Sunday, July 21, 2013

"Wake Up, Time to Die."

How will I know when I have lived enough? I have heard that some people say that they have lived enough and are ready to die. I cannot imagine ever being ready to die. Some nights before I fall asleep, I remember that it is going to happen sometime, and my body goes completely cold. Thank God for sleeping pills.

Many people say they want to die in their sleep or just go quickly. I don’t. Or at least I didn’t until a couple of years ago when a good friend died. Now I’m on the fence. Though dying in my sleep is still terrifying, the idea of going quickly is gaining ground. My friend Chuck was an amazing man. At 70 he had had a few different careers, a couple of marriages, a bunch of kids. He’d biked across country and canoed a 90-mile race through the Adirondacks many times. He was on a “streak” of running at least a mile every single day, and his streak had lasted more than 20 years. Even on that cross-country bike trip, after a 100-mile day, he would jog his mile before bed. He was a reader and a writer. Retired, he read as much as he could and built himself a little log cabin in his backyard that was his writing studio, where he turned out short stories. At the time of his death, he was in a happy relationship, living in a beautiful place, doing all the things he loved to do. In short, from my perspective, his life was perfect. Then one day he came back from a run, got in the shower and dropped dead.

Until then, I had been pretty sure I wanted to die of cancer. I wanted to know I was going to die so I’d have time to come to terms with it. And I wanted to be in so much pain that I would actually want to die. I would have suffered enough. (As a Jew, I’m not sure it is possible to suffer enough; but at least I would be in enough pain to consider death the better alternative.)

When Chuck died, though, I began to reconsider. I felt in my heart that he had died the perfect death. He was living his life exactly the way he wanted to. He never had to suffer the indignities of growing old or the pain and disability that eventually would have ended his running streak. He was in the shower – and I know how good a shower feels after working out. He was tired but pleased with himself for doing it one more day. He was getting clean. Life was good. And then life just wasn’t there anymore.

Clearly Chuck had truly lived. But had he lived enough? I wish we could know what he thought about this. I would bet he would say no, that he wanted to stay with Barb, keep reading, writing, running, biking, canoeing – living. On the other hand, if he had been given a choice between this death or a death 15 years later, infirm and in pain, which would he have chosen? Which would you choose?

According to Kierkegaard (I think), the meaning of life is that it ends. Without the knowledge that this body will not last forever, I could do anything and know that if it didn’t work out I could just do something else. No harm, no foul. Try again and again. Who cares? Blah blah blah.  

By the way, in case you were wondering, I am not dying, nor do I plan to die any time soon. I am living a good life. As I’ve written many times, I am blessed with everything I need and just about everything I could want. I don’t have a “bucket list”. Yes, I’m living a crazy life, but I want to keep doing it forever. I don’t care if it makes my life meaningless. I just don’t think I will ever have lived enough.
 

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