It's a bit mild out for a mid-September evening, and the humidity makes cat fur stick to my face every time I kiss, "Impy." We were playing earlier, so I'm still picking fur off my schnozz. I'm fond of lifting her up and kissing her back, and then setting her back down to chase something; usually a pistachio or a penny. I do so love that cat. Miller's Crossing is on IFC, which is a pleasant surprise.
Other than that I haven't much to report. Most of my thoughts are focused on the Nameless Dread of existential angst. There was an article about a widow in the Boston Sunday Globe. It got me thinking about death. This woman refuses to take off her wedding ring three years after her husband's death. He died suddenly of a massive heart attack at 50 years of age. Some people die suddenly, while others slowly succumb to a withering disease like cancer. That's how my mother died, slowly and painfully. Several heart operations, lung cancer, a broken hip, and finally a more general cancer that did not respond to painful radiation treatments. My grandfather presented himself in my mind as the opposite of that kind of hideous death. He died of a massive heart attack while carrying groceries.
I asked my father which kind of death is generally more difficult. When my mother died, I was almost relieved that her suffering was over. And I had so much time to prepare myself emotionally, even during a time in my life when I was a wreck for other reasons. My sister was devastated because she didn't live with her and witness her painful decline. Naturally, a quick death is easier on the person doing the dying. But if my father or brother or someone else I care about and love dies before me, I hope I have some time to prepare while at the same time they go free of pain.
I think about death a lot. Unlike most people, though, I mainly think about other people. I don't want loved ones to suffer, but death comes to us all. It is a lonely business, but it doesn't have to be agonizing. In Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim, the protagonist fears death above everything else. In one scene, he is tortured horribly. But pain doesn't move him, only the lifeless void that will one day take us all.
I'm the opposite of that, and my prior attempt to kill myself should help add weight to that claim. Non-existence is a fine fate, far better than the eternity of boredom or torture that the Christians are offering. The universe is indifferent, so it's not concerned with a farewell kindness after an anguished existence. We're just lucky that that is what's in store, by chance. There is no god, so there can't be anything out there to create something as horrible as inescapable immortality. The thought of it gives me the willies.
So my fear centers around the passing from life to death. For me, and everyone I love. Death is like a mysterious border town, with all sorts of exotic adventures. It's a strange place, and you are given a new perspective on the life behind you, and the death ahead. Nobody knows what it will feel like, or how you will judge (or just consider) yourself in those last moments. You may have minutes, or days, or months...you just don't know yet. You won't know what was really important until you're poised to lose it. And in that little border town you will have some fine, profound thoughts about the country you're leaving. Or perhaps not. As you sit on the border to the undiscovered country ahead, I like to think that at that moment the existential dread and angst disappears. To look back at life through fearless eyes, with true understanding about the meaninglessness of it all, would be wonderfully liberating. Sort of like finally finding out how the magician saws the lady in half, or pulls the bunny out of his hat. To look back at the stage I was just dancing upon and see how it looks from afar.
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