You can read, watch, and think along with us.

Yesterday was a sunny, beautiful, late summer day, so I strolled through the cemetery across the street from our home in southwest Iowa and thought about what the dead might teach the living about life.

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I’m a retired political science professor. Two colleagues and friends — both retired profs, one in Modern Languages, the other in Communication studies — and I will teach a Life Long Learning Seminar this October titled Conversations about Death, Dying, and Living. We’re in our seventies.

Our previous employer, Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, runs four seminars yearly. In addition to our topic, this year’s menu includes Liberty, Rights and the Supreme Court, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Theologian of Resistance, and Let’s Dip our Toes into Micro-History.

This is a photo of a seminar on America and Race we taught last fall.

Thirty-five people are enrolled in the Death class. That’s all the room holds. The age range is 50 to 98.

Why this topic?

It’s a little unusual as someone with expertise in the subject matter teaches the typical seminar. That’s not the case with Alan, Ruth, me, and this course. But we have invited experts to be guest speakers.

The primary reason for our interest is that death has gotten our attention. Not only because we know people who have died or are dying but because, at this point in our lives, it — death — sits in the corner, stubbornly refusing to go away. When we were younger, we could ignore it or deny it.

Ernest Becker wrote a famous book decades ago, The Denial of Death, about how most human cultures enact sophisticated methods to avoid facing the inevitable. It sat collecting dust on my bookshelf. I read it forty years ago and reread it last year with older and more open eyes.

How do you stop ignoring something that refuses to go away? We’re academics, so our solution is to study it and then talk about it with others. Of course, while we were doing this, one of Ruth’s friends died. Martin was 90, and Ruth and others were at his death in a circle of prayers and goodbyes.

Thus, the Death, Dying, and Living seminar was born after months of reading articles and books, previewing films, surfacing speakers, and planning meetings

The class will meet each Wednesday in October from 9 a.m. to noon. You can see from the photo above that we have a comfortable room with plenty of light. The obligatory picture of Martin Luther hangs over us. He might not like all he hears.

Mr. Death will sit quietly in the middle.

But the rest of us will engage in lively conversation.

These topics, texts, and speakers will guide our conversations

Session 1: Considering Living and Dying; Text: Leo Tolstoy The Death of Ivan Ilyich; link to free online copy.

Session 2: What is Quality of Life and Quality of Death?; Text: Wendell Berry, Fidelity; Guest Speaker, Dr. David Baaken (physician)

Session 3: Who Has Control?; Text: the film Jack Has a Plan; Guest speaker, Brecka Putnam (Howard County Hospice)

Session 4: What happens after Death?; Guest speakers: Scott Helms (Director/Owner Helms Funeral Home); Pastor Michael Wilker, First Lutheran Church

Life

Some day, I will no longer be. Death is when I no longer am. Until that moment, I can change. I am still becoming.

Life Long Learning means that we do not stop learning when we are no longer students. As long as we have life, we can grasp something new.

Ivan Ilyich, the protagonist in Tolstoy’s terrifying short novel that begins our seminar, discovers only in his last moments “that he had not lived his life as he should have done.” Ilyich is dying poorly because he has lived badly.

Tolstoy forces us to consider the question, what does it mean to live well?

In Fidelity, Burley, 82 years old, is dying in a hospital. His son, Danny, believes the machinery and impersonality of this institution is an insult to his father’s life: “There are many degrees and kinds of being alive. Some are worse than death.” This belief drives the plot of Wendell Berry’s short story.

Berry forces us to consider the question, what does it mean to die well?

Jack Tiller has had a brain tumor for 25 years. The Jack Has a Plan documentary chronicles his three-year quest to end his life. It’s an extraordinary film encouraging viewers to ask who should control death.

In our last session, we consider the afterlife for the family and friends of the person who has died and for the person herself. Funeral and burial options are expanding in the USA.

And, finally, what do people think happens after they die?

It should be a lively month.

I’ll give you a live report in November.