Category Archives: Personal Essays

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Intimations of Mortality

My sister Diane died on July 8 of this year, not quite two months ago. She was 68.

I am past the major grieving, I believe—several weeks have passed since my tears have welled up unexpectedly.

I may still be surprised by some sudden emotion, but there are now only persistent evocations of times shared with Diane, and of her forceful and positive spirit.

I no longer can forward to her a YouTube presentation of a popular singer or a clip from a TV comedy show of long ago, nor receive any from her. When I experience something that evokes a time we shared, I can no longer email or telephone to her about it.

She is really gone, but my sympathetic nervous system has not yet absorbed the fact of her permanent absence on this side of the great divide between life and death.

I have read and written and spoken occasionally on the subject of death, always in the abstract—for I haven’t yet experienced it, nor had anyone whose writing I have read.

With the extinguishing of Diane’s earthly presence so suddenly and completely, I feel closer to death. It is not as abstract to me as before.

When our parents died at advanced ages, these deaths were expected and even welcomed, for their last few years were difficult in each separate circumstance.

Not so with Diane’s death. She was younger than I by five- and-a-half years.

I have begun to imagine my spirit suddenly being extinguished. What can it be like? It is a very strange feeling or perception. Will the soul survive and, if so, in what manner?

I have known people who dwelt on the subject of death overly much in my view, or for my continuing interest. Will I now become such a person?

As I write this I wonder what lesson there may be in this new feeling or perception. What comes immediately to mind are the several aphorisms I have read and quoted, all tending toward this conclusion:

Death is always at your left hand (as Don Juan Matus remarked to Carlos Castaneda), so accept it and live life as this were your last moment.

Granddaughter Sydney learned a variant of this recently in Bible camp; she repeated it at the memorial we held for Diane in Sydney’s home.

To me this does not mean to become a pursuer of transient pleasures. Rather, it is to continue to act and build upon values that will have some lasting usefulness, at least for a few generations beyond.

I wrote the following during a low period, some 16 years ago:

Will It Be a Good Death?

When all the patterns close around me,
As my spirals play out all their energies,
When the sun no longer burns inside me,
And the waters cease coursing through me,
Will we cry good tears and say goodbye without regret?

Will it be a good death?

I pray it will be a good death
For the sake of my soul,
And the souls of my children, and of their children,
And of others who love me.

I pray my life will warrant a good death.

Will those with whom I am love-connected say,
“It was a good death: There was honor and completeness”?
Will they peacefully help my spirit to reunite with
The Great Everything?

To die a good death I must live a good life:
Be brave, be true, my soul;
Help me toward that good death.

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Certain Communications: Man/Woman

I’m talking about when a man needs to expound upon a sudden flash of an idea, a vision, a plan, a fantasy.

When I am struck, or imbued, or captured by an idea, I need to see it out loud, develop it, expand it, take side trips, have thoughtful pauses and, eventually, come to completion at the point where I have, at least temporarily, exhausted my energy on the subject.

Most men I know will nod their collective head in the presence of the expounder, and make some noncommittal grunts and other sounds peculiar to each to let him know they are still alert and want to give the impression they are still listening.

Women, on the other hand, want to be part of the action, want to partner with their man on this little adventure. Therefore they interrupt, take side trips not intended by the man, and innocently make turbulent the flow of ideas and words emanating from his little moment of creativity.

Further, other things will interrupt if the man does not choose his moment carefully.

If we are at dinner, for instance, the children will have no hesitation to demand Mom’s attention for the most trivial or transitory of things. This, of course, means the polite and gentle father, husband, man, stops his discourse until this moment has passed.

For some men such as I, when in a certain state, these interruptions and interjections and sidetracks cause a bottling up, a damming of the flow of images and ideas. This can turn things toward the bad, so the experienced man says–I’ll continue this later.

But the woman, who can multitask and hear and understand all things simultaneously, insists on the man continuing.

This does not ease his distress. Rather, the man feels forced to continue with a much narrower and more focused stream of energy so that a reasonable conclusion can be reached quickly.

On learns about and from such things over and over.

Sudden enthusiasms are dampened if the setting and the mood isn’t carefully chosen–but there goes spontaneity.

What to do about it?

Write!

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Perhaps, “The Soul”…

… or, perhaps, “Sagging Skin and the C Minor Mass of Mozart.”

It started with a day off. Despite being a pensionär, I usually have a full-enough schedule every day. I had not had a day off from my various travels, meetings, readings and writings in too long, so I set out last Wednesday morning equipped only with my writing pad and pen. I had no book, no camera, and no plan, other than to deposit the recyclables at the recycle station between home and the subway station.

My state of mind upon leaving the house on a day off is to have no destination in mind and with no expectations. I must admit that it has been so  often that a serendipitous something happens to me on such days that I knew I would not be surprised if such happened again—but I didn’t allow myself to expect.

And so it came to pass that, among other places visited in Stockholm, I found myself in the audio-visual section of the Stockholm City Library in Kulturhuset, the large House of Culture in the center of new Stockholm (as distinct from the Old Town around a kilometer away).

I have borrowed many CDs from this branch of the library but I didn’t want to focus my energies on searching the bins. I thought of my friend Vasil who loves opera and looked for the first time through the collection of DVDs devoted to musical presentations, including ballet. I chose four albums, including the one shown here.

As I went to the self-service station check out the DVDs I found that my library card was missing. I went to the librarian with my problem and she quickly found that I had left it at this branch on my last visit. It was quickly retrieved for me. There was my unexpected something, I thought.

I listened to and watched the Mozart DVD later in the day, before Eva came home from her job, and found that of the two pieces I was most moved by the performance of the Mass. I was often in tears.

The two sopranos and the conductor, John Eliot Gardiner, are the stars of this performance, in my opinion, but all performers are of the highest quality. I had not heard of the lyric soprano Barbara Bonney and was entranced by her presentation, as I was by that of mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter about whom I have heard and seen in advertisements of her local performances.

Eva’s son Leo visited us two days later for a small family gathering on the Easter holiday. While Eva prepared a meal, I put the DVD on again to show Leo the Mass. He was quite willing, telling me part way through that he used to play this piece every Sunday morning. We both wept, each in our own way, at the sublimity of the music and its presentation. I was struck, additionally, by the resemblance of Anne Sofie von Otter to a woman I loved around 40 years ago. So, here were two more synchronicities.

But this was the most important to me: these artists, the four soloists, the singers in the chorus, the musicians at their period instruments, all of them seemed in thrall to something Mozart had captured (or which had been revealed to him) in the notes he had written. Their persons seemed subordinated, yet elevated. The most thrilling moments were during the duets of the sopranos; no, it was when Barbara Bonney and the woodwinds played against and with each other; no, it was when Gardiner embraced the entire assembly of musicians in his conductor’s virtual grasp; no, it was when the chorus soared and swooped…

Ah, Mozart!

Two days later as Eva and I were traveling on the subway to buy garden supplies, I mentioned to her that the skin at my throat and under my upper arms was getting that crepey old-age look. She smiled gently and said nothing. I went further to say that it didn’t seem like my skin; or, rather, that the message the sight my skin might possibly send to others didn’t seem to be a message about me. We discussed a bit about the body being the carrier for our soul. It seemed obvious to us and there wasn’t much more to say.

Pondering this conversation and observation, I thought again about the performers in the Mass. They, individually and in the whole, were using their bodies but were beyond their bodies. How serenely magical it is that the notes revealed to Mozart which he recorded on manuscript, centuries later coursed through the bodies of these performers and subsequently through Leo and me.

Perhaps, the soul…