Good night

Our dear friend Carla just let us know that her husband, Dick, has decided to go off dialysis and begin hospice care. Dick has struggled with diabetes for years, and in recent months has declined significantly. I see his choice as a courageous one.

Jay and Carla have been pals since high school, and I felt an immediate connection with her when I met her nearly ten years ago. Carla has a special spark, a special joie de vivre that lights up a room when she enters. As Dick has declined she has worked to keep her own life full and active while still supporting him as best she could. She has been clear-eyed about his condition and prognosis, which I think will stand her in good stead now, although there is no way to prepare.

Thinking about what Carla faces instantly brings Shayne’s death to mind, swiftly followed by Joe’s. For me, every loss seems connected. Between 2005 and 2012 I lost my big sister, my husband, my mother and my father.  I was in the room for all but my mother’s death, and the witness changed me, changed my feeling about my own death, and left me without fear. In my observation, death is not simple for the body. There is a gradual shutting down in death from illness, with consciousness mercifully among the first things to go. But the automatic functions, breathing and the circulation of blood and all the other functions we can’t see, continue on autopilot until they can’t. And then, just as mysteriously as the soul first shows itself at birth, it disappears, and the person, the self, is gone from sight. I have no theology to help me with this mystery, and I don’t feel the need for one.  I’m content to accept the question of where the soul comes from and where it goes as a mystery. It doesn’t matter. What matters to me is what I do with my soul while I have it, whom do I love, what do I learn, what do I teach, to whom am I kind, what creative and destructive ideas do I harbor. When it’s time for me to be done, I’ll be done without regret, with nothing to cling to. As much as Shayne and Joe and my Dad had loved life, when the time came they simply let go, because there is no other choice. Dylan Thomas urges his father to “not go gentle into that good night.” But really, why wouldn’t we?