We were brought together in the most casual manner by friends. The sexual revolution had left behind two outposts of the ancien régime, and these friends wisely judged that some unsolicited matchmaking was in order. So, with quite a fine hand, they put us in each other's way at a Christmas party.
Within several months, we were married. Within several years, we'd been favored by the stork several times and thought it best to revisit the question of careless abandon. How far we had come.
Time passed. Now we, the two of us once more, live in a sturdy three-room cottage. Inside, we have a warm bed and a well-stocked refrigerator. Outside, we have a garden that produces a few fruits and vegetables and a larger number of flowers. Butterflies and sparrows seem to like it. So do crows, centipedes, ill-bred cats, and the odd snake. They never promised us a rose garden. But we‘ve got that, too, thanks to my wife’s exertions. In the spring, our cottage is substantially rose-covered.
It’s all ours. We can at least starve under our own roof, should we outlive our means. However, that seems unlikely now. Though we started raising a family late, unsure how we’d fare afterwards, the danger of hardship has receded over the years in a way that seems almost miraculous. On closer examination, we see that the help of others played a part again and again. Even a cottage is the work of many hands. Today we’re also secure in the knowledge that our children are not going to let us dry up and blow away.
Poverty has not come in at the door, but mortality has sidled in on crab’s legs. It was bound to happen in one way or another. At length it happened in roughly the same way to both of us. Oh, there’s no telling how our lives will actually end. It’s just that we’ve each been given something specific to think about.
Here two questions arise, one personal and the other social. The personal question is how to think. The social one is how to act. The first question simply unlocks a mental vault where the answer is kept: a treasury of nature and experience, the sum of which makes you feel either rich or poor in life’s blessings. From that instant, you know how to think. To the extent that you value your life, you can be a good sport about your death. This has nothing to do with courage in the face of suffering. It just means you feel a proper gratitude for what has gone before and a proper recognition that whatever lives must die. Suffering is going to be a drag, certainly.
The social question, how to act, is the one that calls for some thought. If you show sunny gratitude and suave acceptance from the outset, aren’t you setting yourself up for a fall? People may think, “That’s all very well now, my fine friend, but just you wait. Laugh and sing? Why, the time will come when you can barely gasp and groan. Won’t you look silly then! Better to show that you have no illusions about the gravity of the situation.” Then, too, there’s the chance to play tragedy. Tears to be wrung.
But that line of thought is mocked by the adage that defines a miser (sometimes “a fool”) as one who lives poor in order to die rich. Even if I thought the last act of my illness would gain splendor from an air of wisdom cultivated in prior austerity, why should I care? Splendor will have no value for me then. Society will be a departing circus train. Memories of silliness avoided won’t be the ones I cherish.
Of course, suffering is not confined to the last throes; but neither is it necessarily a constant companion. An incurable blood disease can, I assure you, be an absolute walk in the park for years on end as far as the disease itself is concerned. The medical tests along the way are another matter. Chief among them is the bone marrow aspiration: the drawing of marrow from a hip bone with a long needle. It’s notoriously painful, and yet it’s the sort of thing that, when you’ve had the experience, makes you want to say, “Well, yes and no.” Definitely yes, but with a surprising admixture of no. Depending on your turn of mind, you may even feel called upon to spread the good word about bone marrow aspirations.
In our cottage, mortality has announced itself by name (barring unforeseen substitutions). Though I describe only my particular case, I can report that both of us are among those to whom high spirits come easily and persist comfortably at no cost in realism. As long as we can laugh, we’ll laugh. As long as we can play like children at the dawn of life, we’ll play. When suffering comes, we’ll see if we can’t shake it off like wet dogs and romp again. Why not? More’s the fun for all. At last, between labored gasps and groans, we’ll try to glimpse the beauty of a darkling world.
So comedic an approach to death may not suit everyone, but it seems we two are inclined that way. Our matchmakers had us pegged.
