This presentation examines the phenomenology of death, supported by the ontologies and cosmologies contained in the philosophies of Willy Ermine, Alfred North Whitehead and Merleau-Ponty. Moving beyond western interpretations of death to explore the perspective that the experience of death is a valuable rite of passage. One that has in previous lifetimes connected us to a deeper aspect of humanity, an aspect that has been touched by the modernization of intimate life. The talk and engaging dialogue proposes an axiology for the spectrum of life experiences touched by death in indirect ways. Anguish by August Friedrich Schenk, (c1878) contributes to analysis of what makes up the continuum of life, and a photograph by Micheal Coyne of an anonymous woman in Tehran ponders the effects of cultural change and shame placed on embodiments of grief. A portrait of Cole Bringsplenty platforms the epidemic of death of Indigenous youth. A photograph titled Warrior by Dave Brosha creates dialogue around the death of “greatness”, questioning the nihilistic ideology that death represents human finitude.(Van Manen 2007) A transdisciplinary, pluralistic approach questions the object of death from multiple perspectives seeking deeper meanings for existence itself, and asking how our purpose and modes of living can be transformed by the transcendence of death.