A lot of life to live

On this day when everyone is being asked to pause in memory of last year's events, I received a piece of email from a cousin. She wrote another relative about her father -- my uncle -- saying:

He really hasn't fully recovered from his surgery in May. He's been depressed, very fatigued and really out of it. Doesn't want to do anything (computer, weekly letters, crosswords). All he does is go for meals and sleep. He really needs some prayers. He's got a lot of life to live.

Now, does that sound to you like someone who "has a lot of life to live"? Not to me -- it sounds like somebody's who's given up and is ready to die. The man is in his late 80s or early 90s. Give him a break.

This is relevant today not just because I received it today, but because it illustrates how the attitudes of family members -- to use that phrase we are hearing a lot this week -- so strongly determine what then becomes the reality for those who have died -- or, in this case, are about to die. The "family members" of those who died one year ago are constantly heard from or seen on TV, doing everything from weeping to strenuously arguing some scruple having to do with "honoring the memory" of the dead. For example, a recent article in the most recent Time magazine mentioned that "family members" were upset that New York was already rebuilding the subway through the WTC site, that doing so somehow dishonored their dead. Can we wake the fuck up? What do these people want -- for the entire city to stop in its tracks (no pun intended) until every single person has emotionally processed the events of a year ago?

As for my uncle, what gives his daughter the right to decide he has a lot of life to live? If it were up to me, if the guy doesn't show any signs that he wants to go on clipping coupons and doing crosswords for the next ten or twenty years, then put him in hospice care. He's ready to go.

Clearly I'm more upset by this than I really need to be. I think it's because, at age 46, I view time as so precious. Every moment I have, I'm writing, or seeing a close friend, or exercising, or doing nothing intentionally.

Now, I can't claim any moral superiority over my uncle, whose time before his surgery was cheerfully writing "weekly letters" to every relative he could think of, the contents of which were a sort of mix between a Paul Harvey rehash of news and sports and a treacly religious tract. I can't claim my own work and leisure is any more important in the scheme of things (although I must personally feel it is).

But if I ever completely stop doing anything, and just shuffle between the table and the bathroom and the bed, I'm done, okay?