Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (but not Death, who takes a holiday)
I was not going to post this blog entry because I feared it might come off as me being a killjoy during the holiday season. I mean, oh boy, a blog about death on New Year's—way to go Audrey. But I wrote this in good faith, spirit, and humor and it is something I wanted to share with you at the end of this year and the beginning of the next. Because I love you, not because I want to bum you out. Plus you have to admit, that picture above is pretty funny.
I do have a plan to get back to history and soul and New York City and all that good jazz in 2008. But for now . . .
By now people who read my blog might think I’m a bit preoccupied with death. I’m not, really. But the “death” of 2007 makes me think of it. And in my own way, I’m just trying to build him (and I say “him” because I hate “it” as a pronoun, so impersonal here, and death is so very personal) a room in my house because death is an inevitable guest. Many of us Westerners spend huge amounts of time, money, and energy avoiding death (I say avoiding, because we can never, ever defeat death) I figure, let him move in now so I can get to know him. When it’s time for me to exit with him, I might not be so scared.Joe Black: Don't be feisty, sista.
Jamaican Woman: I not be feisty mista. You com' for me that's good news.
Joe Black: Can do no right by people. I com' to take you, you want to stay - I leave you stay, you want to go.
from Meet Joe Black
All of this is because a few days ago I watched, for perhaps the tenth time, the film Meet Joe Black. It didn’t do well at the box office. I don’t care. It is one of the singularly most beautiful movies.
The movie is based on the original 1934 film Death Takes a Holiday, which itself comes from a stage play of the same name from the 1920s. In short, Death decides to experience life. So he looks around at the billions of souls on the planet, and chooses William Parrish (played by Anthony Hopkins), a wealthy, principled man, to be his guide. He then looks for a body, which happens to be that of a young man in a coffee shop (Brad Pitt). This young man had just made the acquaintance of William Parris
h’s daughter, Susan, played by the stunningly beautiful Clare Forlani. The two part on the sidewalk outside the shop, sparks a-flying, and she walks away, not seeing that the guy gets hit by a car. A few hours later Brad Pitt’s character shows up at William Parrish’s penthouse home (it is gigantic, hardly an apartment) in NYC for dinner. Death lays it all out for Parrish in the privacy of the study: He can die now, or he can have some more time and show Death the works. Parrish chooses the latter, and when pressed for a name, while introducing Death to his family, he calls him Joe Black. In a nutshell:Joe experiences anger, treachery, sex, love, pain, humor, loss and peanut butter in the span of a few weeks, all the while living in William Parrish’s home. He has a bedroom where he sleeps. He of course falls in love with Susan. Parrish himself gets to know death, and determines he isn’t such a bad sort. Now of course there is the seduction of the settings, which are lavish, and the good looking people, and Anthony Hopkins, who I would watch in a remake of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (by the way, I told my 7 year old nephew to watch it over Christmas (it was on TV), and he actually got into it, really, really bad special effects and all; you can never tell with kids).
The score to Meet Joe Black by Thomas Newman is so beautiful I defy you not to cry your little eyes out while your watching. And of course there is the love story, and who doesn’t love a love story. Don’t go to youtube to watch clips, just rent the film and watch it. I promise you will not regret it.
I might not have such an accommodating view of death if my will to live had ever been tested. It hasn’t. I see doctors taking what I consider extraordinary measures, and I can’t help but feel sometimes it is more about their egos (I’m going to be the one mortal to cheat death because I am Dr. God!) than about their patients. But of course deciding when to die is such a difficult and frightening thing. Still, like the poor wretch standing on the ledge of a burning building, with only two choices, jump or die from the smoke and flames, there comes a point where it’s not about whether you will die, but how will you die. And I can't say for sure I won't be going, kicking and screaming. I hope I won't.
And who am I to say that extraordinary measures should not be taken when there are people like Randy Pausch (the professor who actually delivered what is usually a theoretical “last lecture” before he dies)? He would not have left us with his wisdom and example of how to die gracefully had he not tried everything possible to arrest his pancreatic cancer (Update: When I wrote this, it was arrested. Since then, Pausch has died).
There is Leroy Sievers, a former executive producer at Nightline, who writes a blog about his cancer. I don’t know how he does it, and there are moments when he himself has wondered whether it might not be better to just stop all therapy and live the rest of his life without the side effects of chemo and the pain that has gone with surgery. But he has something left to give and is doing through his blog. (Update: Sievers has also died)
There are the Terri Schiavos of the world. I cannot pretend to understand a mother and father’s heart, or a spouse’s heart, but like most people I do know the unwillingness to let go of a dying loved one, that unwillingness that really grabs your heart and soul and squeezes until you can barely think or breathe. When my father was dying I forced myself through Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance—at lightning speed because I couldn’t dwell in any of those places for too long, and because I needed to get to acceptance so that I could bring it to my father, who, being the wise gentleman he was, always knew when it was time to leave the party. He never made any bones about the fact that his time would come, and so for the 24 hours before he died I was given the grace to tell him good luck and godspeed.
The fact that I’m crying as I’m writing this tells you that as quickly as I ran through those stages, I had to go back and live with them after my dad’s funeral. Of course I miss him. But his dying wasn’t about me. One thing I know is that it would have been an awful shame, and truly wrong, to have forced him through extraordinary medical measures only to have him be unable to be the man he was before he got sick. Which is why I was relieved that Terri Schiavo was finally allowed to move on.
Then there are perfectly healthy people who get stuck in tough situations. Becoming lost at sea, for instance, or in the woods; in a motor vehicle accident not of your doing. There are amazing stories of survival. I think that people who survive those circumstances must get very angry at one point, must say to themselves, this is sincerely effed up. They might even shake their fists at the sky. This "the hell with you, it's not my time yet" type of anger is a type of furious denial that I think helps. And if they get through the trial, then clearly it wasn't their time yet.
Then there are certain suicides. I'm not talking about end stage folks who decide enough is enough. I'm talking about people who, although not always ill in the way a cancer patient is, can no longer bear to be in the skin they are in, or the heads they are in. As long as I live I will never understand them. I can only suggest that I had the good fortune to be wired differently.
I know by now you must be saying: seriously Audrey, we see death every day—suicide bombers; disaffected youths gone mad; gang violence; genocide in Africa; pandemics of all kind. But in these places death dwells as the enemy. He shows only one face. Our problem is that we will not let him live with us so that we can get to know him better, see other aspects.
People often wonder why, for instance, Tibetan monks are not fearful of death. Here is a thing: I read once about a monk who would not leave a glass of water at his bedside because it presumed that he might be alive in the morning to drink it. He put his head on the pillow every night with a smooth brow, unconcerned. Death is not his enemy, and quite possibly, because of the Buddhist belief in reincarnation, death is his friend.
All of this is to say live life in all of its goodness and badness, every single day, but give death a little space in your life as you live. Honor the sacred soul in you and the sacred soul in every sentient being. January 1 is just as good a day as any, but every day begins a new year if you really need it to. I leave you with a beautiful photo of my father. It was taken in a folk art gallery in Alabama. When I look at that picture it reminds me how much Miles Peterson lived life and lived it well. This was a man with few, if any regrets.
I love you all more than I can say. Happy New Year!
Audrey
Comments
Is that not the message? Anyway, thank you for the enlightenment. Have a fabulous year and always a Blessed life.
Linda
Although I applaud your desire to lose any fear of death, I would have to say I completely disagree, from a spiritual standpoint, with "welcoming him into my house." Indeed, from my spiritual background and upbringing, such words would be frowned upon; although the intent may be to merely acquaint one's self with the transitional phase, the words themselves would be seen as open invitations to any negativity that could hasten the event of death itself. The desire to keep death at bay (from those ATRs you are acquainted with) is not an overall fear of death itself as much as it is an attempt to make sure that happens when it is supposed to happen - and not before.
To me, that Tibetan monk you mention displays not so much a comfortable relationship with death as much as a humility in the very knowledge that most of us DON'T know when our death will arrive. The lack of concern he displayed was not, to my thinking, a welcome of death; it was an acknowledgment that this is the way things are, and yes, a very Buddhist outlook that this way of things does not mean a complete end but rather an end to one cycle and a beginning to another.
Am I afraid of death? Well, I am anxious about it, in much the same way I have been anxious of the first day at a new job or going to a new school for the first time. Fear of the unknown. The fear part is only with regards to having it happen before I do all that I have been put here to do. I want to know, when I've stepped out of this skin, that I've left no major tasks undone - shit that I have to come back all over again to finish or redo. If I can be sure of progress, then death is no danger to me. And as I've been assured by certain parties that my life would be a long one, any early death would mean something gone wrong - which would also mean things left unfinished. This life has been arduous enough - I have no desire to repeat it, instead I would hope that the next one is some step up.
So I slog on, trying to do many things, in all areas of my life, some seen, some unseen, many spiritual, to take my spirit where it needs to go. Unlike you, I HAVE faced death before, more than once, and I know that welcoming it too openly can mean welcoming it too soon. So for now, although I fully acknowledge that one day I'll do whatever it is souls do when this journey is over, I will embrace life and tell Death he is not welcome here. Because Death, like my daughter, doesn't always understand the concept of waiting and time, and unlike my daughter, Death's impatience CAN be acted upon.
We can prepare for death, we can learn to be less afraid, we can even, in our living zestfully, show that we are conscious of the passage of time. Indeed, I think of it often, realizing that with each day I am closer to that one last day. With that knowledge I pledge to live life more fully. I know it doesn't push death away in the final hour - but it pushes it away NOW, because I know that unlike the movies, Death doesn't do long pleasant visits.
So with that, I wish a happy, prosperous and joyous 2008 to you, and I hope that Death remains a stranger to you for many years to come. You have much to do here still, much to accomplish...