines gradually as the age advances. This will totally confine you to home. All thinking and desires will collapse in this stage. If you are chronically ill, you may have to be fed with artificial tubes or life support systems to keep you alive. At this stage, you need someone’s physical and psychological support.
The fourth and final stage of death is physiological. This is the cessation of all vital organs. At this point, you are declared officially dead. These four major stages of death normally succeed one another. You have to help yourself for a peaceful transition from one stage of death to another. Through these stages, you need a lot of support from family, friends, and faith community.
The last phase is crucial to one’s life. How do you deal with these four agonizing stages of death that come during the final period of life? In our Sastras, the last phase is known as Vanaprastha, which is the third of the four ashramas, or life stages. It is a Sanskrit term derived from vana, meaning “forest,” and prastha, meaning “going to.” Therefore, it may be translated as “retiring to the forest.” It is a partial retirement from worldly life and has its own dharma. Retiring to the forest is not a viable option in the modern world. However, adhering to the dharma established during the Ashrama period is feasible even if one chooses not to live in the forest.
After fulfilling all the responsibilities in life, you can accept the bare necessities of life by detaching yourself from all wealth, possessions, and attachments and devote time for contemplation, self-expansion, and sattvic life, exploring the meaning of existence, though it is a difficult choice to endure. This is the only right time in the given life styles we have in the modern fast-paced world. It tells us not to simply wait to become old and die. You can create an ambience at home totally different from the routine life that you have led and start living with dignity and in harmony with nature, which you might have missed in the first two stages, the Brahmacharya and Grihastha stages. You can choose to be creative, calling back the childhood stage, and spend time in reading, writing, researching, creating new things, painting, music, dancing, and other art-related activities, finding joy and fulfilment in those things.
You cannot expect the third phase of life to be healthy if the first two ashramas of life, Brahmacharya and Grihastha, are not followed correctly. Each stage has its dharma. These stages of life are related to each other. The effects of one stage of life carry over into the next. However, you can change how you live the remaining part of your life to be something meaningful to prevent loneliness, dismay, and stress. To facilitate a seamless transition from a decreasing age to death, there is no other choice than to decide to live a life that differs from the past. Old-age homes and nursing homes are places where the residents just pass their time, living monotonous lives in loneliness, without any aspiration or enthusiasm, and simply waiting for death. One idea is looking for community living centres for the elderly where people after retirement from active public and private life can join as residents and find all activities to suit their tastes. This can become the Vanaprastha Ashrama for many elderly people in this stressful age. This can be avoided if caring for the elderly with respect, compassion, and affection is deeply ingrained in one’s family tradition.
