Dying sucks.
I’m not the first person to say that. I definitely won’t be the last.
But we all have to do it.
Even though Father Time remains the only unquestioned mediator in the course of human events, I was heartbroken last December when former Sen. Ben Sasse was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Most estimates slot pancreatic cancer’s five year survival rate at 13%. It’s essentially a death sentence.
When I first became politically conscious — just before high school — I tried to fashion myself as a “classical liberal.” You know, one of those “principled conservative,” anti-Trump types. I expected to register for the Republican Party once I turned 18. I would often talk politics with my dad, who heavily influenced me in this direction. I even found my own hero, Ben Sasse, the Republican senator from Nebraska. Sasse went to Harvard and has a doctorate from Yale. He was a former college president. He was one of seven Republican senators who had the courage to vote to convict Donald Trump during his Jan. 6 impeachment trial. He was, quite literally, everything I wanted to be when I grew up.
Of course, I matured politically. I started talking politics with my other parents. I read more books and got a more diverse set of news. I formed my own opinions. I now call myself a staunchly liberal Democrat. But I still always had a special place in my heart for Ben Sasse. The American right would be well served to emulate Sasse’s self-described methods of “very conservative” policy and “tonal moderacy.” So would the left.
Sasse retired from the Senate in 2023, becoming President of the University of Florida. I checked up on him from time to time, remembering him as one of my first political idols. When he announced his cancer diagnosis last December, my dad and I were shocked. We went out to dinner and couldn’t seem to talk about anything else.
But what happened next — and continues to happen — amazed me.
Most people quietly retire from public life when receiving a terminal cancer diagnosis. Most people are so intimidated by the enormity of eternity that they spend their remaining months on Earth passively waiting for their final breath.
And that’s understandable.
But to quote Sasse himself, “I did not decide to die in public. I obviously ended up with a calling to die.”
Sasse chose to reclaim his death, using his platform as a public figure to publicize his journey. The name of his podcast — Not Dead Yet — summarizes its purpose quite well. He’s done many interviews, most recently with Ross Douthat of the New York Times, from which I am heavily drawing the facts of Sasse’s diagnosis. The interview’s title is “How Ben Sasse Is Living Now That He Is Dying,” which I find to be an apt descriptor of his life. He admits that he is dying. He has not chosen to make his journey about his “battle” with cancer, but rather a discussion of what he knows he won’t get to experience — the joys, the sorrows and the work that has been robbed from him. In his New York Times interview, he shows unabashed hate for death, calling it a “wicked thief.” Yet he celebrates its finitude, arguing that “it’s pretty good that you pass through the vale of tears one time and then there will be no more tears, there will be no more cancer.”
And I wonder: Should we be grateful for death?
In a way, I think so. It is a hackneyed platitude to claim that we cannot experience the good without the bad. But it’s so true.
I know I’m not breaking new ground here. And I know my audience. This is a column written by an undergraduate at the University of Notre Dame. It may be read by a few hundred people on campus. Maybe a few alumni., and probably my parents, but not much more.
We can’t have that kind of humility without death. Death allows us to see our own limits; that there is an awesome God who created this universe — this life — in order for us to enjoy it. He was so providential in His wisdom that He limited this gift to allow us to understand this life’s value. O necessary sin of man! O happy fault that gave us death!
It is death that is allowing me to reflect on one of my political heroes. It is death that inspired Thornton Wilder to write in his play “Our Town” that earth is “too wonderful for anybody to realize.” He asks, “Do human beings ever realize life while they live it?” He wrote “maybe the saints and poets.” I doubt that Sen. Sasse would call himself a saint. He probably wouldn’t call himself a poet either. But I think he has managed to realize life just about as much as anyone on this earth can.
When Ross Douthat asked Ben Sasse if he’s ready to die, he said no. Yet he reflected on his Christian faith and how he finds consolation that, at the end, “we get to approach the Almighty … to approach the divine and call him Daddy, Abba, Father.” Sasse said to meet Christ will be “pretty glorious.” I tend to agree.
Ben Sasse won’t ever read this article. I won’t ever get to meet him — one of my heroes. But I’m okay with that. He’s going to die. I’m going to die. And his final inspiration has been to teach me how to die a little bit better. I wish he could know my gratitude.
Grayson Beckham is a freshman living in the Coyle Community in Zahm Hall. He hails from Independence, Ky. When he's not publishing woke propaganda inThe Observer, he studies political science and eloquently uses his silver tongue on the mock trial team. You can send him relevant hate mail at gbeckham@nd.edu.
