Death comes for everyone, and it has yet to spare a single person. It’s a universal inevitability that should be a point of unity. However, in the United States there is a cultural aversion to death and the dying, and an overwhelming discomfort with discussing the end of our mortalities — the “elephant in the room.” 

While death is often a euphemized discussion in the U.S., in other countries, the end of one’s life is often met with tradition, celebration and ritual. 

In Mexico and some parts of Central and South America, families honor their late loved ones during the first days of November. Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead as it is known in English, is characterized by ofrendas — altars — overflowing with melted candles, old photos and flowers commemorating loved ones.

In contrast, on October 31, the day before Día de los Muertos begins, people in the U.S. celebrate Halloween. Children dress up as their favorite Disney characters, unwilling adults turn off all their house lights to deter eager trick-or-treaters and college students drink too much and pile one body too many into their Ubers.  

These holidays are just a day apart, yet the gaps in the cultural attitude reflected within them are evident. Día de los Muertos is ancestrally focused, emphasizing a fearless intimacy with the dead, while Halloween maintains an annual massive financial footprint in the U.S. economy that is centered around fearing ghosts, vampires and zombies. 

However, I would argue that the act of expensive costuming and self-transformation to avoid confronting the end of our lives is a year-round endeavor. Statistics from Precedence Research reveal that in 2024, the U.S. anti-aging market was estimated to be worth over $20 billion. Such desperate grasping at our disappearing youth is intrinsically tied to our national discomfort when faced with death in general.

It is no wonder that we cling to our youth given the embedded societal preference for it in the U.S. as youth is regarded as something to strive for. While age indicates experience, youth signifies ability and productivity on top of the pros that come with having a “fresh face.” The intersection of late-stage capitalism and our death-avoidant culture mutually reinforces the idea that death and disability is an enemy, the antitheses to ability and relevance. 

I also find it deeply unsettling that our fear of death is inextricably tied to our need to make money to live. We are in a perpetual cycle of productivity and consumption where we are both the machine that creates the capitalistic backbone of our society and the victims of this same machine. Consequently, we have developed a cultural anxiety around being sick and dying and tiptoe around these possibilities in hopes neither occurs to us because we “invest” in our health. 

The increasing medicalization of aging and dying in the U.S. has carved out a new industry within healthcare projected to be worth $300 billion by 2030. In his Forbes article, Dean DeBiase explained how the industry encompasses “life extension” and health wellness products and services that shift healthcare away from being a “disease-focused regime in favor of targeting root causes of age-advancing chronic illnesses” such as cancers and Alzheimer’s disease. 

But the reality is that we cannot and will never stop the inevitability of death. Instead, the cultural denial of death has left us woefully unprepared for our looming end. 

Hospice and palliative care are continuously underused by eligible patients. There is no national legislation on paid bereavement to allow employees to process a loss. Most adults do not even have any type of advance directive for end-of-life treatment. The cost for funerals and post-death care are rising at a rate so rapid that it puts into question who can even afford to die with dignity.

Death in the U.S. is handled with emotional sanitization and detachment, a foreign coping mechanism to many other cultures across the world where the end of life is celebrated through accepting grief. We cannot begin to treat death with warmth when we are constantly living machinist lives. 

Resisting the capitalistic monotony that makes us repel death begins with direct acknowledgement. We must reject the notion that we can stay young forever. Shifting the death-avoidant paradigm necessitates accepting that part of living is becoming older. Only then can the idea of death be a true act of celebration. 

You can do this by making an effort to open the conversation of grief in your inner circles and share coping mechanisms when it is appropriate. Adopt daily or weekly personal rituals to remember the loss of a loved one. Assign a marker that represents them so that every time you encounter it, you are made to think of them. Look for them in cardinals, moths and sunsets. Every time you find them, you’ll also find yourself.