It’s late. Peter Jennings died. That got to me like it never would have before. Like, wait, but he was just starting treatment. What happened? One minute he was saying he’d be back and the next, phht, gone. His wife said it was a peaceful, painless death though, with his family around him. So they knew he was dying even though I didn’t. Somehow there’s relief in this. To know that it can’t just sneak up and snatch you (though it can), that he knew enough to make a conscious (at least semi, it seems) transition.
To me the most tragic deaths are the ones where it was waving a red flag, flashing lights and yelling hellooo for days, weeks, months and everyone just ignores it and tells the person everything’s going to be okay. This happened to a friend of mine’s dad. Jack. It was so clear to everyone but him and his son that he was not long for this world. In his healthy, non-cancer, pre-hospice life Jack always said goodbye with a sly “Ciao, babe.” In a non-pretentious, sweet way. My friend hoped those would be his last words some day; “Ciao, babe.” But it never happened because you can’t say goodbye when you’re in (encouraged) denial about those flashing lights up ahead. He died, I think, wishing he were still alive.
And though there’s something so admirably, heartachingly, doggedly wishful and human about that, it’s also incredibly sad. When my day comes (hopefully many decades from now) I’d like it to be honest and peaceful and fully acknowledged. Even if I’m scared as fuck. From one sentence I read somewhere it seems like Peter’s was maybe that way––the aware, peaceful part. Not that that makes it (from way over here) seem any less sudden or personally dismaying and scary. I take comfort, though, in an exit that knows it’s exit. And even more comfort in an exit that knows it’s another phase, us being reswallowed by a bigger sense of life, returning to an amniotic swim of huge, blotting cosmic love. Or something cool and unfrightening, freeing and safe.
