Last Wednesday, in the locker-room of the indoor aquatic center of my home town, Urbana, a recent aquaintance told me that a friend of his was dying.
The recent aquaintance, Barry, is the friend of another aquaintance whose children go to the same school as my older two boys. This is how it is here, in Champaign-Urbana. Strangers are often people who know ten people you also know. So, they're not really strangers in the full sense of the word, because, in many ways, our worlds overlap. This is why, even though I never knew Barry's friend, I am sure I did know him in many ways.
I had met Barry perhaps four weeks earlier and gotten to know him some through short conversations in the locker room. I found out that he and his friends go swimming on Wednesdays and running on Saturday mornings. I found out that, like me, they do these things early in the morning, between six and seven, to be back and ready for family life and work. I found out that they're all about my age, mid to late forties and early fifties. All of them, I could tell from Barry's descriptions, very engaged and loving fathers and husbands.
On Wednesday he was alone in the locker room, his friends were not there. We chatted for a while then Barry told me about his friend, Mark. A great marathon runner and athlete, funny guy with a good sense of humor, two children and . . . struggling with brain-cancer. He had been diagnosed 15 months earlier and now was in hospice care at home.
Barry said he and his friends were taking turns helping Mark's wife and simply sitting by his bed-side. Barry knew, it seemed, that this would be Mark's last week. There was in his face and voice a complicated mix of acceptance and anger, of stoicism and despairing . . . of sadness. Perhaps it was shared age that build the bridge between us at that moment, but it only took seconds and I began to feel those things too. How could we begin to fathom what was happening to Mark and to us?
The feelings are not simply vicarious. Yes, this could happen to us too; we're about that age. So, yes, there probably is fear about that; about our own unknown fate. And, yes, this fear is usually something we'd rather not talk or know about. We have a right to not know it, right? We have a right to live, after all we're only middle-aged not old. Though these feelings are strong they account for very little of what is creating the real struggle for those who stay behind while Mark is off on his last big journey to the eternal hunting-grounds.
The recent aquaintance, Barry, is the friend of another aquaintance whose children go to the same school as my older two boys. This is how it is here, in Champaign-Urbana. Strangers are often people who know ten people you also know. So, they're not really strangers in the full sense of the word, because, in many ways, our worlds overlap. This is why, even though I never knew Barry's friend, I am sure I did know him in many ways.
I had met Barry perhaps four weeks earlier and gotten to know him some through short conversations in the locker room. I found out that he and his friends go swimming on Wednesdays and running on Saturday mornings. I found out that, like me, they do these things early in the morning, between six and seven, to be back and ready for family life and work. I found out that they're all about my age, mid to late forties and early fifties. All of them, I could tell from Barry's descriptions, very engaged and loving fathers and husbands.
On Wednesday he was alone in the locker room, his friends were not there. We chatted for a while then Barry told me about his friend, Mark. A great marathon runner and athlete, funny guy with a good sense of humor, two children and . . . struggling with brain-cancer. He had been diagnosed 15 months earlier and now was in hospice care at home.
Barry said he and his friends were taking turns helping Mark's wife and simply sitting by his bed-side. Barry knew, it seemed, that this would be Mark's last week. There was in his face and voice a complicated mix of acceptance and anger, of stoicism and despairing . . . of sadness. Perhaps it was shared age that build the bridge between us at that moment, but it only took seconds and I began to feel those things too. How could we begin to fathom what was happening to Mark and to us?
The feelings are not simply vicarious. Yes, this could happen to us too; we're about that age. So, yes, there probably is fear about that; about our own unknown fate. And, yes, this fear is usually something we'd rather not talk or know about. We have a right to not know it, right? We have a right to live, after all we're only middle-aged not old. Though these feelings are strong they account for very little of what is creating the real struggle for those who stay behind while Mark is off on his last big journey to the eternal hunting-grounds.
The real question is this: How is it possible? How can someone, a man bursting with vitality, strength, openness and love simply cease to exist?
Since I was a little boy I have wondered about the passage from something to nothing. My first experiences of it were seemingly mundane. I would storm forward into a space where just a second ago a person or a car had passed. And I would wonder about the absolute lack of resistance that space gave me . Just seconds ago a solid thing, a person, was there . . . now it was empty.
Since I was a little boy I have wondered about the passage from something to nothing. My first experiences of it were seemingly mundane. I would storm forward into a space where just a second ago a person or a car had passed. And I would wonder about the absolute lack of resistance that space gave me . Just seconds ago a solid thing, a person, was there . . . now it was empty.
How could the thing I had just seen, heard and smelled have vanished so completely? How could it have gone so absolutely? How could the only thing left of it be in my memory? Why was I now filling up that space, feeling the weight of my own presence more than anything else that might have come before?
When people die, no matter if we know them or not, they leave these spaces, they pass from something to nothing. Often the spaces they inhabited are quickly taken up and filled by other things and other people, sometimes wanted, sometimes unwanted. We gasp at the emptiness of such spaces at first. But if we don't take great care to preserve them, to draw boundaries around them, they will get filled again. It is in this way that life layers itself through time and in time.
So, Mark, wherever you are right now, we will draw some boundaries around the space you once inhabited. Your friends will continue to tell stories about you, your children and wife will treat your absence as a presence of sorts. I will have simply written this piece for you, a fellow man, fellow father, fellow lover of life.
I did one other thing, Mark. Yesterday, when I knew you had passed on, I dedicated a Chopin Mazurka to you. A space in time for you, while I played.
When people die, no matter if we know them or not, they leave these spaces, they pass from something to nothing. Often the spaces they inhabited are quickly taken up and filled by other things and other people, sometimes wanted, sometimes unwanted. We gasp at the emptiness of such spaces at first. But if we don't take great care to preserve them, to draw boundaries around them, they will get filled again. It is in this way that life layers itself through time and in time.
So, Mark, wherever you are right now, we will draw some boundaries around the space you once inhabited. Your friends will continue to tell stories about you, your children and wife will treat your absence as a presence of sorts. I will have simply written this piece for you, a fellow man, fellow father, fellow lover of life.
I did one other thing, Mark. Yesterday, when I knew you had passed on, I dedicated a Chopin Mazurka to you. A space in time for you, while I played.
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