This has been a tough week, and there are no remedies. Natalie’s best friend has had to be transferred into memory care at her assisted living place, and a few days ago, I found out that my somewhat-estranged best friend, Rob, died last year.
Well, we’ll have to get used to it if we’re going to be persistently and annoyingly old, we reasoned. Eventually, everybody you know dies off like the great auk, and then it’s your turn to find out what Heaven looks like.
I understand that crocodiles can live, like 200 years, and continue to grow the whole time. And there is a Greenland shark who has been paddling around the Arctic Ocean since 1620*. Compared to Ms. Shark, we are young and sprightly.
Natalie and I have lived long and fairly adventurous lives, and my observation is that we’re both fairly philosophical about not living forever. It feels exhausting. But it’s incurably painful to see friends climb them golden stairs.
There is a comic strip, “For Better or Worse,” in which five-year-old Elizabeth’s pet rabbit succumbed to whatever rabbits die of. She asks her mother what it’s like to be dead. And her mother’s response has stuck with me for many years:
She asks her daughter, “Do you remember what it was like before you were born?”
“No,” responds Elizabeth.
“Well, that’s what it is like after you die,” answers her mother.
I suppose it’s a dreamless sleep, and you don’t get to meet your grandparents (hooray) and you don’t get to haunt your old school, which is a shame.
I have to be cautious here, for Natalie and I were raised in different religions. Natalie’s firm belief is that the dead shall be raised through the intercession of Jesus Christ, and I hope she’s right.
My own belief is that our limited lifespan is nature’s way of keeping our species alive because it gets people like me, whose big and lasting accomplishment was learning to code in FORTRAN, out of the way of the younger and smarter kids.
I once had to substitute teach a science class in evolution in what was supposed to be a public school and was instantly set upon for expressing that last thought. I really don’t think that original sin causes our joints to crumble and our kidneys to fail, but it’s comforting to believe that there’s an alternative route.
I rather tend to trust the opinion of Pig, a cast member of another comic strip, “Pearls Before Swine:”
“We don’t know why we’re here, and we don’t know for how long, so we might as well laugh once in a while.”
Which Natalie and I intend to do, between funerals and medical appointments. She insists that we must greet each new day with gratitude, which she does each morning. I, on the other hand, am usually asleep, practicing for my eternal stay in the hereafter.
*We’re not sure, because they tend to lie about their age.
Mark Kinsler, kinsler33@gmail.com, lives with Natalie and her skeptical cat in our little old house in Lancaster, where a house built in 1888 is not necessarily historic.
This article originally appeared on Lancaster Eagle-Gazette: Finding humor and hope in life’s final chapter
Reporting by Mark Kinsler, Special to the Eagle-Gazette / Lancaster Eagle-Gazette
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