In 1970, my grandfather was dying.
In the months leading up to his death, his bed was moved to the living room of my grandparents’ home. He received an endless stream of visitors who stopped by to say their goodbyes.
They didn’t wait until he died and then pay their respects to the family.
They came to see him one last time. They came to participate in the final season of his life.
No one questioned whether this was appropriate. No one worried if it was intrusive or morbid.
The final season was visible, expected, and shared.
This was not unique to my family. It was normal.
For most of human history, dying unfolded in the presence of community.
When someone was nearing the end, people knew. And they responded, not after death, but during the final season of life.
They visited. They sat. They told stories. They said what needed to be said while the person could still hear it.
The farewell didn’t begin at the funeral. The funeral completed what had already begun.
That understanding is gone.
Today, dying happens behind closed doors. In hospitals. In care facilities. In private rooms where only medical staff and immediate family are present.
The final season became invisible. And when something becomes invisible, the culture stops recognizing it as important.
This shift didn’t happen because families stopped caring. It happened because death moved out of the home and into institutions.
Once dying was medicalized, it was also professionalized. Doctors managed the process. Families were told to wait. Death became something handled by experts rather than experienced by community.
The unintended consequence was the disappearance of the final season.
The culture now treats engagement during this time as unusual or even inappropriate.
Visiting someone who is dying feels intrusive. Talking about death while someone is still alive feels morbid. Creating acknowledgment before death occurs feels like giving up hope.
So families wait.
They wait to visit. They wait to talk. They wait to reflect.
And by the time death arrives, the season where meaning naturally unfolds has already closed.
Waiting until death to gather, reflect, and acknowledge is not normal. It is historically unprecedented.
For thousands of years, humans understood that the final season of life required presence, not postponement.
My grandfather’s visitors in 1970 were not doing something innovative. They were doing what humans have always done.
They were participating in a season the culture has since erased.
Restoring the final season is not about creating something new. It is about correcting something recently lost.
The final season used to be the most ceremonially rich part of the human experience. It was when farewells began. When meaning was made. When the living and the dying had time to acknowledge what mattered.
That season still exists. Families still experience it. They simply no longer know what to do with it.
They receive medical care during the final season. They receive emotional support. But they receive almost no guidance on how to honor the life that is ending or prepare for the farewell that is coming.
Restoring the final season begins by recognizing that today’s culture is the outlier, not the norm.
Waiting until death to gather is new. Postponing meaning until after someone is gone is new. Treating the final season as something to endure privately rather than acknowledge communally is new.
What is old, what is deeply human, is recognizing that the final season of life matters.
The farewell doesn’t have to begin at death. It can begin while there is still time.
More soon,
John H. Callaghan