One small box
Philippe Ariès, in "The Hour of Our Death," points out that the essential characteristic of death as it appears in the "Chanson de Roland" is that the death, even if sudden or accidental, "gives advance warning of its arrival." Gawain is asked: "Ah, good my lord, think you then so soon to die?" Gawain answers: "I tell you that I shall not live two days." Ariès notes: "Neither his doctor nor his friends nor the priests (the latter are absent and forgotten) know as much about it as he. Only the dying man can tell how much time he has left." From After Life by Joan Didion NYT, LJ
My mother knew she was dying when I told her she'd be a grandmother again. The baby was due in about 30 weeks. The doctors felt Mother had, at best, three months. Mother made two predictions. The baby would be late and they would share a birthday and she'd be alive to hold her. Biddles was born on Mother's birthday. The next day my sister brought Mother to hold the baby.
Over the next two months my mother left a little at a time. There was the time she could no longer hold a fork. Then the time she could no longer hold herself upright. Then the time she no longer could speak. Then the time she no longer could respond. She was still there though. Then she left.
Years later my father dressed for bed then sat on the couch and said "I think." Then he was gone.
It sounds macabre, and not like me at all, but I hope I am like my father. In his room we found he had distilled his life to a small box. We found clippings of articles I had written, photographs of my sister and I, a thought puzzle he planned to give me. And a letter he had saved from a cemetery responding to his request for information.
I am of the age when my father had his first heart attack. As I write this my younger daughter and my wife are playing in the pool. I can hear them laughing. I think often of dying, but I haven't yet prepared my small box.
