Accompany the dying one all the way to death. All the way? Where death is, you are not. But there you are, before the death of the Other. Before you one you knew in life, and the one you will not know in death.
Dying: how is it that it lets appear what is dissimulated in life, what always disappears? Sacred one, separate from us, the survivors, what do you know of your disappearance – of the gift of dying you give to each of us? Dying is there, in person. Which is to say, what is most unknown is given by way of that dying, the absolutely other comes via the relation to the Other.
Relation? A wearing away of relation. Or the relation as the wearing away, for we do not know him anymore, the one who dies. Separate from us, separating himself from us, and by way of dying, which is not his to die. The terms of the relation – each of us, him – are infinitely separated. And it is as though the relation came first – this strangeness that happens between us. Came first – and its terms (each of us, the dying one) after.
‘Are you dying?’ – ‘I don’t know.’ – ‘Are you dying?’ – ‘I don’t know what it means to die.’ It is dying that speaks, not him. Accompany him; do not let him pass alone into death. Alone – but he is already alone, separated from us by a distance greater than anything in the world.
Separate – and what can he know of us, who still belong to life? We speak a different language. Rather, we speak, and a kind of murmuring has claimed him. Not silence, yet. Alive, still alive – but now so that it is as though death has arrived amidst us. Death is here, in person.
‘Are you dying?’ – ‘There’s no one here to die.’ – ‘Are you dying?’ – ‘There’s no one here.’
Lars Iyer's Blog 