Dying – an Unhappy Affair?

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Why do we, as a culture, have such a difficult time discussing, respecting, understanding death?

 In the past few years I’ve watched two close relatives die – my father and my mother-in-law. Neither of these deaths was pretty or dramatic, the only two ways I’ve seen death explored in our visual media – T.V. and movies. After being with my dad on the day he died, I now watch media death scenes with derision.

 Yeah, sure, the character’s dying of cancer, but she’s wearing lipstick and can talk to her loved ones seconds before she takes her last breath.

Or, oh, watch the cowboy/drug dealer/policeman take a bullet and stumble, then look out at his rescuers or killers and tell them exactly what they want to hear before his heart stops.

Even our most gruesome shows, like CSI or Bones, show the dead person after he or she’s died. I guess it’s easier to go after the bad guy than watch the slow painful effects as the victim slowly succumbs.

Of course, there are a few exceptions. Meryl Streep plays a woman ravaged by cancer in Anna Quindlen’s book-turned-into-a-movie, One True Thing, about the death of a perfect mom.  She slowly loses weight, and hair, and dignity as her life winds down to a hospital bed in the living room. Now that’s real death in America, though for some it ends in a sterile hospital room loaded with metallic devises meant to prolong the agony of dying. Either way, it’s not pretty. It’s hard, hard work. Like birth.

Are we meant to work so hard at dying? Granted, it should never be easy to die; most of us want to live forever, always able to enjoy a sunlit spring morning, a lover’s embrace, a child’s smile, a dog’s unconditional love.

But we weren’t built to last forever. Our bodies wear down, our hearts weaken, our minds turn vague.  Back in the ‘old days,’ like a century or so ago, I think dying wasn’t such a slow process. We didn’t have pills to keep the ticker ticking, chemotherapy to keep the tumor smaller, long-term health facilities to keep the dying alive no matter what. My mother-in-law’s cancer had progressed beyond rescue, and at 84, she was aware that her life was at an end. But chemotherapy was used to keep her alive for ‘at most six more months.’ For five months, she suffered through bleeding sores in her mouth and esophagus, severe nausea and vomiting, weakness and debilitating fatigue. Was it worth it – those last five months of doling out poison to keep her alive?

I guess that’s the question we should all be asking ourselves, even when we’re in our 30’s and 40’s and 50’s and feeling blessed with the joy of life.

  • When does quality of life end, and living ‘just to still be breathing’ begin?
  • How important is our life, and when does it become unimportant?
  • How much should we suffer, and do we need to suffer to have lived a full life?
  • Why are we born, and why do we die?

Perhaps if our culture wasn’t so afraid to ask these questions, dying wouldn’t be such an unhappy affair.

And we’d understand the astonishing link between birth … and death.

Time – A Cruel Thief?

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As we begin to be inundated with “the holidays,” I shiver at the thought of how fast the time has gone.

If someone came up to me and said, “Fooled ya, it’s really May 25,” I’d gladly and willingly believe them.

In fact, just this past month I told two different people that it’s spring. And I was being sincere! Embarrassing? Yes, but my brain really can’t fathom the fact that we’re into late fall already.

Where does each day go? The goddess in charge of the calendar just swoops days up into her apron, juggles them around as if they’re playing cards to be shuffled, and then (the clinker here) snaps her fingers like a magician to make them disappear.

The weird thing is how this same goddess, when she and I were much younger, tricked the days into being as long as a string that encircles the earth. I remember a day in my 6-year-old life, for instance, when my mom and I were visiting her sick friend.  The morning crept by tick tock tick tock tick tock one minute at a time, slow slow until hours and hours later, it was still morning and I still had to play with the friend’s smarmy kid.

Once in high school, the days were still excruciatingly long: each year – freshman, sophomore – took a decade to complete. The idea of ever being an adult, on my own, away from my parents’ grip, was too ludicrous to even contemplate.

But now, spring has become fall in the blink of an eye. If time keeps racing on, laughing at me, daring me to slow it down, I will be an old lady in two blinks, feeble, stooped, alone, and lonely.

That horrible reflection turns my thoughts to Elizabeth Haileys’ quote from A Woman of Independent Means, “Time is a cruel thief to rob us of our former selves. We lose as much to life as we do to death.”

Then I berate myself for cogitating so negatively. After all, without time, we’d all be without family, loved ones, friends; in fact, we’d be unshaped and unbeautiful.

And each of us are so lovely in our own time, shaped from our own experiences, bent and doubled over sometimes, yes, but still standing strongly, still looking that time goddess in the eye and saying, “Bring it ON.”

Pauline Fisk explains it superbly in her book The Secret of Sabrina Fludde:  “The flow of time is always cruel. Its speed seems different for each person, but no one can change it. A thing that doesn’t change with time is a memory of younger days. Something that grows over time is a true friendship, a feeling in the heart that becomes even stronger over time. The passion of friendship will soon blossom into a righteous power and through it, you will know which way to go. Time passes, people move… like a rivers’ flow, it never ends. A childish mind will turn to noble ambition, young love will become deep affection, the clear waters’ surface reflects growth. Now listen and reflect upon yourself.”

So I am listening, and I am reflecting, celebrating my righteous power and deep affection for life.

And trying not to look at the clock while doing so….

1955

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I see her hips move

Swinging back and forth to the music

I think she’s lonely, standing there,

In front of a pretty man named Dick Clark

Swinging her arms back and forth

Steam swaying over the long flat board

Clothes smelling freshly flattened

I want to dance with the fun people

On the TV, but there is no room

For fun, with the iron, and the board

And my mother, swinging her hips

And sighing, as loud as the iron hisses.

Baby, You Make Me Laugh

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Babies make me laugh just by watching their expressions as they try to figure out the world. They make it all seem funny: birds and clouds and lawn mowers; dog bowls and T.V.’s and sneakers; rings and lips and voices. Each and every idiosyncrasy is funny, and everything and everyone in the world is idiosyncratic to a baby.

Sophie, my granddaughter, finds me especially peculiar. When I walk into a room, she looks at me and smiles. When she smiles, her eye light up and she crinkles her nose like a teenage girl flirting with the quarterback. How did she learn to do that already?

But back to me. Why am I so amusing? I read a nursery rhyme to Sophie and bounce her on my knee. She chuckles. I put a dinner napkin over her face and ask, “Where’s Sophie?” She giggles as if I’m the funniest comedian in the world. I blow bubbles on her belly and she laughs so hard she gets the hiccups. Now that’s funny.

There’s something about the sweet innocent face of a baby that makes us all smile. God, in her infinite wisdom, creates babies round and comely quite purposely. Otherwise, changing diaper after diaper after diaper, cleaning up each time the baby regurgitates her food, and trying to get the baby to stop screaming and take a nap would be impossible to endure. But just when a mother or father, grandmother or grandfather, is about to take the baby back to the hospital, where she came from, she stares at you with big wide sweet blue eyes and opens her arms to be held, smelling sweeter than a bunch of lilacs, and chortling in pure pleasure. The heart melts into molten chocolate, and the baby becomes a part of you, a third arm, another lung, some appendage or organ that you will never ever be able to do without.

Watch a baby when you have chance. She’ll remind you how peculiar and intriguing we all are, and how strange and wonderful life is, in all its mystery and delight.

Sleeping In

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I can’t think of one good reason to sleep in. The idea of sleeping in makes me so uncomfortable my spine stiffens and I get a funny taste in my mouth.

I’m ashamed of this reaction. I have become one of those people – one of those overactive, overinvolved, overstimulated humans. Why else would I react in such a negative way to the idea of doing nothing on a beautiful, new, glorious early morning?

You see, if I sleep in, I don’t get my early morning walk with my dog along the waterfront, watching the fog swoop through the Golden Gate and swirl over Angel Island, pelicans diving in and out of the misty gray. On some mornings, this scene is what makes the day worth living.

The pulse of my blood, the stretch of my limbs, the smile on the golden’s wide mouth and the twirl of his happy tail. I would miss this if I slept in. As well as the warm sweet tea that my man delivers to me by 6:20 every weekday morning, with perfect milky foam and Earl Gray steaming into my olfactory senses. How could I miss this?

And then the ‘ting’ of the computer singing hello to me, the sweet greetings of East Coast friends and family who have been awake for three hours and already shared their thoughts and yearnings and news. I suppose that those messages would still be waiting for me if I slept in, but hours old. Old news.

Can I sleep in? Unfortunately many nights I can’t sleep past 3:30 a.m., much less 6 or 7 or, gasp, 8. When was the last time I ‘slept in’? Um, senior year of college? Noon, in my twin bed while my sleeping roommate slowing wakes up in her twin, dormitory noises outside the locked door, sun trying to peep through the gray blinds. Reliving out loud the crazy night before. Giggling, while struggling to not wake up.  But the door reverberates with knocks, “Get up you two, touch football on the green – girls are ahead of the boys, 6-2.” Roomie and I pop out of bed, vowing to never sleep in again and miss all the fun.

Sleeping in makes the day start too late. I’d miss the ‘me’ time, the delicate time between being in my own world, before joining the world of everyone else.

How about you?