DESPITE OUR ATTEMPTS TO PUT IT ASIDE, DEATH IS ALWAYS THERE,
STANDING INTHE SHADOWS, ASKING NOTHING MORE OF US THAN TO RECOGNIZE IT AS
A PART OF OUR LIVES AND TO CLAIM IT AS OUR OWN. WHEN WE ARE YOUNG AND
VIGOROUS, OUR OWN DEATH SEEMS LIKE A MYTH. As WE GROW OLDER, WE PUSH
DEATH AWAY LIKE A FRIEND WHO EMBARRASSES US OR A DISTASTEFUL RELATIVE WE
REFUSE TO ACKNOWLEDGE.
For me, as I write these words, death is a cancer moving through my
skeleton and sending warning signals through my bloodstream. Within a
year or two, it will claim me, but as of now, it is content simply to let
me know that it is there. I learned of its presence, I have tried to come
to terms it face-to-face to make it a instead of an adversary. This has
not been easy. But with the support and encouragement of my wife, Kay, a
teacher and therapist in death and dying who has met death often in her
work, I have called by name the shadow that inhabits me and invited it to
share, openly, the rest of my life.
The life story of every human being is a variation on the theme of
loss through death - of every pet, every friend, every loved one, until,
sooner or later, the self, too, is taken. Yet this familiar companion on
our journey remains a feared and hostile presence until the end; a dark
assassin who waits in shadows until he cuts down. Yet since there is no
escaping death's company, doesn't it make sense to call it out of the
shadows and make its acquaintance? This is the task that lies before Kay
and me.
The only human death I have ever experienced firsthand was Karyl's,
my first wife. The surgeon who opened her abdomen quickly sealed it up
again. "Three months," he said. "There's nothing more to be done." And
the wasting process of a wildly metastasized stomach cancer took
precisely that long to result in death. There was no pain. The anodyne of
methadone and Thorazine saw to that. Until the moment of death, Karyl's
dying was marked by an undimmed clarity of thought and emotion.
We talked often about death - as a concept, as a looming presence -
and less and less about life. In those months, as her world closed in
about her, she was calm and without regrets. "It's as if I'm standing on
a high plateau," she said, "looking out over past and future. There is
nothing more to trouble me. I'm at peace."
While I am not enough of a psychologist to penetrate what may have
been layers of denial and avoidance, I can testify to the tranquillity
with which she awaited the inevitable hour. On the morning of the day she
died, I entered the hospital room to find her brushing her teeth and
applying her lipstick. We spoke fitfully as she drifted in and out of
sleep. At about three in the afternoon, she opened her eyes again and
said, "Goodbye."
"I'm not going anywhere," I said, fearful that she thought I was
leaving her.
"No, but I am," she said, and before I could protest, she sank into
the calm slumber from which she never awoke. There was a momentary pause,
the gentlest of exhalations, and the invisible border between life and
death was crossed.
And I thought, That's death? That's all there is to it? That's what
terrifies us so? And though I felt the first terrible emptiness of loss,
the wound had somehow already begun to heal in the presence of the larger
mystery - the easy, gentle peace of her passing. It was strange to me
that our doctor friends, especially, seemed incapable of dealing with the
reality of Karyl's dying. It was as if her failure to be cured was an
affront to their profession, the result of some moral weakness in her.
This almost universal inability to come to terms with the blunt fact of
her death forced her to be the comforter, to get them off the hook by
demonstrating her acceptance of the presence of death.
Like everyone who has ever lived, I am deeply concerned about my
own dying and death. In April 1991, I was told that the pain in my hip
was caused by a further spread of the cancer that I had been diagnosed
with two years earlier. Without further intervention, I could count on
only one year of life at most. Maybe I could luck out with two.
I suppose that everyone who approaches death has the same desire to
flee, to create a diversion, to put up a baffle, even though the battle
might be a sham. I must know more about dying. Fortunately, I can usually
find answers to my anxieties by sharing them with my wife, Kay, in
conversations we share at midnight.
Herb: It's not death I fear most, it's the suffering before dying.
Why is dying so hard?
Kay: Peace at the time of death can be yours throughout the whole
time of dying. The anguish, the fears, are not physical but
psychological. They interfere with the natural process of dying. But they
are not a part of it. Like prejudice or superstition, they've been
learned, and they are not in harmony with natural experience. We're
protected in dying by defenses that are born in us. But we need to get
back in touch with them. We've lost so much of our self-awareness that we
have to be reminded of what we've known all along.
H: But how about the pain, the physical suffering? How can we come
to terms with that unless we're doped into insensibility?
K: For all the patients in whose dying I've played a part, their
pain, while real, has been transcended. The worst pain is not of the body
but of the mind, emotions, spirit - the pain of loneliness, the fear of
abandonment, the pain of loss, feelings of guilt or doubt. These cause
the worst suffering.
Tags:
abdomen,
adversary,
anodyne,
assassin,
bloodstream,
cancer,
companion,
encouragement,
first wife,
human death,
karyl,
methadone,
rest of my life,
skeleton,
stomach cancer,
three months,
variation on the theme,
wife kay
