On Passing

On Passing

   The other day, we attended a celebration of our friend's passing, something she wanted due to her ancestry geared in wakes and celebrating life and not death.  After a long battle with pancreatic cancer (30 chemo treatments!), she fell into a coma and moved on a day later.  She was 64.

   Of course, none of us really know when we will breathe our last breath.  Each night, we go to sleep and think little (if anything) of not waking up.  Tomorrow's another day, we say, and expect it to be so.  It is the same with being told that you have something wrong inside your body, something seriously wrong.  Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and author of over 50 books, might have summed in up in his book, Open Heart.  On being told by his cardiologist (over the phone, who saw his scan results) to get immediately to the hospital and go through the emergency entrance where he would meet him, Wiesel writes:  On occasion, I can be incredibly stubborn.  And so I nevertheless steal two hours to go to my office.  I have things to attend to.  Appointments to cancel.  Letters to sign.  People to see...strange, all this time I am not really worried, though by nature I am rather anxious and pessimistic.  My heart does not beat faster.  My breathing is normal.  No pain.  No premonitions.  No warning.  What has changed so abruptly in my body to destabilize it to this extent?

   It is only when on the gurney and being told of his five clogged arteries that he "is shaken."  On seeing his wife and son, possibly for the last time, he writes:  Their smiles seemed forced.  And how am I to hug them without falling apart?  "The doctors are optimistic.  The surgeon they propose is world-renowned."  I remain silent.  I steal another glance at the woman with whom I have shared my life for more than forty-two years.  As the door opens, I look one last time at our son, the fine young man who has justified -and continues to justify- my life and who endows it with meaning and a hereafter.  Through the tears that darken the future, a thought awakens a deeper concern, a deeper sorrow: Shall I see them again?

   Those of us fortunate enough to be healthy or young or cautious may likely avoid such feelings for a few more years, that of being hovered around by doctors and nurses, machines beeping, hearing the sounds but unable to open our eyes or respond, sensing people telling you that it's okay to go, our thoughts likely racing, wondering what they're talking about, then perhaps realizing and accepting and wondering why this happened and why now and why you didn't have a proper goodbye and what you should have said all along, what you regretted.

   Our friend had no regrets, according to her husband's tribute.  None, he said, and he couldn't think of anyone else who could say that.  But his wife told him over and over...I have no regrets.  And then, the day before lapsing into a coma, she stared at the corner of the room and gasped, recognizing something or someone.  There was nothing there, at least nothing that others in the room could see...and she never told them. 

   Perhaps she had made peace, had hit bottom and was now eligible to see and know things well beyond our comprehension, a sight and knowledge given only to a few, those ready to depart.  Diane Nyad, who at 60 swam from Cuba to Florida (the equivalent of swimming the English Channel 5 times) said this after she had recovered:  I don’t care how healthy I am—it’s not like I’m going to live another sixty years.  There’s a real speeding up of the clock and a choking on, Who have you become? Because this one-way street is hurtling toward the end now, and you better be the person you admire.

   I think that we all hope that we perish quickly, smoothly, without pain and most importantly, without regrets.  We all hope to live a long life, a good life, a life we can leave feeling grateful for having enjoyed it so, a life of being loved.  As Weisel writes:  I know --I speak from experience-- that even in darkness it is possible to create light and encourage compassion.  That it is possible to feel free inside a prison.  That even in exile, friendship exists and can become an anchor.  And I continue to cling to words because it is up to us to choose whether we wish to use them to curse or to heal, to wound or to console.  Illness may diminish me but it will not destroy me.  The body is not eternal, but the idea of the soul is.  The brain will be buried, but memory will survive it.  Such is the miracle.

   Our friend wanted a celebration and she got it, ending her life in much the same way she lived it, always competing and and always enjoying, always strong-willed and and always laughing.  A life without regret.  For my wife and I, at least, we hope we can follow her example.