THE ANNOYING CERTAINTY OF DEATH
Photo credit: ShutterStock Photo ID: 2335089655 photographer ZikG
My friend Diane Barth, generously posted this essay on her excellent blog, “Aging Without Map” https://substack.com/@fdbarth
I asked my niece’s daughter how old she was. She said, “7, how old are you?” I said, “72”. She shot back, “You’re almost dead”. Kids don’t know how to bullshit.
When you’re old there’s an annoying invisible elf on your shoulder constantly reminding you that life is a sexually transmitted condition with a 100% fatality rate. We just don’t know when and how.
I read the obituaries now and my first question is, “how old?” and “what got him?” Based on the average age in the obits I figure I’ve got around 8–20 years. It’s all about luck and when lightning decides to strike.
The speed of time is different in each phase of life. For kids every year is a 50/50 split between school and summer. Four years of college was a lifetime. Then again in 1952, when I was born, Hitler had only been dead for 7 years. Seinfeld was on the air for 9.
Modern medicine helps slow down the demon time. I have 2 artificial knee joint implants. Cataract surgery gave me a new lens in each eye. To fix an irregular heartbeat they ran a wire up my leg and into my heart to electronically zap something. Now every morning a little transmitter just below the skin in my chest sends my nightly heart rate data to a company in Oregon that reports to my doc. I’m like one of those 1950’s cars in Cuba still on the road thanks to replaced parts and great mechanics.
It’s easier to write about death at this moment when I’m not dying, sick or in one of my frequent hypochondriacal meltdowns triggered by some new transient symptom or pimple. It helps a little to know that there are 8 billion other humans on the planet in the same boat but as an elevator ice breaker you can’t really go with — “Hey, how about that certainty of approaching death — Huh?”
We all have our stories of lives cut short. A few months after a close friend retired at 70, I got a call from his girlfriend who was waiting for him to start their vacation in Maine and he wasn’t answering his phone. My conversation with a Brooklyn cop about to climb through a window into his apartment, where they found him, will be with me for the rest of my life like a brain tattoo.
I learned the true meaning of courage watching my wife’s father, a Normandy veteran, confront death at age 102. I was in the hospital room when he asked his beloved doctor for a prognosis. When the response was a grim faced, tight-lipped, head shake he decided it was time to check out. Over the next few days until he died, each time the morphine wore off he was furious about still being here.
I have 4 grandsons, ages four to one month. I wonder how much of their lives I’m going to get to enjoy. When they are long out of diapers will someone be changing mine?
I was recently watching the four year old and his buddies racing around a playground pretending they were dinosaurs and roaring in each other’s faces. I flashed an image of those little guys as young men getting together in a bar after work and sharing hazy memories of that playground.
One of the hardest parts of getting old and watching my kids grow up is the journey from the center of their universe to the margins. What did you ever learn about the parents of a friend or co-worker in the years before you started hearing about them getting sick or dying?
In writing this I wanted to avoid sounding like a Hallmark Card with a syrupy message about how short life is so make the most of it. I have always sneered at Hallmark cards. I put them in the same category as small town bed and breakfasts with framed crocheted sayings on the wall and porcelain squirrel clocks. My experience in those places always includes an early morning search for the owner to ask her for a toilet plunger.
I decided that if I was going to say something about Hallmark Cards I should at least check out their website for samples of what I’ve been sneering at. I did not expect to have my mind changed. It turns out that Hallmark became a gazillion dollar company, with three cable networks, by figuring out how to help millions of people express kindness, support or sympathy to someone they care about.
Just above “Thanksgiving and Wrapping Paper” on their web site is“Ideas and Inspiration”. This took me to “Hospice Messages: What to Write to Someone Who is Dying.” I found a short essay by Keely, a self described “long time Hallmark writer”. Her “Linked In” page says she was an English Major with a Masters in Writing from Kansas State University.
Keely put together a list of writing tips organized by theme to help people offer, “comfort, bring a smile and, most of all, let someone you know, know how much their life has meant to you.”
It took me well into adulthood to understand that the smartest things people say are usually the simplest. On the subject of being kind to someone who is dying, this young English major suggested, “May I just say that it really sucks that you’re dying? Hey, this is me here — not some kind of poet.”
I know an Ivy League graduate whose entire job is to write correspondence for an Ivy League president. Regular people go to drugstores and pick out the right card.
Remember that thing I said about not wanting to write something Hallmarky about how life is short so make the most of every minute. I’m over that now. It’s not a bad idea. I am, however, holding the line at framed crocheted sayings and porcelain squirrel clocks.
