Death (Card) at a Funeral

The Death card is a complex, bittersweet one. Some people fear its appearance as an omen of something bad about to happen. Some people like to focus on the promise of a new beginning. In reality, it’s a combination of both difficult emotions and positive ones. And if that’s ever felt confusing to you, I’d like to share with you a very personal example of how that can be the case.

Because a couple of weeks ago, I scattered the ashes of a family member of mine.

Prior to her passing, she asked me to read something to those in attendance - a combination of her words and mine. I put a lot of thought into preparing it. This felt like a huge responsibility because I wanted to honour her wishes in the way she would have wanted.

Though not explicitly articulated, there were many clues as to how she viewed death, from the music she had selected, conversations we’d had and handwritten notes found after her passing. From what I could gather, to her, Death did not feel like a somber ending. Nor did it feel like a ‘celebration of life’. Rather, it was a moment in which the part of her being that she hadn’t been able to fully express in life was set free.

Coming to that understanding, and contemplating that as her ashes were scattered to the sound of birdsong, the sun peeking through the trees, stirred a myriad of things. Such complicated emotions. And as tears filled my eyes, it probably looked like they were tears of sadness. But it wasn’t that simple. There were so many things hitting me at once.

Saying goodbye to someone who I wanted more time with.
Witnessing the small but meaningful group of people gathered to pay their respects.
The weight of speaking on her behalf.
The way she saw this moment as freedom and release.
Imagining all that went unexpressed in her lifetime, that she wished she could have shared.
The birdsong feeling like the birds calling her home.

It would be impossible to capture the emotion of that moment in one ‘feeling’. To categorise it. To label it ‘good’ or ‘bad’.

And I don’t believe my experience is unique.

That’s why I’m sharing it with you today.

Most of the time, in a tarot reading, the Death card does not appear to represent literal Death. Rather, it is symbolic of endings.

But whether we’re talking about death literally or figuratively, we can still experience a myriad of complicated emotions, similar to the ones I just outlined.

We can be simultaneously sad and glad to see something end.
We can grieve something but also know it’s for the best.
We can be relieved something is over, but grateful for the experience.
We can regret what has happened, but also recognise what we learned from it.

Sometimes tears aren’t from sadness. Sometimes a smile comes from a broken heart.

Maybe the Death card’s most profound insights come, not when we try to pigeonhole it as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, but when we position it as neither - or both, all at once.

But over this last week, I keep coming back to the idea of Death as freedom, because it is the thing that has made me the most emotional to think about.

And, me being me, I can’t help but contextualise things through tarot.

And I think this idea of Death as freedom gives us an interesting way of looking at the Death card.

Because, whether we categorise Death as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, we often tend to think that the painful element of it is in the ending itself - in the Death.

But in some instances, death is not the painful part.

What matters is the context.

Sometimes, the existing circumstances are more painful than leaving them behind.

I see this in client readings.

You might delicately approach the Death card in a relationship reading, only to find that the person has been deeply unhappy for months… years. And actually, the idea of that coming to an end, despite all the history they share with the other person, can feel like a relief.

And that’s not a ‘Death sentence’. That’s Death as freedom.

And here’s the thing about the Death card. Our current world, with the prevalence of social media, is so keen to simplify things. It’s comfortable. We know the ‘good guy’ from the ‘bad guy’. And we want to know the ‘bad cards’ from the ‘good cards’.

But life repeatedly shows us that it’s not that simple.

And the Death card in particular is tarot’s biggest reminder of this.

It’s not easily categorised. It looks different to everyone. In every situation. It’s deeply emotional and uncomfortably complex.

And perhaps that’s why it makes us so uncomfortable.

Not because it’s a ‘bad and scary’ card. But because it’s deeply personal and impossible to label.