We who are about to die salute you

21 May 2002

Yesterday Stephen Jay Gould died from cancer.  Dr. Gould had been
diagnosed with a particular cancer in 1982 - 20 years ago - that had a
median life expectancy of 8 mos. after diagnosis.

Gould used it as an opportunity to explain about the personal meaning of
statistics, and the very important distinction between mean, median, and
the distribution as a whole. Though he didn't get into conditional
distributions, but he did indicate certain characteristics he possessed
at the time that gave him hope for survival - a right-skewed
distribution, the fact he was young at the time of diagnosis...

Though evidently many people were aware of his medical condition, in
particular that he had this cancer and was quite sick -- I had no clue.
I have been reading his column in =Natural History= for only about 3
years, am never mentioned his medical condition; this is no indictment -
if a person has had a particular condition since 1982, I can see why he
wouldn't bring it up too often.

It would be similar to me saying -- hey I really like beef and Jane
Austen, I'm really into math, and my Dad, who is my model human, died
when I was 16.  These are characteristics and facts that have been
attached to me for a long time.  I don't mention them unless there's a
particular point I want to make.  Or maybe not.  I'm not that directed,
ya know.

Still, the announcement of Gould's death shocked me.  I've been thinking
of death quite a bit lately - it's common to the human condition - and
I've made certain claims about myself to other people of late.  I've
claimed that I'm not scared of death (and I truly think most people
aren't scared of death -- they're really scared of pain). There's been
lots of terrorism alerts given lately - indications that suicide bombers
would hit NYC soon.

(Aside -- Stu and I are discussing how to shit in the woods -- catholes,
postures, trees, and the like.  And now Stu is telling me a joke from
one of his survival guides, involving the Pope.  I told him my own Pope
joke, and he didn't think it funny.  Well, I didn't think =his= was
funny.)

In any case, I'm listening to Fresh Air with Terry Gross right now, and
they're doing a short retrospective on Gould.

To a certain extent, quite a few of the people I've set as my models
have died untimely deaths - or my own involvement in reading or
appreciating their works is mixed with my finding out they were dead or
soon after died.  I wrote to Isaac Asimov in the month he died, telling
him about my own father's untimely death due to heart attack.  I can't
imagine writing to any author I admire with diabetes with the story of
my Aunt Pat's death.

This doesn't hold across the board of course - Martin Gardner is still
going on, and he's got to be quite old at this point.  Orson Scott Card
is still alive, well, and writing (knock on wood).  Larry Niven has had
a bad accident in the past year, but I think he's okay now (dammit,
Larry and Jerry, finish =Purgatory=!)

I could go on about "Carpe Diem", but it's not exactly what I'm talking
about.  I've just been more aware recently about how short a time I've
had with those I see as sublime human beings, in a particular field, or
as a human overall. The loss of my father and my aunt is the deepest
chasm - these were the people that most people compared me with (I had
been told that I was my father's son a few times (and if you don't know,
I'm female) and I was named after my Aunt Pat) - and I knew them only
when I was a child.  My understanding was extremely limited then (as
opposed to the very limited understanding I possess now), and much of
these two giants of my childhood will remain a mystery to me.  For quite
a while after my father's death, I had a horrid fear that I would lose
others...

Which I have.

Then I realized, one can't stop loving people just because they're
likely to die before one.

We will all die someday.

I find it sad how often people decide they can't be near those they've
loved for so long, just because these people are in the process of
dying, just because this will make them uncomfortable.

If one is always scared of what one will lose, one will never get to be
in a fruitful love, one will never have close friends, one will never
stay in touch with relatives -- all these things pass eventually.

News bulletin: there is nothing eternal on this Earth!  (Even the
elementary particles do not remain, should you believe Feynman
diagrams.)

Most people don't take their fears to the extent that they never fall in
love, that they never make friends, that they never commit to a course
of action, because they are afraid of what will happen when it all
dissolves.  But too many people become cowards when the end is in sight.
I've seen people soon before they died, and yes, it was painful looking
at them and knowing they soon would be gone, but I didn't let my
discomfort from enjoying their love and friendship to the last moment.

Though too often people now mention their ideal death would be sudden,
and without warning, most of us will die over some period of time...
wasting away at home or in a hospital... do you want to spend your last
days alone?  Do you want to be abandoned by those you love because they
"just don't know what to say", because "it hurts so much to see you that
way"?

And then we end up in the ludicrous position of those who are dying
trying to hide it from those near to them, to side-step the ostracism,
to try to save their family and friends from anxiety and pain.

From seeing it both ways -- death sudden, unexpected, and a long,
drawn-out, expected death -- they both suck.  There is a conservation of
pain.

I know I'm rambling, but you can't possibly expect any human from seeing
these things straight, from organizing these thoughts in a way that
makes a discernable point.  Death is the terminus we all know awaits us,
though we try to avoid it in so many ways, by denying the possibility
for ourselves and by avoiding those who have the taint of death upon
them.

All I'm saying is to pay attention to Death.  And don't try to avoid its
existence and arrival for yourself or others.

I've finally decided the worst death is not the sudden kind, is not the
violent kind, is not the long, wasting kind -- but the kind where one
dies alone, ignored by those around you.

There are so many I miss, and so many I will miss in time to come.  I
know that disaster of some kind will strike my beloved city again, but
that won't stop me from going to the Natural History Museum, Central
Park, or my favorite Barnes & Noble -- that won't stop me from talking
to the many people I run into on the street, in the jury room, on the
subway, in the bars.