Myth and Mortality: Testing the Stories

Myth and Mortality: Testing the Stories, by Harry Willson, relates the author's field of expertise, that is, mythology, to the field of Death and Dying. Years of counseling the sick and dying, and years of searching with students for answers to life's big questions, have helped him with this task. Informed by personal experience and scholarly study, Willson challenges readers to examine the ideas and beliefs they may have accepted by default, and to make a conscious choice to replace all that breed guilt, hatred and fear with those that bring joy, compassion, and enthusiasm for life. He suggests that fear or denial of death is the result of our unwillingness to set aside ego.

The actual work of preparing this book was triggered by the way Willson's parents died: his mother suddenly and easily, doing her self-appointed task which was caring for her ailing husband, and his father slowly and miserably, not believing in the end what he had so assiduously taught others all his life. "His mythology let him down," Willson says. The first twenty-six pages of the book tell that dramatic story -- "Two Deaths One Summer."

Then follow essays entitled, "The Denial of Death," "Our Aging Population," and "We Need a Mythology. The last one introduces the main body of the book, which works through thirty-two different beliefs or metaphors dealing with death, and gives frank evaluations of how helpful they may be for persons confronting death. They are arranged according to the source of the myths under analysis.

Willson deals first with Stories from Infantile Wishing. Then he proceeds to stories from Contemporary Media, from Socio-Political Movements and from Practical Observation. His most striking innovation is the distinction between Stories from Religion, which are designed to preserve Ego, and Stories from Philosophy, which enable us to transcend Ego.

The book ends with an essay, "Whose Task Is This?" in which the author challenges each reader to be in some way ready to be responsible for his or her own departure. Ego is the problem.

Harry Willson, 1932-2010 Harry Willson was born in Montoursville, Pennsylvania. He received his undergraduate degree in chemistry and math at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, and a Master of Divinity in ancient Middle-Eastern language and literature at Princeton Theological Seminary. He became bilingual through one year of Spanish studies at the University of Madrid, and holds the Diploma de Español como Lengua Extranjera from the University of Salamanca, Spain. Later he studied Spanish, literature, philosophy, mythology, and theater arts at the University of New Mexico. He served as student pastor at the Presbyterian Church, Hamburg, New Jersey while in seminary. In 1958, Harry moved his family to New Mexico, where he served as bilingual missionary pastor in Bernalillo, Alameda, and Placitas, and later as Permanent Clerk of the Presbytery of Rio Grande, Chairman of Enlistments and Candidates, Chairman of the Commission on Race, and Moderator of the Presbytery. In 1965, Harry answered Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. s call for clergy to go to Selma, Alabama to assist in voter registration and demonstrations against police brutality. He participated in the successful march from Selma to Montgomery on March 25, where he personally witnessed Dr. King deliver his How Long, Not Long speech. Not long after that, in 1966, Harry left the church in sorrow and anger over its failure to take a stand against the Vietnam War. He spent the summer of 1967 on the staff of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta, assigned as their representative to the Atlanta Alliance for Peace. After quitting the clergy, Harry taught, first at the Albuquerque Academy and then at Sandia Preparatory School, after which he retired from teaching to devote himself to his writing. His fiction and nonfiction attracted a diverse and enthusiastic audience. From 1996 to 2010, he wrote a monthly column for the Amador Publishers website. He was also published in a variety of local and national periodicals. Readers frequently corresponded with Harry to let him know how much they were personally touched by his writing; some claimed he had changed their lives.