Death and Dying

February 13, 2018

Death and Dying

I want to talk about death and dying. But I don’t want to be depressing. I don’t want readers to stop after the first sentence. Nor have I received bad health news; I'm basically good for a few more years at least. But the fact of the matter is that when one turns 75, the subject of death and dying does come up. Too often. I find myself noting the age of celebrities’ deaths when reported on the news. I look back at the people close to me who have died and I note their ages. I don’t think I’m obsessive, although people might disagree, but I just feel like death and dying are something one would be wise to face in one’s life.

I wonder if this train of thought has been brought on by my severe back pain, which is keeping me in my apartment for days at a time; I have way too much time on my hands. (Lordy, I found myself watching The View the other day; can soap operas be far behind?) Or maybe it’s just the realization that some—many—of the people I loved have died, from close friends like Donna and Roger to relatives like my grandparents or, most importantly, my parents. Death is no longer an abstract concept as it often is for the young. It’s all too real.

My first brush with death was my grandfather. He was actually my step-grandfather and he was a most unpleasant man whom I did not care for. His dementia led him to attack my grandmother, whom I truly did love, with a butcher knife. He even once attacked my mother when she went to their place in Colorado to assist. He was placed in a home and died relatively quickly after that. I went to the funeral, my first, with decidedly mixed feelings.

In quick succession, or so it seems now, my father, my grandmother, and my mother died. Mother’s death was the hardest as we were very close. I don’t think I’ve gotten over it yet. And then my friends began to die. Donna, my dearest friend for decades, died after a long and horrific battle with ALS. Then Bil died after battling bone cancer for many years. The hardest was my closest friend Roger, who died unexpectedly while undergoing minor surgery—and as I had his power of attorney, I had to make the decision to disconnect him from those ghastly machines.

So, as I age and begin to deal with a variety of physical issues (such a pile of pills I have to take), I can’t keep back the floodgates of speculation, both of death and the process of dying. But I don’t believe I have a morbid fascination with death and dying. I do believe I am trying to look at those issues rationally and with, I hope, some foresight. Will it stop the processes? Of course not. But at least I am, I hope, learning to deal with the reality that faces all of us.

As French Cardinal René Francois Regnier put it:

            Gaily I lived as ease and nature taught,

            And spent my little life without a thought,

            And am amazed that Death, that tyrant grim,

            Should think of me, who never thought of him.
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I just found a funny, and relevant, cartoon, especially if you know how much I love the poetry of Emily Dickinson: