Readying for the Reaper

This may seem a bit grim, this blog, but as I look it over, I don’t think so. I think it’s kind of hopeful.

Still, sometimes things come straight at us and we start thinking about heavy, hard subjects. Lately one of these has been forced into my mind; in consequence I’ve decided to write about it. My sister-in-law, who is not quite 70, has over the last nine or ten months been attacked by metastatic cancer, originating in her uterus, but now popping up all over: liver, lung, brain. She’s been doing chemotherapy and, whether due to that or to her own utter unflappability or to whatever it may be, has done remarkably well. She’s still playing canasta and bridge at her club, modeling courage and grace to all her friends. And all the way from the other side of the country she keeps smacking me soundly and roundly in Words With Friends. But nevertheless she’s getting weaker.

Other things: I just turned 75. Nowadays of course the old three-score-and-ten doesn’t spell the end of the road for lots of us, but (as my college class secretary) I know that it has done so for a fair number of my classmates. Perhaps in consequence I’ve been doing the groundwork to establish a family trust. This task isn’t much fun, actually. The object is to list all one’s assets, no matter how frail. I know that shrouds have no pockets, but I want to set some of these assets aside in order to preserve them for the family members left behind when I am gone before.

At my wife’s church, we are having a seminar called “The Journey Most Avoided: Talking about Aging, Illness, and End of Life.” There are four weekly sessions, each addressing a different question. The first of these, “What happens when we age?” is led by a hospice counselor, and it seems to me, she should know. She plans to discuss what hospice is and how to plan ahead, how to talk with family members about hopes for end-of-life protocols. Hospice workers allowed my father to spend the last few weeks of his life – including Christmas – at home, which was a great gift indeed.

The next week Jane and her assistant, the Reverend Nancy Frausto, will help parishioners cope with “What is our theology of death and dying?” One very concrete element of this discussion will include funeral planning. Many of us don’t like to talk about this touchy subject; it’s easier to let those left behind figure it all out. That can be kind of hard on them, who may have received divergent signals about how things should be handled. In some cases, opportunistic funeral professionals can really gouge vulnerable families. (Though I know that most of these workers are extremely considerate people, once in a while they aren’t.)

Jane and I have our funerals all worked out, by the way. We lived for more than a quarter century at Phillips Academy in Andover, MA, and both sons went to school there. We bought plots in the academy cemetery (where Harriet Beecher Stowe is buried). There is a memorial Garth – a wide circle of granite – where some of my former colleagues are currently residing. I’ve already blogged about this spot (http://www.johnagould.com/my-future-address/) so many of you already know about it. We’ll have to be cremated, so there’s no debate about how to handle us, and it’ll all be pretty cheap.

The third question is one of the most important, and one that many of us don’t want to deal with at all: “How do I make sure the end goes as I want?” Reba Birmingham, a Long Beach attorney who often deals with estate planning, will explain what sort of legal and medical issues plague families as one of their members faces death. The processes of protecting assets, directing legacies, providing medical direction – “do not resuscitate” orders, organ donation, and so on – are all hard to think about but harder on others when we haven’t provided any direction for them. As I mentioned at the start, Jane and I are in the estate planning process right now, and it’s very complex. Counting up assets? Whew! That 1853 portrait of my great-great grandfather? What’s that worth? Who wants my fourth edition of the first collection (1890) of Emily Dickinson’s poems?

And finally the Big Casino: “What happens when I die?” All the seminar facilitators will be present for that one. Remember Laura Nyro’s song, as sung by Blood, Sweat & Tears? “When I die and when I’m gone, there’ll be one child born and a world to carry on, to carry on.” Well, maybe so. But the process of dying is fairly complex, and it is, of course, different for everyone. What is it like for those who die slowly from age and illness, for those who die suddenly from accident or suicide, or for those who die from violence. How can we know? What can we ourselves expect as we approach the great divide? How can we know that?

These are all deep and sobering questions.

I do feel something quite intimate about one of them, for in a way it already happened to me. On a night in the summer of 1968 I was in the back seat of Dave Poulin’s ‘64 Impala convertible, riding back from Gray, Maine. There were four of us, high school buddies now in college, taking a night off from working together, stoop labor harvesting low-bush blueberries.  We had decided to go to a dance in Gray. Coming home it was late, three of us sleeping, and then Dave fell asleep too. Fortunately none of us was wearing a seat belt. The Impala wasn’t even equipped with them.

I remember hearing stones hitting the underside of the convertible and then nothing at all until I woke up on somebody’s lawn. My boots had been ripped off my feet. Some guy was kneeling beside me asking, “Buddy, are you all right?” The car had hit a tree and scraped bark eight feet off the ground; we either tore through the canvas top or flew out after it was knocked off; the Impala flipped over and pancaked, three feet high after being turned back on its wheels; one of us was thrown 100 feet through the air. And we all were alive, and all out of the Lewiston hospital in five days.

“You were sooo lucky,” everyone said.

And we were. We should have been killed. Later, I thought about it all, and wondered if I had been killed, and that what I was getting now was a kind of do-over on earth. Some angel had given me a second life, another chance to do a better job of it. Eventually I settled on the recognition that it’s all a gift, life is, so I should live it; after all, it won’t last forever. You know, I don’t even think I want it to. I got my second chance, and that’s enough. It’s more than most folks ever get.