One of the thoughts that has recently been going through my mind is triggered by watching our kitchen-timer run down the last 45-50 seconds. One day, I keep thinking, one day 45 seconds will be all I have left to live. Who, I wonder, will be there, beside me? Will I have made peace with all those I need to make peace with? Will my sons be on their way towards their own accomplishments, families, love, passion and happiness? Will those last 45 seconds be filled with regrets and worries or will they be filled with gratitude. And what are the things that will truly count?
And no, this doesn't feel morbid to me. It doesn't feel like fear, more like wondering. A deeper sense of what is, what will be and what will be without me.
Philosphers and other thinkers have remarked on the fact that we cannot think our own non-existence. I agree, thinking I don't exist is a paradoxical concept, bound to confuse us and, ultimately, not make much sense. But, I hold against this, that we can feel what it means to exist no longer. I am deeply interested in this feeling. Nothingness is palpable emotionally and it is, perhaps, this experience Irvin Yalom refers to when he reminds us that death is no different from not being born. In other words, it is a state of being we're already deeply familiar with.
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THOUGHTS ON DEATH, POST-VASECTOMY: I, too, am thinking about death lately. I have an affinity for death, anyway, dreaming about people who are going to die before they die, and then after as well. My dream of having 2 kids died a while back, but the body was just cremated today (cauterized, actually). It's just grief, not resentment, although I suppose I resent my own lack of resources to some extent, if anything. Every time I go over the past, I see that I simply was not ready to have a family earlier than we did. So my grief is mixed with acceptance, maybe borne of acceptance. I also am sad that Asher is an only child, but more sad that the village is not close at hand, that his failure to have frequent contact with friends is my failure to make it happen--he obviously can't, though he does what he can, God knows he loves to play with other kids and seeks their company.
I feel grief that a part of my body is gone, a capability I had is gone. If Asher should not make it to adulthood then my plan B is gone.
I am knocking on wood here about Asher's dying--but this is my biggest fear, to lose him. The other night in the hospital, I was shocked by his drawn appearance, dark circles under his eyes, unconscious, his eyes half open and unmoving--this is what he would look like if he were dead. I know there is a streak of anti-death morbidity involved--of course, he will die, eventually. The Spanish used to feel their children's skulls, as a reminder of the closeness of death. On the other hand, they use a verb with a temporary feel to describe the state of being dead, heaven (or hell) being right around the corner if one dies, some kind of rebirth the next turn in the road. I hope the boy gets to see his Nanna when she dies, that she gets to kiss him one last time. I know most of this is unlikely, so I am left imagining his dying to try to recapture some of the (good) drama.
I know part of me wants him to die, wants everyone to die, because death is relatively uncomplicated: the person is gone, you think of their good points and you are sad, period. Life means you have to interface--in your face--with all of it and the challenge is to appreciate the good stuff even when the boy is spitting on you or grabbing your vasectomy wound....If he were dead, I could feel unqualifiedly good about our relationship, with communal support for that. Alive, I have to look him in the face and blow away the static--the shame, the rage, fear and frustration, the judgement of him why can't he I we be different dammit, etc.--and find the patience and love, or even just the willingness to find them some days. Alive, I have to witness the dearth of people in his life who treat him with such love as I am not always able to conjure--I could come up with a list of people in his life, which is great, but the total amount of time they spend with or around him still seems to me to be paltry at best, and so we are back to the Village which was never incorporated fully, never formed, constellated, inaugurated or christened, really...It just struck me--this is his childhood--he doesn't get to do it over.
....I am sad not to have two kids, but I guess I am sadder to have one kid--just one--for whom I have a hard time getting his needs met. Am I too cynical? Probably. I don't appreciate the good stuff enough. We had a good day today, he had a good day today. I need to stop fearing and act, as to the Village. I feel like I need some form of help that I do not now have at my disposal, some wisdom and perspective, some contacts, something.
I feel good about having the vasectomy, because I am following my principles--I am not just wishing that people would have fewer children, I am actually having only one. I hope that Asher will be like Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings--one sword worth a thousand regular swords, because God knows those thousand other swords are clashing together in the town square, boy. But here, this vasectomy, this fixing, is a kind of death, the death of a possible future, of a possible child, of a younger, more vigorous father of two or three hypothetical--and thus easily lovable--children. It is a death that foreshadows Death, as all deaths, little and big, do. My best friend's wife died this year, my fertility is dying, my kidney attacked my bladder with slow-motion stones, my father's mind and body grow ever more feeble...it all adds up and suddenly the blissful ignorance carried along by the illusion of youthful invulnerability is popped like the soap bubble that it was--my mother never felt my skull, I did not kiss my grandparent's along into death. I could die; I am, in fact, dying, dissolving back into the earth and air. Without modern medicine, two tiny stones could have killed me like David Goliath, three days of vomiting and pain might have left me a stone-and-leather mummy, a memory, my child fatherless, my wife one of those single mothers who had never wanted to be a mother. Therapist, friends and schoolmates die, beautiful children die as casually as the ant I'll never know I stepped on, and death gives birth to grief and relief, too. And I, sheltered from death--death wears makeup, and portrait photo masks of life, death sends postcards from the hospital--am shocked into acceptance of my death and my fear.
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