An Aside

I often think about death. I don’t talk about it too often because it’s considered inelegant, and it makes others squeamish. But birth and death are the two most important events in one’s life, and talking openly and seriously about the latter should be encouraged, rather than avoided.
I have reached and surpassed my past due date, which for males in the U.S. is 73.5 years. Life expectancy for U.S. men has fallen and it is now six years less than that of women.
At my age, I have lost both parents, one older sister, uncles, aunts and cousins, three best friends, one significant other, and a number of acquaintances, casual colleagues and comrades, teachers and students and neighbors.
I have enough health issues both significant and not to realize and accept that there’s not an infinity of time left. I am not a religious man, though I do believe there is some sort of higher force out there, and that it isn’t me. I don’t believe in heaven or hell, but I do allow that anything’s possible. I’ve often wondered why pain and discomfort are far more the norm than happiness and pleasure, and why this higher power has not made the business of creation less violent and more amicable. I believe that Tennyson nailed it: Nature (is) red of tooth and claw. But I wonder why…
I remember reading years ago that the body doesn’t remember pain. I’m not sure whether this is a quote or urban knowledge, and it doesn’t really matter—it’s true. Would we be as willingly violent if we remembered ever scrape and scratch? Would women be willing to have a second child if they could remember the almost unbearable pain associated with the first? And why pain? Why hasn’t nature allowed birth to be a pleasant experience? Why are violence and creation cousins so inextricably linked? There’s something of a bait-and-switch here. Sex is pleasant, hopefully for both parties involved, but the end result of sex, its culmination—birth—is painful and, until recently, often fatal to the child bearer. This makes no sense. The Zulus knew this and understood that when a woman gives birth, it’s the man who lies down.
What I find interesting about death and illness is the embarrassment that surrounds them. When asked how we are by friends, we do not respond with a litany of ills. We say we’re good, fine, thank you, and we turn the question back to the querier, “And how are YOU?”
My answer to the inevitable is, “I’m peachy!” If that doesn’t lead to a change of subject, I’ll go with peachy KEEN! That seldom fails.
I have had the dubious distinctions of seeing both my mother and father shortly after they died. My mom was in a room in the American Hospital in Paris which, strangely enough, is where she gave birth to me. Lifeless, she seemed so small, it was difficult to associate her slight body with the sheer dimensions of her personality. My dad died in the U.S. following a fall from a window. He too was small in death, and neither wore a revealing expression. They were not serene, or happy, or sad. They’d become empty vessels whose usefulness was past.
I know both suffered, and death must have been a welcome escape. I’m grateful for that, but unlikely to ever understand why pain was necessary.