Death and Dying on a Saturday Morning

Saturday morning I awoke to a rare sunny day in the permanent cloud that is Ingleside. The sunlight glowed with stubborn enthusiasm through my bedroom window as I stretched, yawned, donned my “I’m an intellectual” outfit and cheerily contemplated the first Litquake discussion I had chosen for the day: Death and Dying, presented by Lapham’s Quarterly. Yes, I had chosen to begin my gloriously bright morning with one of the darkest, dreariest subjects: our imminent doom.

It’s too early, Death. Go back to bed, you look like hell.

The panelists, John Crowley, Kira Don, Timothy Don, and Jeff Sharlet, affectionately joked that death was a subject they had wanted to cover since the inception of the magazine, but feared that others would shy from the imminent topic, and that their magazine would go the way of their subject… to its grave. Thus, seven years later, they held enough confidence in their magazine to present the subject of death and dying to a bleary-eyed public at 11am in the lovely Hotel Rex.

Sometimes I take really pointless pictures. I apologize.

The panelists read works ranging from the 17^th century to the present, all relating to our inevitable end. One thing became strikingly clear throughout the readings… though styles, opinions, technology, language (insert cultural item here), may change… the presence of death and the fear of it never will.

My favorite poem was the work of a 20^th century poet, Philip Larkin. The poem, written in 1977, is entitled Aubade, which is a song or poem said to a lover when departing at dawn. You can draw your own conclusions about the title after you read the poem.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178058

If you’re lazy, here’s a snippet of Larkin’s introspective poem:

And so it stays just on the edge of vision, 

A small unfocused blur, a standing chill 

That slows each impulse down to indecision. 

Most things may never happen: this one will, 

Wonderfully spine chilling, is it not? We may never get to see the Eiffel Tower, go sky-diving, swim with blue whales, walk on the moon, eat rocky mountain oysters, or sprint naked across a filled stadium, but there is one thing we will, without question, all eventually do… and that is to die.

Here’s a piece of the very last stanza of the poem:

Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring 

In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring

Intricate rented world begins to rouse.

The sky is white as clay, with no sun.

Work has to be done.

Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

And so this, too, is inevitable… that we must all wake in the morning to our lives and our jobs. Telephones wait to be answered, bikes wait to be ridden, MUNI drivers wait to yell at you, and lovers wait to kiss you upon your return. The simplest yet most significant thing I took away from this seminar was… while you’re not dead, remember that you’re living.