Winter Thoughts

It surely isn't easy to face up to the realities of aging and death. Speaking only for myself, my inclination is to do as the Johnsons did. In November 1979, I was distressed to learn that she was dying. Elsie wrote that "the prospect of death does not distress me, but the prospect of becoming a helpless invalid does. Therefore, should this rare cancer of mine speed up the inevitable a bit, I would think I'd be grateful. If you find this hard to accept, it may be because you don't have to face the alternatives." Two months later on January 4, 1980 Elsie died. At the memorial service for Aunt Elsie, Aunt Viola said "Ray seemed frail and worn. Ray took his relatives and us to a cafeteria after the service. After we got home, he got right into his pajamas and slept for several hours. His children don't expect that he'll live long without Elsie." Six months later after Elsie died to the day, Ray died. "I was with my father when he died of a heart attack after a weekend of reminiscing," writes his son Ray M. Johnson, Jr. "Death was instantaneous and appeared to be painless, at least for him." The Johnsons' love for others than went beyond their death when they left their estate to 22 different people and their bodies to science.

Having friends in medical school and knowing of the disrespect that students sometimes show to donated bodies, I tried to discourage my aunt from donating her body. She acknowledged the possibility, but insisted the good to future students outweighed the bad behavior of other students, cheerfully endorsing this essay from Author Unknown:

"At a certain moment, a doctor will determine that my brain has ceased to
function and that, for all intents and purposes, my life has stopped. When
this happens, do not attempt to instill artificial life into my body by use
of a machine. And don't call this my 'deathbed'. Call it my 'bed of life,'
and let my body be taken from it to help other lead fuller lives.

"Give my sight to a man who has never seen a sunrise, a baby's face or love in the eyes of a woman. Give me heart to a person whose own heart has caused nothing but endless days of pain. Give my blood to the teenager who has been pulled from the wreckage of his car so that he might live to see his grandchildren play. Explore every corner of my brain. Take my cells, if necessary, and let them grow so that someday a speechless boy will shout at the crack of a bat and a deaf girl will hear the sound of rain against the window. Burn what is left of me and scatter the ashes to the winds to help the flowers grow.

"If you must bury anything, let it be my faults, my weaknesses, and all
prejudice against my fellow man. Give my soul to God. If by chance you
wish to remember me, do it with a kind deed or word to someone who needs you. If you do all I have asked, I will live forever."

My mother read a tribute I wrote for Aunt Elsie. "Over the years I've saved some of her letters," I wrote at the time. " 'This morning's mail brought the enclosed letter from Lillian about Uncle Otto's death in Ipswich ... another link broken in the family circle,' Aunt Elsie wrote me several years before her death. 'As we grow older, I think we accept death more-not only because it's inevitable but also because limitations to a life span become more acceptable. But that doesn't diminish the deep sadness and sense of loss when someone who has been a part of one's life for as long as one remembers anything at all-suddenly is no more.' Eased by a flood of happy memories-hiking through the Grand Tetons, boating down the Snake River, trying Japanese food-I feel the same sense of sadness." And now, two decades later, I see that Aunt Elsie's great gift to me was that life need not be a vale of tears, but a joyous smorgasbord of wonder and challenge and a striving for excellence and empathy as well as travel, theatre, books, cooking, museums, children, seminars, and music. With her great moral and common sense informed by a deep humanity and a supple and sensitive mind, Elsie Wik Johnson taught me as few others have.

When I was on the beach in Hawaii last spring, I gave Ben a teaspoon
of philosophical reality. I stamped my foot into the wet sand and
pointed that footprint to him as the surf washed over it. In a second,
the indentation was gone, as if it never existed in the first place.
That, I said, is our life on earth. It is but a vapor in the eternal
vastness of oblivion, a barely noticed flash on that endless ribbon of
time. As the preacher in Ecclesiastes said: "To every thing there is a
season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be
born, and a time to die." In the local cemetery, I came across a
ninety year old grave marker that had toppled over. As I turned it
upright, I wondered if anyone today even knows or cares that person
lived or died. And I realized that the day will come that no one will
know or care if I or anyone else for that matter lived or died. Man is
not the measure of all things as I'm reminded of Shelley's poem
Ozymandias.

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away

While my faith takes me to a belief in the afterlife, it doesn't mean that our life here on earth is much more than a ripple from a pebble tossed into a boundless ocean, a twig swirling into oblivion. That said, our response cannot be cloud-dwelling morbidity as life is to be lived, and it is our awareness of death that gives life poignancy and urgency. We are always hearing time's winged chariot hurrying near, and it is this knowledge that brings us closer to what and whom we cherish. For me, this means spending less time with tele-marketers and tele-politicians and more time with my family and friends, and less time worrying
about stuff I can't do anything about and more time enjoying the stuff that makes up my life.