Recoiling from the Grim Reaper

My father-in-law Frank checks in with his kids and their families, via telephone, almost every Sunday evening. When he called this past Sunday, one of the first things he said upon my answering the phone was:  “I’m fine and everyone is still alive.”

This may seem like an odd opening statement, but Frank’s last surviving sister and her husband of 62 years are both ill, very ill.  As a result, we are braced to receive sad news, specifically about sweet Uncle Vinnie, sooner rather than later.

Their passing, whenever that should come, will not constitute a tragedy. They will have lived full and long lives and will not have suddenly “gone gently into that good night.” Nevertheless, their absence will leave a huge hole in the hearts of all those who love them.

Here’s the thing: it still rankles me that they have to die at all.

Oh, I know I am being unreasonable and that death is an essential cog in the natural cycle of life. I too am steeped in many of the apt quotes and clichés:  “No one gets out alive.”  “We are born astride the grave.” And so on.

It’s just that, at the end of the day, death and illness irritate the hell out of me. There it is: I am annoyed with this inexorable fact of life, that if we are very lucky, our fate will be thus: to grow old, sick and die.

For starters on why this riles me so, death renders “the golden years” well, not so golden after all. Illness marks decline, and often suffering, and sometimes debt from obscene medical expenses. Is this not a deplorable way to wind down one’s time on Earth? Why must so many of us end our days alone and miserable? Why couldn’t we go out in an oxycontin haze of rapturous blissful delight?

Imprudent questions, of course, in the face of the inevitable.

The other day, a friend of mine – whose existence was pounded when his wife died several years ago – told me that both his eyesight and his hearing have begun to fail. “My world,” he said glumly, “is slipping away from me.”

“What about corrective lenses or a hearing aid?” I stammered. “This is 2013!”

He shook his head slowly, and explained he had been to see experts at MGH, and that, unfortunately, his particular issues eclipse the available corrective measures. What can one say in the face of something so sad?

At a certain point, it really is just all downhill. But, when does the journey that is life take this precipitous turn? Much younger than I ever expected, that’s for sure.

I recently read that things like hearing, eyesight, memory, muscle tone – and many other assorted cellular activities – all begin to deteriorate as we reach our late twenties. That’s right: we basically start the process of dying before our thirtieth birthday! It’s amazing life expectancy is as long as it is given this.

I am not typically one of those people who bemoan getting older. After all, what is the alternative? It’s just that I am weary of all the illness in the world and irritated by that final assault: death. Life has begun to feel like time spent between funerals and I’ve even begun contemplating my own “sendoff.”

So when my father-in-law says, “I’m fine and everyone is still alive” – well, I know exactly what he means. And I dread what lies ahead, for my family, for me, for all humanity.

Sigh. It’s been a dark winter.

Fortunately, next month marks the advent of Spring. The new season – and all that it represents – will not arrive a moment too soon.