Mike,
No, not a fun topic, but siting here at a Starbucks-sized table a few
feet from Susan's hospice-provided medical bed impending death is there
every time I look up.
As to broken hips, my grandmother fell and broke her hip and then died
shortly thereafter. She was 86. I've heard about such cases for years
and have never understood the connection between a broken hip and
death. Of course the broken hip is not in itself fatal, if Susan is at
all typical. Young people with healthy bones don't as a rule break
hips. Even old people with healthy bones don't break hips, but if the
bones are weak, and Susan at 70 had osteoperosis, then probably other
things are weak as well and they sure were in her case. I didn't know
what my grandmother's circumstances were. "She was out gardening, fell
and broke her hip" an uncle told us.
I say I've got nothing wrong with me, but I have a tendency toward high
blood pressure. Half the time its okay so I take only a mild BP pill.
Also, as I learned from wearing myself out taking care of Susan after
she broke her hip, I am susceptible to bronchitis. And I often wake up
with a stiff neck. That's all I can think of. Will one of those things
be the final cause of killing me after I fall and break my hip at 86 or
96? Maybe.
[Most of the time I think I might eventually be in the running for the
oldest living veteran of the Korean War, but not recently.]
Lawrence
On 6/24/2015 6:14 PM, Mike Geary wrote:
Not a very fun topic, Lawrence. I've known several people who died in their thirties and early forties, people who would be in their sixties and seventies now. Most of the drug deaths were accidental, but not all. The rest were caused by alcohol. For some of them it was a conscious decision to die. They had been told by their doctors that if they continued to drink they would die soon from liver disease. Yet some chose death rather than stop drinking. That fact shocked me and continues to shock me, but then I've never lived in their skin. Bar "life" can be a very jovial, convivial, fun, sociable, sharing and even caring atmosphere. For many people, I believe, it is the most enjoyable time in their lives, or at least their most relaxing. At the same time, it can be a killer -- which ain't half so bad if you're drunk. I'm 71, my father died at 73, but his father died at 96. I only remember Grand Daddy as a cantankerous old man. It was said he had never been to a doctor because, he claimed, "doctors kill people." But when he was 96 he fell and broke his hip. He ended up in the hospital surrounded by doctors and sure enough within a month he was dead. Just goes to show you. I don't worry about dying because I won't ever know that I died. I won't ever know that I once was. I just hope those who extoll reincarnation are wrong because I don't want to come back as a roach which I surely would.
On Wed, Jun 24, 2015 at 4:52 PM, Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
From Hemingway's short store, "A Clean Well lighted place":
"He's drunk now," he said.
"He's drunk every night."
"What did he want to kill himself for?"
"How should I know."
"How did he do it?"
"He hung himself with a rope."
"Who cut him down?"
"His niece."
"Why did they do it?"
"Fear for his soul."
"How much money has he got?" "He's got plenty."
"He must be eighty years old."
"Anyway I should say he was eighty."
"I wish he would go home. I never get to bed before three
o'clock. What kind of hour is that to go to bed?"
"He stays up because he likes it."
"He's lonely. I'm not lonely. I have a wife waiting in bed for me."
"He had a wife once too."
"A wife would be no good to him now."
"You can't tell. He might be better with a wife."
"His niece looks after him. You said she cut him down."
"I know." "I wouldn't want to be that old. An old man is a nasty
thing."
"Not always. This old man is clean. He drinks without spilling. Even now, drunk. Look at him."
"I don't want to look at him. I wish he would go home. He has no
regard for those who must work."
. . .
"Another," said the old man.
"No. Finished." The waiter wiped the edge of the table with a
towel and shook his head.
The old man stood up, slowly counted the saucers, took a leather
coin purse from his pocket and paid for the drinks, leaving half a
peseta tip. The waiter watched him go down the street, a very old
man walking unsteadily but with dignity."
*Comment:
*I'm now sitting at a table about the size of a table I set at
near the El Mirador hospital in Palm Springs. It was in a
Starbucks, sort of. That is, the Starbucks was actually inside
the lobby of the hospital -- a very nice setup for those waiting
for someone or for a ride. I sat there for perhaps an hour
reading a book, waiting for a doctor to be done conducting some
procedure on Susan. I had no thoughts of suicide -- still don't. If (I still have difficulty thinking "when") I lose Susan, I may
check out the Starbucks near me. I won't use the drive-thru but
will go inside and see if it will be a clean well-lighted place,
good enough to sit and drink coffee for an hour our two.
Years ago when I was going to college and paying my way, largely,
by working for the Teamsters, someone told me the story of a
fellow who retired, had someone take him to an inlet of the
Pacific Ocean every day. He had a lunch pail and a fishing pole. He cast his line out and then opened his pail and took out a
bottle. By the end of the day he was drunk, and someone came to
get him. Day after day it was the same until he died. I never
heard how old the man was. Sounds like he could have been an
existentialist.
Hemingway's old man was deaf. I'd rather be deaf than lose
clarity of mind as Susan has. I discussed with Susan the idea of
reneging slightly on her plug-pulling plans. She could get kidney
dialysis. I'd be happy to take her for that. She'd gain clarity
of mind, but she stuck with her original plan to give it all up. She has gone on for years getting weaker and sicker. She's tired
and wants there to be an end. Not just that, she has an extremely
high degree of faith and experiences no doubts about "being with
the Lord after death." So it isn't like the old man hanging
himself in a Hemingway notion of existential despair. Susan has
been responsible -- more than responsible. She has done
everything the doctors asked and prescribed so that she could have
a new liver and live a long time, but when they said they couldn't
operate and that beyond that their tests had given her kidney
failure, she decided she had done enough. A person desperate to
live as long as possible might opt for kidney dialysis, but she
isn't desperate. She is a physical wreck. Whether she could even
endure the being lifted into a wheel chair, taken to a dialysis
place, waiting in a wheel chair, enduring the process, put back in
a wheel chair and driven home is doubtful. She's content to wait
here in the hospital bed the hospice people provided, have me feed
her as much as she can manage, and wait.
As for me, I don't drink and so won't experience any
alcohol-induced despair. I do read biographies of poets, which is
depressing enough. Auden, in the one I'm reading now, made it
to age 67. He died in Vienna. A Syrian doctor reported Auden
saying "'My mind still seems to function, thank God, as it should,
but my body gets tired very easily. His diagnosis -- a weak
heart, whatever that means.' Shortly afterwards, at the close of
summer, he wrote three lines that may constitute his last poem:
He still loves life
But O O O O how he wishes
The Good Lord would take him."
". . . Some friends and acquaintances in New York and Oxford, who
knew how miserable Auden had been, speculated whether he had
killed himself either deliberately or incidentally with alcohol
and pills. . . A limited autopsy was performed and indicated that
he had died of heart failure. There is no evidence of a fatal
overdose, intentional or otherwise; and perhaps the speculation
arose because Auden in his last years often volunteered the remark
that he had never contemplated suicide, with an insistence which
made some of his friends doubtful."
I skipped ahead in Richard Davenport-Hines' biography of Auden to
see how Auden died. I didn't read enough to have the entire event
in context, but from what I read Auden was taking "pills" and
also, like the old man in Hemingway's short story, drinking. Lots
of people slip away under those circumstances.
I wonder, if Auden's mind was not functioning well, whether he
would have rationalized his way to suicide? Perhaps not if he was
as religious at the end as his three-line poem suggests. Susan is
that religious. I think I'm okay as well, but maybe I don't need
to worry about that for awhile -- plenty of time, most likely, to
find a clean well-lighted place of my own.
Lawrence
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