We're all gonna die
Hello friends!
There’s a picture of my father taped to a window frame in our family room. He’s wearing a navy v-neck sweater and resting a glass of what looks like his third or fourth Heineken on his belly. He’s looking sideways at someone outside the frame, his face lit with a sarcastic smirk.
Every time you look up from watching a movie, building Legos, or playing Monopoly, there’s my dad, ready to heckle you.
He died three-and-a-half years ago after five years of being sick from cancer and its side effects. My father fought death. He let the doctors try whatever they could come up with - anything - to extend his life, regardless of the quality. When I think about that long fight, I often wonder: what was it about? It wasn’t clear, to me anyway.
When he landed in the hospital for what seemed like the 97th time, I tried to find out. The hospital trips were becoming more frequent, and I was worried. If I didn’t push, I’d never know what he was afraid of. Was it about where he was heading? Who and what he was leaving? Some mix of both? I asked him if he wanted to talk about his feelings.
“I don’t have any feelings,” he said. Then, from his death bed, he bellowed, “I love golf!”
(same guy, different picture)
The stuff that’s hard about coming to terms with our mortality - whether we’re looking right at it or considering it from a distance - is also a gift. As Atul Gawande points out, accepting that we’re all gonna die forces us to ask ourselves and each other: how do we want to live? How can we live with meaning, with connection?
We need these conversations whether we’re 22, 45, or 73. And maybe part of the answer for ourselves is another question - how can we facilitate meaning and connection with and for others, including those older and younger than us? Considering ourselves not as isolated, alienated, or opposed to people from beyond our generation might help us remember our latent connections - to the people who came before us, those who are here right now, and the ones who will be here when we’re gone. And this is why, while I get the #okboomer stuff, I’m also like, yo we’re all in this together.
As older people outnumber the young in our country (a thing that is happening), and live as widows, or with long-term ailments like dementia, the potential for loneliness and isolation will grow. Can we counter that by strengthening intergenerational connection and care and pushing our loved ones - even those who were not raised to exhume and examine their feelings - to talk about what they fear, what they want, what they’re living for?
In terms of what he feared, I assume my dad was afraid of leaving my mother alone (he needn’t have worried - she is mid-renaissance and it’s delightful to see); devastated to know he’d miss seeing his grandchildren grow up; terrified of what would happen when he stopped breathing.
In terms of what he lived for, here’s a thing I know: My dad lived for golf. I didn’t always understand this, but as time has passed, I’ve decided that play brought my father joy. It was play where he found connection and meaning (and I’d be remiss not to say mastery, which fed the joy).
So as I think about him on this Day of the Dead, which comes at a time when I’m asking a lot of my own questions about what I want to do with my one wild and precious life, I made a list to remind myself to put the work into making it good:
Have the conversations, with yourself and your loved ones, about what you really want. Say those things out loud, often.
Make time for connection.
Play more.
Right now, I really want lunch. Thanks for reading.
XO
Leigh