Most parents try to shield their children from thoughts of mortality. One Indiana-born psychologist did the opposite, turning death into a classroom subject and morbid curiosity into family bonding.
He and his daughter kept a running inventory of deaths they wanted to avoid. Buried alive topped the list. Whenever news broke of an unusual fatality, they added it to their shared catalogue: farm machinery accidents, medieval torture methods, mobsters using cement shoes. It was an unconventional hobby, but it came from a deliberate philosophy about how to raise a child.
The father had grown up surrounded by death's mundane reality. Raised on a farm in Indiana as the second of four boys, he witnessed the constant cycle of farm life and loss. His only sister was stillborn. Animals died regularly in accidents or slaughter. As a university student, he lived above a funeral home, preparing bodies for burial in exchange for rent. He saw firsthand how people woke up on ordinary mornings unaware they were dressing for the last time.
His daughter experienced her first death at age three when a neighbor child died unexpectedly from respiratory failure. Rather than deflect her questions or delay the grief conversation, he walked with her to the neighbors' door so she could offer condolences. He reassured her that she would not meet the same fate.
Years later, when a family friend died, her parents brought her to the funeral home. She stood nervously at the casket, viewing a corpse for the first time. Her father explained what she was seeing, told her the body would feel cool and waxy, and invited her to touch it. He normalized death not by ignoring it but by describing its physical reality without sentimentality.
He documented these moments photographically. Family albums contained images of his daughter standing beside open caskets of her deceased grandparents, her facial expression uncertain. When questioned about the appropriateness of photographing the dead, he explained simply that the pictures helped him remember.
The father spoke frequently about life's fragility and randomness. After hearing about a traffic accident near his Michigan home, he and his daughter discussed how a forgotten wallet or a bathroom break could have shifted the timing and prevented two drivers from colliding. He lived with an acute awareness of how thin the margin between ordinary and catastrophic truly was.
That awareness shaped his values. He believed people reserved their warmest words and deepest time for the dead at funerals, offering tributes and presence they withheld during life. He once emailed his daughter proposing something unusual: lying in a casket and pretending to be dead so he could listen to what mourners said about him. Then he would rise up and surprise them, joining the gathering to hear their unfiltered memories and praise.
The philosophical point he was making never had to be tested. In mid-April 2019, on an early Monday morning when Midwesterners hope for spring but battle fickle weather, his truck collided with another vehicle on icy country roads following an overnight snowstorm. By the time his daughter flew home from Washington that evening, the snow had melted.
She was present when he took his final breath. She left the hospital with a bag of his clothes: jeans instead of his usual dress pants because he had considered stopping to shovel in the parking lot. Paramedics had cut away his favorite black leather jacket while trying to restart his heart on the roadside. She realized he had no way of knowing that morning that it would be the last outfit he wore.
When she inspected his truck at the police station, she thought about the seconds that divide fate from chance. A few moments in either direction and he would have missed the other vehicle entirely.
The family maintained the tradition of photographing the body in the casket. Her album now holds a new image: her standing beside his body, still uncertain how to arrange her face for the camera. At his funeral, she delivered a eulogy and turned toward his casket, suggesting it was finally time for him to join the gathering. There was no answer, of course.
Nearly seven years later, she hears his voice when she encounters unusual death reports and wants to text him another entry for their list. She has become more deliberate about attending family gatherings, supporting friends, and offering praise while it can still be heard. She tries to live with death's certainty, taking his lessons seriously by letting that awareness sharpen rather than diminish life's purpose. Every morning when she puts on her socks, she thinks of his observation about the people who have no idea they are dressing for the last time.
Author James Rodriguez: "A psychologist who taught his daughter to face death head-on ended up proving the most important lesson of all, not through lectures but through absence."
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