Visiting my new home

When my wife, Lynn, who has a wicked sense of humor, refers to our cemetery lot, she usually refers to it as  "our future home."  So when the monument maker called this week to say that the granite marker we had ordered in the spring was ready to be installed, I asked her, "should we invite people to a wine and cheese--like a housewarming party?"

Laughter is certainly helpful in dealing with matters of mortality, the topic we Americans tend to avoid (except when we indulge our love of guns and watch our fellow citizens being shot nearly every day).

It was a positive approach to death and dying that led me last year to give a talk at our church on "Making Friends with Death."  The resulting essay is now almost ready for publication on Kindle.  And then this year to order a "pre-need" monument for the graves where one day our remains will lie.

I found that writing about my deepest fear was the only way to deal with it, and that talking about it with others was essential. I am not, as they say, getting any younger.  It was also useful to find quotations from wise men and women over the centuries who have, without being morbid, reflected on the fact that, as Shakespeare wrote, "all that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity."

Now, having made some basic funeral plans and preparations, I feel a bit less anxious. I try to see death as an inevitable part of life and a great transition--to what? To that unknown realm where so many people dear to me now dwell.

To talk about death is to talk about the meaning of life and the need for faith in coping with the darkness. I want to feel comfortable with the darkness, even with the fact that my identity, memory and consciousness will be forever erased when my body dies.  What remains will be, I hope, happy, at least free from the "thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to" (Hamlet again, sorry).

As the great 16th century poet and mystic St. John of the Cross wrote, "I don't know what lies on the other side, when everything for me is turned into eternity; I only know that a great love awaits me."

I thought of this when Lynn and I went alone this week to look at our new monument, carefully carved with our names (spelled correctly, to my relief). There was no need for a party.

Roth, Tolstoi, and the Meaning of Life

The recent death of Philip Roth has led me to read more of his fiction in an attempt to see why many have called him America's greatest writer.   Indignation and the short novel Everyman show him to be a masterful storyteller who is able to combine humor with pathos; the latter work has an amazing narrative economy, giving us a life story of its nameless protagonist in 180 pages.

But this late fiction is grim, not merely because it shows that "old age is a massacre," a depressing battle zone of pain, medication, and suffering. But because of its bleak view of life as essentially pointless.

Fiction, it is often said, reveals the truth in profound, human terms beyond the ability of philosophers. And what truth, what insight comes to Roth's alter-ego, his aging protagonist as he reviews his troubled life and looks toward death? Gazing at the ocean he has always loved, the narrator is depressed, thinking that life "has been given to him, as to all, randomly, fortuitously, and but once, and for no known or knowable reason."

He is unable to feel gratitude for this unique, random gift of life--and for all the good things in the present moment. Beyond the ongoing, ceaseless misery of life, he is unable to see any value and beauty in each day or in the people in his life.

As I completed Everyman, I thought of another similar but much greater novella: "The Death of Ivan Ilych" by Tolstoi, in which the dying main character moves from a self-directed darkness of despair to the light of gratitude.  He sees in loving, in being loved and cared for, enough reason for his existence.   As Ivan's body dies, his soul comes alive in a mysterious way, and he is no longer tormented by the nihilism that dominates Roth's character.

Human life, Tolstoi suggests, is not pointless after all, even amid the bitterness of isolation and the pain and suffering because Ivan has at last found a "knowable reason" for having lived. The tragedy is that this insight comes so late; but for Tolstoi, and the reader, the point is that the redemptive insight has come. Ivan does not go grimly, hopelessly into the oblivion of death.  He has known love.

You might think that Tolstoi has written a religious story with Christian overtones. Perhaps.  The author's intentions here are not that simple. But there is a depth--call it spirituality if you wish--and a mystery to his dying character that Roth's strictly materialistic character lacks. To me, at least, his story remains ordinary, rooted in postmodern pessimism, whereas Tolstoi's "everyman" story remains profound and profoundly moving.

The Slow Goodbye

Death, the subject we tend to dread the most, is always present somewhere in the mind, usually at an unconscious level.  Sometimes it is tinged with hope and a sense of relief; often, with a terror of the unknown.

I wish I could simply say, like Hamlet's mother, "all that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity," and let it go at that.  But fear of the final goodbye and the extinction of our consciousness and identity runs too deep.

For the past year, our cat, Lizzie, a nineteen-year-old tabby cat, has been teaching us a lesson in dying with dignity. When the vet yesterday officially said what we knew--that her kidneys have failed--she also said Lizzie has been very tolerant of her condition. She has always been a quiet, indoor cat, a model of patience and simplicity, who now spends most of her life sleeping.

Her disease has gradually made her confused, as she walks slowly around very familiar territory, looking disoriented. She neither eats nor plays; yet, when petted, she will still wag her tail and purr a bit.

As my wife and I watch her, we think, invariably, of our own end. We are aware of neighbors and friends whose lives are ebbing away. 

Lizzie is lucky to be spared the knowledge that she will die.  She remains placid most of the time while we wonder about when to end her life: should we prolong it another week, waiting for nature to take its course?  When is the right time to say goodbye?

If Lizzie can wait (without knowing she's waiting), why can't we? 

This gentle cat has taught us many lessons, provoked many laughs during the past fifteen years, and inspired many stories. Now I think it is her destiny to teach us  something about accepting death as the natural part of life it is and as something to be welcomed with relief.

Thoughts in Solitude

Two Lenten reflections:

1. The most important thing our cat does not know, of all the millions of things she is unaware, is that she is dying. Lizzie, perhaps 19, is a quiet tabby we  have had for the past 15 years as an indoor cat; she once enjoyed being outdoors on our porch and at night she would play with me before licking my wife's face in bed.

Now Lizzie sleeps curled up in a corner, half-hidden by a curtain, as if trying to retreat from us. She emerges only to eat and use her box, where she seems slightly disoriented. She has no interest in being playful or being petted. Yet she is spared, as I am not, the keen awareness of age, infirmity, and the coming of death.

I think of this daily now since I am aware of my 93-year-old neighbor who is near death in a nursing home wondering, as he tells me, why he is being kept alive. I have no answer.  He must know it would be a great relief for his wife and family if he passed, yet it is not God's will--yet.

My own aging process fills me at times with great dread as I think of being sent to a nursing home to die or picture myself hobbling around my home half-crippled with arthritis.  All I can do is find time each day to be grateful for all that is good in my life and to be productive, even when surrounded by reminders of mortality.

None of this is as depressing as it may sound since I am glad to be aware of what is going on since it forces me into prayer and reflection.

2.  A shared insight from Richard Rohr, the Franciscan writer:  Most of the untold millions of people who have lived on this planet have been poor and powerless, often oppressed.  Their history is seldom told. A major exception is the Bible, which uniquely legitimizes those on the bottom while criticizing those with wealth and power. Is it any wonder that the Bible and the faith it records remain alive for countless people?

An important topic for Lenten reflection is being mindful of the poor and marginalized, who are so often unseen in our affluent society. I think of Pope Francis' call for a poor church, "a church for the poor."  He does more than speak. This week, a homeless man was buried in a special part of the Vatican cemetery reserved for German priests.

Francis doesn't worry about setting a precedent--if we do this for one, how many more will expect to be buried there?  Such is the likely fear of many in powerful places in Rome and elsewhere.  And I doubt if the German priests will mind sharing space with a no-body who lived on the streets.

It is good to see the Vatican moving in some surprising new ways to pay attention to the poor, who are the image of Christ among us.