Growing Mortal

Side by side

July 9th, 2008. Obituaries, New York Times. He was 95, she was 84. John Templeton was born poor in the midst of dusty winds in Tenessee. He grew old enough to, at age 12, witness the Scopes "monkey trial", a judical battle involving fundamentalist creationism (is there any other?) and the theory of evolution. He lived and worked to be fabulously rich but kept a modest lifestyle. Most of his fortune financed projects and people dedicated to unveil "spiritual realities" and to reconcile Science and Religion. Pneumonia ended his untiring search for Truth.

She was born Ruth Printz in 1924 and grew up in New York. Good student and good typist, she married her high school sweetheart and went on with an ordinary life until a judge asked about her brother-in-law's involvement with anti-American communist espionage. She lied on the witness chair, incriminating her husband's sister. Ethel was executed with her husband Julius Rosemberg on June 19, 1953. After the execution, Ruth Greengrass had to live under an assumed name for the rest of her life. After her death, the government consented to release her testimony, her life-long Lie.

Ruth and John face each other inside the obituaries session. Truth and Lie. Does Death make everything irrelevant? Or is it the measure of what really matters in Life?

- L... 

The American way of death

    I was there as a mental health professional, with nothing more personal than my trained empathy for the living ones who are experiencing the loss of a relative. Time went by, long religious service, I end up chatting with the funeral home director, Brazilian like me.

    He tells me about his fascination with the American way of organizing a wake, the deceased one memorialized in videoclips, the quiet sadness and the dead ones presented with almost no trace of suffering or decay. We remembered the night-long wakes in Brazil, the strong bitter coffee keeping the faithful awake, the crying out loud and the fainting flowers. And the onmipresence of flies, forecasts of decay. Someone would bring a fan, or a fly swatter and stay in charge. Others would take turns by the door, guarding against the robbers who work the overnight shift. The burial has to be hurried, especially on hot days, due to the implacable march of the bacteria, so everyone is asked to help out. A wake in Brazil is a marathon of solidarity, alertness and emotional endurance. Nothing to compare to the climate-controlled rooms of a funeral home, the safe parking and, more importantly, the embalmed body.

    "Only famous artists and presidents are embaled in Brazil," the coordinator informs me. "Everyone else has to rot right in front of their friends and families." He has a story to tell: "We sent an old woman to Brazil and the family thought she was a saint because her body was embalmed. They decided to have another night-long wake so every one in the small town had a chance to pay their respects and ask for a blessing".

    I asked if he had thought about telling the truth to the family.

    "No," he said. "We try to make people happy - it sounds funny, but it is the truth in this business."

    After a pause, he confided that he was thinking about opening a franchising of his funeral home in Brazil, where the elite may be willing to pay for the privilege of experiencing the American way of death.

        --- L.

Baseball and Death

From "The Boys of Summer," by Roger Kahn (1971)

    "Unlike most, a ball player must confront two deaths. First, between the ages of thirty and fourty he perishes as an athlete. Although he looks trim and feels vigorous and retains unusual coordination, the superlative reflexes, the major league reflexes, pass on. At a point when many of his classmates are newly confident and rising in other fields he finds that he can no longer hit a very good fast ball or reach a grounder four strides to his right. At thirty-five he is experiencing the truth of finality. As his major league career is ending, all things will end. However he sprang, he was always earthbound. Mortality embraces him. The golden age has passed as in a moment. So will all things. So will all moments."

The Moral Fears

    My moral fear of dying is that my children will, in the final result, be disappointed in me

    My moral fear of dying is that my wife will, in the end, be disappointed as well.

    My moral fear is that death will find me a disappointment to my brother.

    If my parents are still living, they will be disappointed in me.

    I am afraid to die before I've done all I can to keep from letting these people down.

        --- C.

Overheard

    At the Y, working at my weight-loss project on an elliptical trainer.
    The young lady on the trainer to my left decides to make a call.
    "It's me. I'm trying to think about something. I have to go to this thing tonight. This kid from my class, he died last week. He drowned swimming by the Trestle, you know where we go sometimes. Yeah, he drowned. He was in my math class and my social studies class. The wake is tonight and I need help to think. What am I going to wear?"

        --- C.

Oh, by the way

    Received a call from a high school friend, a guy who calls me about once a year with his updates.
    He has the odd style of a person who is not completely plugged into feelings the way most people are.
    We talked for about ten minutes, he asked about my kids, I asked about his.
    "Oh by the way," he says. "Did I tell you about my mother? She had a stroke last year. She's totally paralyzed on her right side and she has aphasia and I'm taking care of her full time. It was really messed up the way it happened, too. I went to visit her at home and she didn't look right, so I took her to the doctor and the doctor said 'Take her to the hospital, she's having a stroke,' and then after a couple of days they thought she was doing better and they wanted me to take her home but I said she doesn't look very good. The doctor there said she's fine. But I noticed she was only using her left hand to do things, and it turned out she was having another stroke right there and no one really noticed, so by the time I got her home she was completely paralyzed and I had to take her back and she was in the hospital for another month and in rehab for a month but none of that did much good. I'm taking care of her now. I don't want her to go to a nursing home. Did you know that the average person dies about four months after moving into a nursing home?"

        ---- C.

How much and for how long

    The woman looked Latino like me, with a similar taste for slimming dresses. We chatted in and out of the crammed fitting room until the moment of paying for our bargains. Before saying goodbye, I asked her if she would have an opportunity to use the beautiful flowered dress when visiting her home town below the Equator.

    I was just trying to be nice.

    "I'd never travel back home unless someone dies down there" she said. Seeing my puzzled reaction, she offered an explanation. "You get ten years older, just making the trip back. Over there, a woman my age is way too old to dance and to date. I would be good only to babysit nephews and nieces and to die of a stroke".

    She told me her age, 54.  With unschooled wisdom, she taught me how life's horizons stretch or shrink. Ten years younger, she waved me good bye.

        --- L.

My New Home Depot Friend

    At Home Depot, while buying $800 worth of building materials (... don't ask ...) I was stopped by an older gent named Chris, who asked if I would help him carry his $50 worth of lumber to his house in my borrowed van. He offered me $35, which I didn't want to take, but my wife insisted we take the money because it will make a good donation for the library.
    I rode with Chris in his Buick while L rode in the van with our faithful builder. Chris has an interesting story: native of Greece, he was a merchant marine sailor who visited 52 countries and jumped ship in the US in 1957 with a goal of making $10,000 to take back home. Fifty-eight years later, married with two children, he has retired from the restaurant business, which he says "was slave labor but steady work."
    He has some advice. Any day you can wake up and move around, breathe easy and smile, that's a good day. People who make millions of dollars can't sleep nights worrying about losing their money, and that's no good.
    Also, he says, there's no percentage is being sneaky and illegal. "You ought to know, those cocksuckers in the FBI are watching all the time!"

        ---- C.

What if?

    We went to the gym -- a production in and of itself, when going means extracting ourselves from a household with three emotionally needy dogs, one emotionally needy contractor, and two teenagers who must be winkled out of their television-videogame stupor just to get a status report from them.
    We went to the gym because we're trying to lose weight.
    Trying to lose weight because I'm about 50 pounds overweight and my doctor told me at my last exam that I have signs of metabolic changes presaging diabetes.
    Trying to lose weight because she hopes to get pregnant this summer and the doctor says that if she is losing weight it will improve the chances of conception.
    I watch her walk on the treadmill for ten minutes while I'm climbing the elliptical. After ten minutes, she poops out and walks away to find a glass of water.
    And it scares me. What if she is really in such bad shape that she can't carry a baby? What if trying to give me and her one more child ends up with her dying of a heart attack.
    Later I tell her how scared I am at this. She says, "I'll be fine. I was made to carry babies."
    I hope she's right.

            ----  C.

Pubic and private

It shone against the morning sun, still humid after the morning abluctions, rebeliously uncurly and definitely gray: a perimenopausal pubic hair, transcoding my DNA-encrypted aging program. Less than half an inch long, this tiny thread of protein would go unnoticed if I wasn't so happy about the celebration of intimacy that had happened the night before. Now it was acutely visible and almost cruel, considering how long I had to wait - and work - for  sexual fullfilment. I am not ready for the end, so close from where it starts. Haven't had enough. Got the tweezer from the bathroom vanity cabinet and would have gotten rid of it if it wasn't for some vague intellectual pride. Hours later, I found out that I was not alone with my humbling secret: there were several cosmetic solutions for was is euphemistically described as a need for "intimate gray coverage". The hair is still in it's place. But I can't deny how tempting it is to think about it rejuvenated in shades of radiant auburn , seductive blonde or in luminescent pink. Or, sensible solution, mimetically tinted in shades of golden brown. 

It is to dye for.

        ---- L.