Life, Death, and Things (Un)Said

It's the season of new life, so let's talk about death.

Or more euphemistically, about the end of life.

In her recent NYTimes article titled, "Dying, With Nothing To Say," author Katie Roiphe considers things said and unsaid when faced with a loved one dying. We either look for idealized last life moments where clarity sparkles or we yearn for what could have been said.

When it comes to death, I believe we like our ends all neatly tied up. In reality, however, the clear finish rarely arrives. 

Ms. Roiphe's father died suddenly late in life. She wasn't with him.  She admits there were no unanswered issues between them when she notes, "He knew I adored him. So what was there for either of us to say?"  And yet, she wonders.  I think most of us wonder as well. 

When someone dies a sudden death, the chance to share final thoughts is stolen.  Wondering is all that is left.  So it would seem to follow, that a protracted illness offers the chance to share ourselves freely and not hold back.  Yet, Ms. Roiphe finds this is the place for unexpected irony.

She continues, "We have an idea that when someone is dying, a new, honest, generous space opens up; that in the harrowing awfulness of dying there is a directness, an expansiveness, a loosening of inhibitions, the potential for things to be said that could not be said before. But if one does actually manage to pull off a last conversation, what can it be but a few words in a lifetime of talk? How can it be enough?"

Famous deathbed scenes in plays, movies, poems offer a soundness that usually closes the circle of unfinished business.  Shakespeare wrote many heroic, expansive death scenes where closure ruled, yet his own death remains a mystery.  The Bard's literary deaths which have been performed for hundreds of years offer a glimpse into the his sense of story, but we are left empty handed about his own last hours.  

Roiphe chose to research the last moments of famous authors for her book titled: The Violet Hour: Great Writers at the End.  Her findings show, "Even the writers I was researching — people who lived in structure, plots, words — mostly did not find their way to conversations that offered a satisfying ending. They left things messy, unresolved, dangling."  Sort of like life. 

Eddy Van Calster's wife of 31 years, Fabienne, worked at the airline ticket counter at the Brussels airport.  She was killed in the recent terrorist bombings.  His quiet reflection cuts deep as he clarifies what is lost and what cannot be lost in death. "In killing the body, they don't change anything. Nothing is changed.  Her love is still there and my love is still there.  The love of loving people you can't touch."  A lifetime of love supersedes the facts of Fabienne's death. 

I have limited experience in deathbed conversations, but it's enough. I believe any time spent at the side of someone leaving this world places us half here, half there.  It is sacred. Both parties know a life is ending.  How we use the time comes down to who we have been all along. This truth echoed when I heard a dear friend say "I'm ready to die" hours before she did. It was brave and blunt - two of her defining traits. 

I think the bigness of death inflates our emotions.  We may show a heightened version of ourselves, or retreat in awe.  But the person dying is having the raw experience and there's no map for how they walk that path. Someone who lives life in quiet reticence isn't necessarily going to be gregarious at the end.  We are who we are, especially under inevitable death. 

A NYTimes reader, who is a health psychologist, commented on Ms. Roiphe's piece with this grounded reply: "Dying, like giving birth, is a biological event. Giving birth does not instantly turn women into excellent mothers any more than dying turns one into a wise Buddha."  

We are all dying. The pressing question really becomes, how are we living? Is it satisfying? Frustrating? Mindful?  The final days aren't a summary. They are the last lines of the last chapter of a short story or epic novel.  Life is messy, complicated, joy-filled, sorrow laden.  Why would death be any different?  

No wonder the gift in death has to be living our fullest life. 

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Link to Katie Roiphe's  NYTimes article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/28/opinion/at-the-end-of-life-too-few-words.html?mabReward=CTM&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&region=CColumn&module=Recommendation&src=rechp&WT.nav=RecEngine

Link to letters re: article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/opinion/sunday/dying-with-nothing-to-say.html

Link to Eddy VanCalster's video "Her Love Is Still There:"
http://www.nytimes.com/video/world/europe/100000004302940/her-love-is-still-there.html