Between the Bookends of Birth and Death

By Ooi Kee Beng. Editorial, Penang Monthly October 2025

I am past 70 years of age, so I shall pull rank on my readers—most of you anyway, and talk about Birth, Life, and Death.

My parents are both dead. I was at their wake, funeral, and burial. There is much one can learn from the emotions, rituals and social behaviours that such events involve.

Reflexively, we fear death, but when it does appear, we find that we do accept it, simply because there is no choice. Reality is always abrupt when it confronts you. Death is always abrupt, and it is final. Yet it modifies reality for those left behind.

Chinese wakes can stretch over several days. I came to realise why this is so. Now, births and marriages are socially declared and celebrated, while deaths (and maybe divorces) are socially mourned and acknowledged. The collective participation these occasions call for is highly relevant.

The loss of a loved one is more easily accepted if members of the close collective—friends, neighbours, relatives—come together to acknowledge that loss, and to mourn. It is indeed of great help to the closest grieving individuals to experience the loss as a collective moment, as one that stretches beyond their personal memories and grief. A person’s death is an ontological issue, of course, and collective grieving makes the forthcoming permanent absence of the deceased more real, and therefore easier to accept.

A collection of social games, of relationships—unique ones at that—pass away with the death of a person. Another thing I have learned about observing death is to distinguish the experience of dying, from that of mourning. There is not much to learn about the former except to wonder about the last moments. The latter are the ones we sympathize with. As social beings, a part of them has died as well, in the sense that the one-to-one social moves they used to have with the deceased can no longer be made. They are ended.

Those who depend most on that mutual connection to the deceased suffer the most, one imagines.

Meaning and Life

This brings me to talk about Life. Now, I am one of those who do not conceive of Life and Death as polar opposites, as mirrors of each other. Birth and Death are, but Life and Death are not; it is a false dichotomy. Life is simply the period between Birth and Death, the span of time when the individual transforms his energy into meaning.

Birth and Death are bookends, and the contents—the books, the stories, the narratives—are all found in the space between them.

How long that space is, and what books stand there… that depends on what and how much meaning the person created in his life.

In short, we are the meaning-makers. Meaning requires investment in time and interest, energy and resources. And that comes from the individual living being. It is in their use of attention, energy and time, that we can judge how much something means to them. Their giving of meaning in that concrete way is what brings meaning into the world.

The quest for meaning in Life is best satiated by seeing Meaning as a verb, and not a noun. Meaning does not exist the way a physical object exists. It is “found” only in the sense that something—anything, physical object or not—inspires serious investment from an individual.

The thing is, as human beings, we cannot not mean!

For aged people though, it is clear that time and energy are running out. The energy they wake up with in the morning is all they have for the day. How they use that energy is their bringing of meaning into their day.

Not to be wasted. Carpe diem.