Hold My Hand, I’m Afraid of the Dark

I often think about last words and what I would say when my time comes. Would mine be poignant, like William James’s: “These, then, are my last words to you. Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact”—or ironic, like John Adams’s in 1826: “Thomas Jefferson survives?”

Death has a funny way of not waiting for a person to come up with last words before knocking at the door. However, if given the choice and the fortune of living to old age, I’d choose simply this: “Hold my hand, I’m afraid of the dark.”

There is a scene in Florian Zeller’s “The Father,” in which Anthony, a man riddled with dementia, breaks down, repeating the same line over and over between tears and gasps for air. “I want my mommy. I want my mommy,” he cries. The scene is impactful not only in its visuals—an old man afraid of the world around him—but also in its language. Like a child, abandoned by his friends in the playground, he cries out for a mother he knows will not come. This moment reminds us that the older person you may see confused in a grocery store, or staring listlessly out a bus window, was once someone’s child. As they age, they become childlike again, only this time without a parent.

I believe life has two distinct periods when we are implicitly vulnerable. The first is infancy; the second is the end of our lives. There is an image in my mind, at least, of older people as somewhat infinite buckets of wisdom from which we can learn and build our own lives. While I find this true, it is also an essential truth that as we age, we regress in many ways back to the conditions of infancy. As many people age, they progressively lose the ability to live and thrive completely independently. Nurses and doctors often adopt the role of the parent, providing a sense of safety, security, and a shoulder to lean on—or, in many cases, to cry on — as they move on to the next and final stages of their lives.

I have no shame in saying that, as a child, I was afraid of the dark. Maybe it was more a fear of the unknown, but in my young mind, it manifested as a fear of the dark. I swore up and down to my parents that there were creepy-crawlies hiding beneath my bed that would nip at my toes and keep me up at night. Eventually, my parents stopped coming every night because they knew my gimmick, but the fear was real.

The unknown has always caused trepidation because it is unknown—a tautological statement, perhaps, but one that reflects an essential aspect of the human condition. Our fear of what we don’t know does not stem from the knowledge that it is inherently dangerous, but from its conflict with our innate desire for control. Various pillars of society, religion among them, can be understood as attempts to impose meaning on what was once, and in some cases remains, unknowable. The fear of the unknown, I think, is not merely a personal anxiety of mine but an intrinsic feature of the human experience.

Death is the ultimate unknown, a frontier that man has yet to conquer. “Death comes for us all; even at our birth—even at our birth, death does but stand aside a little. And every day he looks towards us and muses somewhat to himself whether that day or the next he will draw nigh. It is the law of nature, and the will of God.” This line from Robert Bolt’s 1960 play “A Man for All Seasons” speaks beautifully to the finality of life and the inevitability of death. Though death may be the “law of nature, and the will of God,” it remains a frightening concept at any age—especially in older age, when it is no longer an afterthought but a constant reminder.

We have constructed heavens above our heads and hells beneath our feet, which serve as the best examples of humanity’s refusal to accept oblivion as an option. Whether in philosophy or religion, we have long sought reassurance that death is not final but a brief intermission on the way to better things.

John Donne, the famed late 16th-century poet, speaks directly to death in “Holy Sonnet 10,” writing: “Death, be not proud, though some have called thee / Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so.” Donne’s confidence, rooted in his unwavering Christian faith, is admirable, though it rests on an unprovable promise. We do not know what lies in the infinite beyond; we think, we believe, but ultimately, we cannot be certain until we meet it ourselves. I believe in God, and I believe in heaven, yet faith has never completely silenced the fear of the unknown. And so, if death grants me the opportunity to have last words in my old age, they will neither be ironic nor brave but simply human: “Hold my hand, I’m afraid of the dark.”

Noah Basden ’29 (nhbasden@college.harvard.edu) did NOT have a night light until an embarrassingly old age—whoever told you that is lying.