Conclusion First: Logan’s Run is a silly sci-fi movie from 1976. The premise is that in the future, everyone lives a life of ease and pleasure unit they turn thirty, and then they’re ritually murdered by the state to control population. To escape his death, the protagonist, played by Michael York, runs away with a cute girl and founds a new society with Peter Ustinov, the world’s only living old person.
State sanctioned murder as population control is a dumb idea, but the question of how would we live our lives if we knew when we’re going to die is more interesting. Any one of us can assign himself an expiration date. To make it stick, you need the buy-in of friends and family. That’s not easy, because none of us belongs only to himself. Even in death we still have obligations.
Today I did some retirement calculations to give my wife Anna confidence about the future. She worries about money more than I do. I created five different scenarios based on different assumptions. When I explained the calculations to Anna, I started with this worst case scenario. We never got to the best case. Anna started to feel woozy and had to leave the room. I have now planted the worst case scenario deeply into Anna’s mind. That wasn’t my intention.
Talking about suicide is a bit like retirement planning — it’s a theoretical possibility, far in the future, full of uncertainty, and it’s likely to plant the worst case scenario in the heads of those we love. It doesn’t have to.
Last week I visited my parents in New Jersey to help with my mother’s cancer surgery. She also has Alzheimer’s disease. The “Golden Years” thing is a lot of crap. Old age can be terrible. It would be good if we knew when it ended, and we could exercise final control over how it ended. Old age is our most difficult adventure. I plan to miss the worst parts of it.
I’m reading the Odyssey again. It’s a trip into a world very diferent than the one I occupy. There’s no Jesus in Homer’s world, no Freud or John Locke. I enjoy the vacation into a world free of all the ideas I take for granted, like human rights and super egos. Maybe getting old is like a vacation into a world where no one is obsessed with appearances or sex and achievement, that doesn’t honor what the young honor. Death might be a vacation from thought, too.
We don’t see death in our daily lives as much as Homer did. It’s been hidden from us. We don’t even talk about it. Death is buried deep within our grotesque healthcare system. It’s a shame that we’ve made a mystery of death because dying is among the most natural things we ever do. Dying is a lot more natural than driving a car or wearing shoes. It’s a lot more comforting, too. Death can be like the time before we were born if we make it that way. If we don’t exist, what could ever harm us?
I don’t want to paint a rosy a picture of death. Those left behind can be wrecked by our deaths. Surprise suicides, accidents, painful illnesses, babies and children who pass long before anyone could have imagined — these are terrible things that leave scars and pain in their wake, but only for the living. For the dead, there’s nothing.
During my previous visit to my parents house, about a month ago, I sat on the couch with my mother, pressed up next to her because she gets cold easily and because it feels good to be next to her. We talked about love. My mother’s Alzheimer’s has taken away most of her inhibitions. She swears now, and she can talk about subjects like love. She spoke of how her love for my father has grown over time, how she loves him much more now than at the beginning of their marriage, how she admires his generosity and goodness. My father has always been a hard worker, and now he’s working to make my mother as comfortable as he can. It’s a difficult job. We don’t know how long he’ll need to keep doing this work, but we do know how the work ends.
I don’t want to put Anna and my children through what my father is going through. I want them to know how long they’ll have me around. I want an expiration date. The date won’t be guaranteed. It will be a “no later than” date. I could still die in a motorcycle or skiing accident before my expiration date, though it’s pretty unlikely since I don’t ride motorcycles or know how to ski. I don’t smoke, drink, or do drugs anymore either. I’m not even that fat, and I just had my comprehensive physical; all signs are good. Anna and the kids are probably stuck with me until my expiration date, which I plan to set sometime between my 83rd and 84th birthdays. The final date is TBD. I need to talk things over with Anna and the kids. We need everyone to clear their calendars so we can plan the going away party.
I was scared to death about dying when I was young. Montaigne, Lucretius, and Anna all cured me of my fear of death. It’s easy to say, “I’m not afraid of dying,” at a healthy 55, but I have to start saying it sometime if I really want to mean it when the time does come.
When I die, I want to die like my friend Margaret the Pug. She held out as long as she could against the cancer inside her, but when it got too big, she gave up, and told me she was ready to go. Anna and I took her to the vet, and they finished what nature had started and Margaret had already accepted. First they gave her a shot to make her relax, and then they gave her another one to stop her heart. It was fast and painless for her. When she was gone I cracked, and I cried lonely tears. She was just a dog, but no other dog will ever be like her. When I die, I want my children to be with me, like I was with Margaret. I want to guide them through the end of my life like she guided me through the end of hers, and I want to go peacefully and quickly with the aide of medications, just like she did. The messy, cruel, painful deaths we inflict on ourselves are criminal. Margaret knew when it was her time. I pray to God I will know when it’s mine.
It’s hard to plan our last day because our lives aren’t our own. My life belongs to Anna and my children as much as it belongs to me. I’m physically able to end my life without their permission, but they’d be angry if I did. I don’t want that anger as a legacy. The purpose of picking an expiration date is so we can all prepare. I want to save my children the pain that comes with uncertain death. At some point I’ll probably have to just pick a day and stick with it, like planning a Christmas party. No day ever works for everyone.
I downloaded a death countdown application today. It says I have a life expectancy of 104. God, I hope not. I don’t know anyone who seems all that comfortable in their eighties, and no one is comfortable at 100. There’re a lot of aches and pains that come with getting older. I have to get up most nights to go the bathroom, and I’m not even sixty. This is not going get better over the next fifty years. Of course, I do get to get back in bed with Anna, and that’s nice. She makes a sweet baby sound when I get back in bed. (Yes, I wrote that to make people jealous. They should be of what we have.)
Socrates died at 70. Seneca was abut the same age. Montaigne was gone by 59, and Jesus wasn’t even 40. They’re all much better men than me. Why should I hang around until 2072? I’ll just keep listening to the same fifty records I listen to now. Imagine how worn out they’ll be.
I can imagine this conversation between one of my children and their friends when I’m 100.
“How’s your dad?”
“Not dead yet, but we’re hopeful. Maybe someday.”
My children will be in their seventies when I’m 100. If I live to 100, I’d be torturing them. Give the kids some space, for goodness sake. Whether I die at 100 or 84 or 55, I’ll be dead the same amount of time. It won’t make a bit a difference to me because I won’t exist, or I sure hope I won’t exist.
“Eternal punishment or eternal reward is a judgment far out of proportion for whatever we do in the short span of our lives.” — Montaigne
When I’m dead I’ll never have to renew my car tags again. I’ll never have to wait in the check out line again, or clip my toe nails. I’m not that fond of myself, so I won’t miss me much when I’m dead. If I’m able to, I will miss the people I love. They might even miss me. But for Pete’s sake, let me go and let others go on with your lives. If there’s anything next, and I really hope there isn’t, we’ll be together again anyway.
“When the hail comes down on a man’s head, it seems to him that the whole hemisphere is in tempest and storm… But whoever considers as in a painting the great picture of our mother Nature in her full majesty; whoever reads such universal and constant variety in her face; whoever finds himself there, and not merely himself, but a whole kingdom, as a dot made with a very fine brush; that man alone estimates things according to their true proportions. This great world … is the mirror in which we must look at ourselves to recognize ourselves from the proper angle.” — Montaigne
“I might be dead, but I’m not really dead. Nothing we love ever is.” — Margaret the Pug
