Conscious Choice: Coming to Grips with Our Own Mortality

May 2006 | Body & Mind Health

Coming to Grips with Our Own Mortality

By Jonn Salovaara

The mother of my friend Dan is dying from Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS). She is paralyzed and in the last stages of that illness. His father, he says, is in a state of denial about the inevitability of her death. I asked Dan if he was doing anything to prepare himself for the loss of his mother. He replied that there are many books dealing with dying and the depression that can result from the death of a loved one. “But you can only read so many books about depression before they start to have a depressing effect.”

He pointed out that grief isn’t something you control, and said he is probably already in the early stages of grief. Being an English teacher, Dan deals with grief in part by talking about it in general terms with his classes, in part by finding books that anthologize literary struggles with death, including poems and stories about grief and mourning. Anyway, says Dan, “Men are supposed to be wired not to linger over death.” (Presumably, such lingering would seriously inhibit the process of warfare.)

I do tend to linger over the death of loved ones. (It’s clear to me I’m no warrior.) My father died 12 years ago and I read then in The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying about imagining the dead attaining a specific sort of reward, and using prayer and meditation to help the departed soul move on. In my father’s case, that led me to envision him in an endless game of Scrabble with his sister, both of them enjoying a glass of wine as they argued jovially over the existence of questionable words, on into eternity. This seemed to help.

My Mom is in her 80s and in good health. Still, in the last couple of years, I’ve begun to pre-linger over her inevitable departure from this life. I figure I’m doing this partly because her own mother died at about her age. Rationally, I see that this could be a completely mistaken analogy, but rationality doesn’t have a lot to do with this.

My mother has been a consistent positive force in my life, always pushing on no matter what the setback, always believing that life matters and that cynicism is a waste of time. Through my Dad’s employment, through various illnesses and losses, she’s always been clearheaded and strong. I already miss that embodiment of willpower and fortitude, that relentless optimism and drive, even though it’s still just a phone call away. I fear that I don’t have all these qualities myself, and I’m going to be stuck in a world where they exist only as a memory of a missing elder, or in some twisted form within someone not nearly as morally decent as my Mom.

It’s not just the exemplary human being I’ll be losing. As Dan also points out: “Mothers can understand you better than anyone.” That sort of understanding from and connection to another human being is a lot to lose. (Just for the sake of equal time, Dan does add, “They can also mess with your mind better than anyone.”)

Maybe I can get over this worrying by coming up with an image of eternity for my Mom, like the Scrabble thing for Dad. What would her preferred eternity be? Baking bread? Holding babies? Applauding her children? Walking her West Virginia fields? Nothing seems to sum it up.

I seem to be immune to spiritual consolation on this. Maybe because for so many years my parents represented the barrier between my own mortality and me. Since my father’s gone, when my mother passes, in a certain sense, I’m next, and I don’t want to face my own inevitable demise. So, like Dan’s dad, I’m holding at the denial stage myself. A part of me keeps asking, “People live to be 100, don’t they?”

Jonn Salovaara teaches essay writing and literature in the English Department of Columbia College Chicago.

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