A Few More Weeks

A Few More Weeks

    There's a story about the singer-songwriter Graham Nash; when challenged to write a song in 15 minutes, all while he and his friend waited for their plane to take off, he came up with this: Just a song before I go, a lesson to be learned; traveling twice the speed of sound, it's easy to get burned.  It seemed an appropriate summation of my extensive quoting of the late Dr. Kalanithi, his medical knowledge shattering his deniability as he read his own CT scans...tumors raked through his body.  And soon, he would die.  There's an old saying that the moment we are born, we begin dying.  But for Dr. Kalanithi, the puzzle was the not knowing a time.  As he says: The tricky part of illness is that, as you go through it, your values are constantly changing.   You try to figure out what matters to you, and then you keep figuring it out.  It felt like someone had taken away my credit card and I was having to learn to budget...Death may be a one-time event, but living with terminal illness is a process.

    But life is rather like that, isn't it.  As with one of those new and massive roller coasters, you are born and hear that clicking of life as you struggle ever upwards, the thrill of what's to come exciting you even as the height grows scarier; but no fear, for you are young and securely buckled in, this ride is safe...isn't it?  And then you reach the peak and the downhill slide begins, the speed breathtaking as you plunge toward the bottom only to hit a quick turn then another small hill then perhaps a corkscrew and an inverted turn, the ride's momentum and changes constantly surprising you and all going by at a disorienting speed.  It's exhilarating and there seems to be no end...and then, a small straight section and you feel the slowing down.  For many of us, we can see the giant structure even before we get on, the viewing of its engineering already engaging us as we patiently wait in line...soon it will be our turn, soon we believe we will know its thrill.  At those moments, we can't tell if the car we board will come off of the track, or if the ride we see will turn out to not be the one we will be getting on.  We only know that which is in front of us, the possibility.

    It's the not-knowing.  It's life...a skiing accident, a stroke, whatever.  We read about it daily, the ages ranging from babies to those passing the century mark, each ceasing to live and each never truly expecting it to happen.  Says Dr. Kalanithi: I hadn't expected the prospect of facing my own mortality to be so disorienting, so dislocating.  I thought back to my younger self, who might've wanted to "forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race"; looking into my own soul, I found the tools too brittle, the fire too weak, to forge even my own conscience...One chapter of my life seemed to have ended; perhaps the whole book was closing.  Instead of being the pastoral figure aiding a life transition, I found myself the sheep, lost and confused.  Severe illness wasn't life-altering, it was life-shattering.  It felt less like an epiphany --a piercing burst of light, illuminating What Really Matters-- and more like someone had just firebombed the path forward.  Now I would have to work around it.

    I've noticed that with my mother, and have apparently yet to notice it with myself, that of What Really Matters.  My wife reminds me (and rightfully so) that despite my best efforts, I seem unable to get clutter-free.  Why do I keep clinging to things, even as I give much away?  Books, prints, old dust-filled tape decks and other hidden "treasures" destined to become landfill junk once it leaves the garage.  For my mother, little of this sort of thing matters now.  A few clothes, a bed, a regular schedule of meals; and once out of rehab, a social gathering (usually around meals) and perhaps an outing.  Stop with the photos, she tells me, take the rest of the things to your house (which only adds to my dust-collecting collection in the garage)...dishes, a jewelry box, some coins, a desk.  Indeed, the papers (both hers and mine) are piling up faster than I can put them into neat and tidy folders, all of which have already formed their own pile.

    The past week I kept having a recurring dream or at least pieces of one (rather strange for me, for although I tend to dream a lot --often 3 or 4 dreams a night-- it is rare for me to have a dream that is similar or that matches an earlier one) .  Something in my dream kept telling me to start making a list for my mother, beginning at the start of the alphabet.  I began with anthuriums (my mother's from Hawaii, after all), then moved to analysis (perhaps I felt or feel that she's rather analytical) and then onward to Abe Vigoda, and there the dream stopped.  Who?, you might ask?  Well, me too.  I never even got the last name right in my dreams, but I knew who I was supposed to put down.  Abe something, the actor.  Who was he?  And why would his name keep popping up on my mother's list?  As far as I knew, she didn't really know who he was either.  Yes, he was a face you'd recognize, and had a number of famous roles...but quick, before looking, what were they and what did he look like?  And then about four days later, it hit me.  His was a face in the background, a face famous in its own way and yet nothing really "special" to most people, a face more of less like you or me.

    This is something I've mentioned quite a bit in earlier posts, that in your own way you can make an impression, you can change the world one person or one action at a time.  A smile at a person or making eye contact, a nice conversation or a nice sincere listen, a letter, a handshake, a joke, a donation.  It doesn't take much.  In Abe I think I was seeing my mother, someone in the background and yet famous in her own way, never wanting the cameras and lights and yet a celebrity in her own right.  Often, we never know if we've made an impression on someone, or are truly touched when a friend or person tells us such.  Perhaps we should do the same, we should be that person telling others, changing their lives with just a few simple words, how much they mean to us, how much we enjoyed what they did, what they said, what they brought to our lives.

    Abraham Verghase, himself a respected author and physician, wrote this about Dr. Paul Kalanithi's book: Be ready.  Be seated.  See what courage sounds like.  See how brave it is to reveal yourself in this way.  But above all, see what it is to still live, to profoundly influence the lives of others after you are gone, by your words.  In a world of asynchronous communication, where we are so often buried in our screens, our gaze rooted to the rectangular objects buzzing in our hands, our attention consumed by ephemera, stop and experience this dialogue with my young departed colleague, now ageless and extant in memory.  Listen to Paul.  In the silences between his words, listen to what you have to say back.  Therein lies his message...Out of his pen he was spinning gold.