Random Thoughts from a Restless Mind

Death has made a visit to our family once again. Not unlike the passing of my brother-in-law Peter’s Dad, the departure of “Poppy”, my sister-in-laws Dad was a familiar “Circle of Life” event that was just around the corner for some time. Beloved grandfathers to our nephews and nieces, Mr. Keith and Dr. Spector hadn’t been well for some time. If memory serves both men were in, or nearly in their 90’s. Their passing, as inevitable as it may have been, still caught everyone unaware. Unprepared. My sister-in-law Joanne had just been with her father. Like my experience with my Gama, Poppy died while Joanne was trying to get to him one last time.

I’ve told some version of this story many times. When I eulogized Gama I told the story of the young girl, perhaps 5 years old, standing in front of her grandfather’s coffin, stomping her feet in anger. “He CAN’T be dead. I wasn’t DONE with him yet.” That’s surely how I felt at 18 when my Gramp died; I sure wasn’t done with him yet, and neither do I think was anyone else. I never thought Gramp was done with all of us, either. Gama, though, alone for more than 15 years was almost certainly done. I didn’t know Mr. Keith all that well, but I know Joanne very well.

Joanne would have wanted more of her Dad, for sure. I was struck by the pain in my brother’s voice when he said that only one member of our parents’ generation is left to witness our children’s milestones. All but two remain.

But I’m comforted by the fact that, knowing Joanne, she quite naturally had said what I have also written as the things that might make that last goodbye, or more pertinent to this story not knowing that your recent goodbye was the last, a goodbye that might at least leave you peace. Credit for this goes to the sage hospice specialist from Dartmouth who gave the inaugural Ken Lee, M.D. memorial lecture, whose name I have sadly forgotten. The four things we should all say to our loved ones long before they are on the precipice. Long before we find ourselves sprinting to the finish line lest our loved one leaves before the saying.

Thank you.

Please forgive me.

I forgive you.

I love you.

We ought not wait to say these things. They can be hard to say, especially the “I’m sorry” one. Indeed, we probably could stand to say them to those we love early in their (and our) lives, and often. As hard as the loss of Poppy is for my brother’s wife and their family there is the inevitability of death in the elderly; it focuses one’s attention. Not so my friend who lost her daughter to a cardiac arrest while studying for finals in college. Or the friend who lost her son to leukemia before he was old enough to shave. The parents of the little girl who fell off her horse, alone in the gloaming, gone before anyone knew to look.

In reality we are all going to die someday. Everyone we love and everyone we know will, too. But the other really important reality is that, for almost all of us, we are not going to die today. Nor will our loved ones, our friends, or our acquaintances. Unless we are either very old or very unlucky, will all have some living left to do.

I find inspiration in the memory of my father-in-law, Beth’s Dad, who upon receiving a medical diagnosis with a nearly 100% imminent fatality rate went right about the business of living. After getting the diagnosis the guy went to his CrossFit classes for a couple of months for goodness sake. Bob had control of his faculties until the last day or two of his life and darned if he wasn’t going to spend them alive, not “not dying” among his loved ones.

I find inspiration in the dogged determination to milk life for every drop of its glory despite the fact that living now means communicating through blinks of his eyes interpreted by the wonders of a computer chip, a camera, and recordings of his voice made in preparation for these days when he can no longer muster the air to pass through his vocal chords. Nick sent almost 200 men, some friends, some friendly acquaintances met later in life like me, a collection of songs he declared were too important, too lovely, too alive to miss the opportunity to share them, his dwindling minutes remaining be damned.

And I find inspiration in the memory of a little girl who spent her last moments doing the thing she loved more than anything besides the love she had for her parents and her family. She was alive. Like us. Like my father-in-law and from what I know of him Mr. Keith. Life, you see, can be taken by the reins and ridden for all its worth. We need not sit back and let life come to us like a horse at the far end of the field. It may, come for us that is, but it just as well may not. Like that horse, though, we can go right over and get it, hop on, and ride like hell.

That’s the beauty of life. Of living. Of what we the living all have. Being alive is a full-contact participatory sport. Every day you get to wake up is just chockablock filled with literally herds of horses just there for the riding. Some days you’re ready for literally anything and it’s off after that fire-breathing stallion and a gallop for the ages. Others, it’s all you can do to pull yourself into the creaky old saddle of a ancient herdy-gerdy pony barely able to put one foot ahead of the other.

No matter. You’re alive. You woke up again and you looked into that pasture at all of those horses, chose one, and started to ride.

Death may have paid a visit, may indeed be stalking us, stalking you and me, but today is not our day. Uh uh, not today. Today we are alive. We are surrounded by our people, here and everywhere. Hopefully you have told each one of them those four precious things. Thank you. Please forgive me. I forgive you. I love you. Our circle is full. Today you still have your people, and your people still have you. This is not a day to be “not dying”, this is a day to be living.

Choose a horse. Take the reins. Today, once again, we ride.

I’ll see you next week…