Even though I knew ahead of time who he was and what he represented, I watched the story unfold with a bit of anxiety. I wasn't sure how the elderly woman—who for years had been living her life in seclusion behind locked doors, terrified of meeting Death in person—would react when she finally recognized who she had invited inside her house.
If someone reading this post hasn't watched the episode (we hadn't, so it was new to us), I won't go into many details. But I did want to comment on one aspect of Redford's character (named Harold Beldon). Though his character was kind, gentle, even vulnerable, knowing who he was and why he was there, I kept waiting for him to become evil or bad. Like a demon in disguise.
When that never happened, when, like a gentleman, he offered the woman his arm for her to take as he escorted her out the door, I realized I was conflating two things unfairly: death and demons. But this episode seems to be suggesting that death, in and of itself, is not evil. Death did not enter her house to hurt her. He entered to escort her to the next life.
I won't bother to explore spiritual or Biblical questions about the afterlife, or faith in God, or sin or hell. Rather, I prefer to stay focused on what this one little 30-minute Twilight Zone episode seemed to be exploring: Death seems terrifying to those of us who are clinging desperately to this life, breathing in and out and living day to day. But what if it's not so terrifying? What if it's simply just the next step?
Anyway, not that I don't want to keep on breathing and living day to day. But these are the thoughts that came to mind this morning. And I was reminded of this lovely poem by Emily Dickinson, who also took a moment to personify Death.
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