Meditation on Death, 17 September 1993 (Blog Version)
Meditations on death seem
to sneak into my consciousness too often lately. Perhaps it’s just the end of summer that stirs the uneasy
feelings associated with loss of youth and the shouldering of responsibilities,
of being a grown-up person whose purpose is, after all, to work and pay taxes
and acquire possessions but never really enjoy them and then to eventually die,
hopefully without having to be really sick or to suffer.
But I think not. I seem to think of death when I walk in
the woods with Moose, my fourteen year old part Lab who has cancer and drools a
thick slimy space-age-looking substance that I’m sure would make me a million
if only I could bottle and patent it.
Yet the idea of making money just returns me to my ascetic thoughts.
Knowing that sooner or
later I will have to decide to have the dog euthanized gives me some degree of
angst. I can’t help feeling that
this is a test. On the one hand I
am a realist and I know that death is a natural thing; on the other I know how
losses tear away at my very being.
Thus it is the waiting for precisely the right moment that has me on
guard: for this decision must be timed perfectly. To let go too soon would serve only my desire to get the
waiting over with and substitute some of the pain with guilt; too late would be
selfish and cruel and insensitive and make me grieve too intensely.
It wouldn’t be of such
significance were it not for the fact that I know this is a test. Not to hurry
death prematurely with despair, nor to thwart death by holding on too tightly
to life.
Death seems so ugly when it
is random and untimely. Yet so
often it comes as an end to suffering and is seen, on a purely human level, as
a relief. When my mother was dying
it was the waiting that seemed to take its toll on me; in a sense I had been
waiting for over thirty years. It
was as if she had died long ago and the only thing that had survived was her
disease; as if it was the disease, not Mom, around which our lives revolved.
I left her hospital room
one afternoon and drove around aimlessly as if to gather up the phlegm of anger
that had settled in my chest over the years. When I walked into the kitchen back home, I was drawn instantly
to the drawer where we kept the silverware. We always called it silverware even though there wasn’t an
ounce of silver in it. There was
one setting of flatware that had a different pattern – the set that only mom
used and which was always separated from the rest of the knives and forks and spoons (supposedly to protect the rest of the family from contracting TB).
My anger was powerful and
overpowering; I was suddenly intent on mangling and destroying what I instantly
became aware of as the symbol of my mother’s disease. I twisted and bent the
offensive utensils and expelled them from the house and into the trash. The private drama was my declaration
that the disease no longer had power over this place, or this family. The release and relief was intense.
Mom was on a respirator due
to her deteriorating ability to breath on her own and was unable to talk because
of the breathing tube that forced air into the part of a single lung that she
had lived with for nearly twenty years – and thirty-two and a half years longer
than the doctors had once given her.
Mom was gesturing, trying
to communicate her desire to have the breathing machine removed. This was not possible, the doctors
explained to us and to her – unless she was able to breath on her own long
enough to meet the strict protocol for the device to be disconnected. Mom drew on whatever strength she had
left to breath once again on her own – to breathe long enough to meet the
required standard. The doctor
ordered removal of the respirator and the breathing tube.
She wanted no further
“extraordinary measures” to be taken, and once she was off the respirator, the doctors were
obligated to comply. She was able
to give up her spirit in peace and dignity. My grief then was quiet and cleansing and, like a gentle rain,
tapered off and ended.
It is strange what we
recall from all those religious retreats and days of recollection we had to
endure as teens and young adults: one Padre in a long cassock reminded us that
our lives are as short and insignificant as the dash carved on a tombstone
between the year of one’s birth and the year of death.
I hope I pass the test with
Moose. I suppose it’s in the
timing; the timing is the important thing; to know precisely the right
moment. Not too soon; not too
late; to be patient; to wait; and yet to go on as if nothing is different; to
fool death, to pretend not to notice his game of hide and seek. The timing is everything. Ollie-ollie-in-free. The leaves are falling and it is the
end of another summer. Another
tick in the tick-toc of time. Another
microscopic chip of granite carved out of the space between the year of our
birth and the year of our death.
Suddenly summers become a shrinking commodity. How many are left?
I wonder if there is any
point to trying to do, to see, to have, to experience more; I suppose if you’re my Leon,
it makes sense. He collects memories
like home movies. I, on the other
hand, forget. Leon says that it’s
a waste for me to go on a trip or to see a movie because I forget so much. Perhaps that is my attempt at
detachment. Knowing that I am
easily encumbered, I prepare for death by forgetting life. Perhaps like my mother, I’ve already
died and have to wait for it to be finalized. God, the waiting is so tedious sometimes. And so, as
meditations go, one often gets distracted, perhaps so as to avoid getting too
entangled.
We just go on to tomorrow.
We just go on to tomorrow.