The Inexorable Before Us All

As I was driving home tonight along a side street toward Fountain Avenue, I saw a girl of about five, sitting in front  of a well manicured, tree lined house.  The sight was a contrast to a large part of the day--with my aunt and cousin visiting husband and father, respectively at the Veteran's Hospital.

The little girl was life and its possibilities on earth. My uncle is the edge of the end of life. He follows, so closely, his eldest sister who only just recently died at the good age of 100. As I watched him in the hospital, trying to make his wishes known to a staff that is overwhelmed and compassion fatigued, I could see Georgia, his sister, and Constantine, my dad, in his face. I even have a picture of my father, in that very kitchen, I think, as the one above. What was, when they were young and healthy and not thinking of their end of days particularly, or only sporadically, and then at the end of that breath that is our lives.

The two sided contradictions of existence.

As I write, I find that I am not feeling anything.  And yet the drama of the contrasts in one day ought to evoke a strong reaction. 

My uncle is so thin. So worn. And fighting still. He has been sick a very long time, but the spark remains in his eye, and the force of his personality that says, "I am in control" even when he clearly is not any longer. He tried to show the staff his muscles, this man of once great strength who could build or fix anything, even just a few years ago. He wants to go home.  They always want to go home. My father. Monsignor. My uncle. Me too if my time comes, if I live long enough.  The genetic raging against the dying of the light.

Even with a faith, as my uncle has, as I have, it is the only light we have known, on this earth, and while we believe in the afterward, from here it is ambiguous and harder to embrace. 

The child, if Providence provides, need not think about any of this for many years. My uncle cannot avoid it, and yet he says, "I think I'm dying" in a way that begs to be countered with, "Of course you're not."  He/we would like it to be that it isn't what it seems. My father tried to escape from the hospital. He had to be partially tied down (they can't tie a patient totally) so that he would not run from cure, or death. Cure was less likely than death at that point. I suddenly am reminded of that Twilight Zone with Gladys Cooper and Robert Redford--handsome death beckoning the frightened recluse lady--barring her door.

There is no running The choices are dying slow or dying quick. Neither is particularly enticing.

All the cliché's occur to me, about living in the moment, grabbing the gusto, interrelating, leaving small hurts behind, thinking about higher things and trusting in that Providence whose guidance of our lives sometimes seems imponderable.  They are hard to get hold of when you are with someone you care about facing what you will face yourself--each of us alone, but yet brothers and sisters in our aloneness at the end of life.