John Cena’s Reflections on Mortality Are a Masterclass in Grief Literacy
Despite his iconic “You can’t see me” gimmick, recently-retired WWE wrestling superstar John Cena seems to be appearing everywhere, from garbage bag commercials to the big screen. But while he’s living his post-wrestling career to the fullest, it seems that death is still holding space in Cena’s mind. During his recent chat with Rachel Martin on NPR’s Wild Card with Rachel Martin, the 49-year-old Cena reflected on his life and his mortality with the same charm and honesty that’s made him a media darling.
“I will die, and I think about that often,” Cena told Martin. “Now my perspective has changed that we all die. We are all going to die. And it gives me gratitude towards the now.” He went further later in the conversation, landing on a line that could double as deathcare’s mission statement: “We are all renters.”
Retirement without a void
During the interview, Cena ties mortality awareness directly to his December retirement from full-time WWE competition. Although he stepped away from a 23-year career after 17 world championships, he rejects the assumption that retirement left an emotional void that he was trying to fill by acting.
“You speak in an absolute that there has to be a void. I don’t think that’s true,” he said to Martin, explaining that he’d planned his exit years in advance specifically because he’d watched other performers hang on “when I’m a step slower” and get remembered only for that decline. In fact, Cena credits confronting his own mortality, not just career strategy, for that clarity.
“I don’t know how many people face mortality,” he said. “I knew getting into this it was going to end… instead of the void of it’s not there anymore, I look back on… I had 23 years of being a pro wrestler. What? That’s my vocation.”
A decade of “leaning into mortality”
Cena told Martin his relationship with death “really had a profound impact” only in the last decade. He traces a chunk of that shift to his work with the Make-A-Wish Foundation, where he holds the Guinness World Record for most wishes granted — 650 and counting since 2002, more than triple the next-closest celebrity.
“There is not a better chin check on how bad are my problems,” he said when asked about working with so many terminally-ill children, “than to go into someone really fighting… climbing a steep hill. And when that person is a young person, and to see them so full of joy and excitement and hope, even with that steep climb, it has made a world of difference in my life.”
Not everyone gets there by 49
Although most people don’t arrive at “we are all renters” acceptance without a health scare, a diagnosis, or a loss forcing the issue, Cena got there, by his own account, through voluntary proximity to other people’s mortality — Make-A-Wish visits, a career built on physical risk, a hard deadline he set for himself.
When a celebrity with this much reach tells a mainstream NPR audience that thinking about death “not from a morbid sense — from a factual sense” made his life better, it’s an inspiring lesson that deathcare professionals can certainly keep in the back pocket to share with families — especially those considering preplanning.
Cena spent 23 years convincing arenas full of strangers he was invincible, but as it turns out, the more interesting trick was convincing himself he wasn’t — and being grateful for it anyway.
