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Reflections February 2016

Farewells

The End of the Beginning?

By Paul Erland

“You only live a short time…and you are dead a long time,” in the words of Johan Huizinga, a Dutch historian (died Feb. 1, 1945), who presumably knew what he was talking about, having studied history, the record of people who go on being dead.

Another year long gone, another one stretching ahead of us, and here we are in the dead of winter with renewed opportunity to consider, among other things, our own shuffling-off. It’s a last act that’s yet to be written, and if we can’t be sure of how we’ll play it or where it might take us, we can’t help but feel – can we? – that in dying, as in living, attitude is everything.

Defiance is an option, as it was for Ethan Allen, the Revolutionary War patriot and leader of the Green Mountain Boys. In response to an examining doctor who told him, “General, I feel the angels are waiting for you,” Allen said, “Waiting, are they? Waiting, are they? Well, let ‘em wait!” (The wait ended on February 12, 1789.)

Of course, acceptance is another way to go, although we needn’t be as stoical as some people are — like the French philosopher Montesquieu, for example, who died on February 10, 1755. “One must mourn not at the death of men, but at their birth,” he wrote. (I wonder if he sent out cards of condolence to new parents.)

Whether we think of dying as a closing (“This is the last of earth. I am content!” – John Quincy Adams, our sixth president, who happily expired on February 23, 1848), or an opening (“My idea of heaven is eating pate de foie gras to the sound of trumpets.” – English clergyman Sydney Smith, who went to his celestial meal and concert on February 22, 1845), we should keep in mind that the show will go on, and that we’re bound to have some say in the matter – maybe even the last word, before the curtain rings down.

“I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark,” is the way Thomas Hobbes, the great philosopher, signed off — elegantly enough, as he died on Leap Day (Feb. 29) in 1679. Still, the statement seems prepared. At the other end of the profundity scale was physicist Richard Feynman, who was unimpressed with the biggest event of his life. “I’d hate to die twice,” said Feynman on his deathbed. “It’s so boring.” (He succumbed on February 15, 1988.)

While the actual end may indeed turn out to be tedious, the contemplation of it can be a salutary exercise. “You only live a short time…and you are dead a long time,” in the words of Johan Huizinga, a Dutch historian (died Feb. 1, 1945), who presumably knew what he was talking about, having studied history, the record of people who go on being dead. And Sydney Smith, who looked forward to goose liver in heaven, hinted nonetheless that death might be the bitter end for some of us — a deadline, so to speak. “Every day sends to their graves obscure men,” said Smith, “whose timidity prevented them from making a first effort.”

Make every day count, that is to say, keeping in mind that life is a brief candle, while death can seem to go on forever.

On the other hand, sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees. “Death is God’s way of telling us to slow down,” the comedian Henny Youngman (died Feb. 24, 1998) used to joke. (He’s the one who often said “Take my wife…please,” but never “Take my life, please.”)

Which brings us around to Sylvia Plath, the poet who took her own life (on February 11, 1963). “Dying is an art, like everything else,” she wrote. “I do it exceptionally well.” Maybe so, despite what Richard Feynman had to say about it. A cynic might write this month’s Deathless Verse:

Death as an art form? Sounds like sheer bollocks,
And if some are like Rembrandts, most are mere Pollocks.

 

Paul Erland is a writer from Nashville, Tennessee. His Farewells: An Almanac of Parting Thoughts is available at Amazon.

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