The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot

by Marianne Cronin

answer?” I leaned back in the pew and it creaked. The echo reverberated around the room. “Why am I dying?”

“You know, it’s funny, I get asked why more often than I get asked anything else. Why is always the hard one. I can do the how and the what and the who, but the why, that’s the one I can’t even pretend to know. When I first started doing this job, I used to try to answer it.” “But you don’t anymore?” “I don’t think that answer is in my jurisdiction. It is only for Him to answer.”

“Think of it this way. Why are you alive?” “Because my parents had sex.” “I didn’t ask how you came to be alive, I asked why. Why do you exist at all? Why are you alive? What is your life for?” “I don’t know.” “I think the same is true of dying. We can’t know why you are dying in the same way that we can’t know why you are living. Living and dying are both complete mysteries, and you can’t know either until you have done both.”

“The problem is,” I said, “what if we die before we finish?” Father Arthur tapped his nose. “What if you don’t?”

“Lenni,” she said softly, “you’re the bravest person I know.” “Why?” “You just are,” she said, and the moment fell between us. “Dying isn’t brave,” I said, “it’s accidental. I’m not brave, I’m just not dead yet.”

Without my consent, a tear broke free from my eye and decided to make its own way in the world,

We have practiced for death every night. Lying down in the dark and slipping into that place of nothingness between rest and dreams where we have no consciousness, no self, and anything could befall our vulnerable bodies. We have died each night. Or at least, we have laid down to die, and let go of everything in this world, hoping for dreams and morning. Maybe that’s why my mother could never sleep—it’s too much like death and she wasn’t ready.