The Gaping Maw of Death

My blog posts do not just to burst forth in a moment of thought or creativity. I start thinking about them, the topic, the content, the accompanying artwork, days or even weeks before I put pen to paper (so to speak).

A few days ago, I had just gone onto my blog to check for spelling, grammar, or other errors. As I re-read the post (which was about actual deaths) I started to think about my usual topics - death and cancer and having the knowledge that you’re going to die in relatively short order. 

Now everyone knows that they’re going to die eventually, but knowing that instead of those forty to fifty years you thought you had left to play with and in, you only have a few years, tops. And you don’t feel much like playing. So you are left, and I thought this was clever, staring into the “gaping maw of death.”

Now, I’ve been running around the Internet long enough to know that truly original ideas are very, VERY rare. As much as we all like to think that we are unique and special, people come up with the same thoughts and ideas all of the time. And sure enough, if you google, “gaping maw of death” and you will get 6300 results, which to me means that it is fairly common.

Many people with cancer and other progressive diseases are stood upright in front of death and made to truly stare into that gaping maw and consider the implications. What does it mean to be dead? Is it total annihilation of the self where we only ‘live on’ in the memories of others and the odd photo (or blog ;) left behind, or is there an actual piece of us, some energy (a soul) that leaves and goes elsewhere (heaven, hell, the eternal cosmos, absorbed into some great energy of the universe). Who has it right? Catholics? Protestants? Pentecostals? Jews? Muslims? Atheists? Mormons? Resuscitologists (see book by Sam Parnia), Scientologists (please no)?

That’s the hardest and most frightening part of death. We just don’t know and can’t know until we leap into that open, dark, slimy maw. And so we’re left with a choice. Which idea of death do we want to hang on to? Which one is the easiest for us to live with? I was raised a Christian and so that is the idea that is the most comfortable fit, although not the usual heaven as angels and harps and everyone dressed in white, yada, yada, yada. The idea of the afterlife as going home is very appealing to me.

We’ve all been away from home for periods of time long enough to feel a sort of relief upon returning to our own abode.

Letting go. Finally. Peace.

This is what I choose. This is what I hope for.

Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him. ~ Job 13:15

Roger Ebert and Me

As most people already know, Roger Ebert recently died of cancer. He’d had it for a long time and although disfigured by it, still maintained his public persona.

I saw Roger Ebert once.

 

Living in Chicago, you see celebrities from time to time. But I didn’t see him on the street, or in a deli, or even at a movie theatre. I saw him at the hospital.

 

It was the week after I had been diagnosed with something – they were still trying to figure exactly what. I was in the basement having just completed my PET scan. They were wheeling me back up to my room and they wheeled me right past an older mand and a women with big-ish hair who were talking with a doctor. The man was wearing a hospital gown and hospital footies. The woman was looking earnestly at the doctor, presumably listening closely to what he had to say.

I thought the man looked familiar and once it dawned on me that it was Roger Ebert, I almost turned around to the orderly pushing my gurney to say, “Hey! Do you know who that was?!” See him there made me feel a little more certain about choosing Northwestern for my treatment. If Roger Ebert who, presumably, has a great deal of money and could go anywhere for treatment chose to come here, then perhaps it’s trustworthy. 

And I used this story. At the beginning of this cancer thing, my mother was trying to convince me to go to a cancer center like Sloan-Kettering and I guess there’s one in Florida near where she lives. I understood that she wanted me to get the best treatment possible, but I didn’t want to move or travel for treatment. Once I told her that I had seen Roger Ebert and that he was getting treatment where I was, she understood and dropped the subject. 

When I tell people my Roger Ebert story, many of them ask me, “Did you give him two thumbs up? Hardy harr harr!” I have to say that, no, I didn’t give him two thumbs up. The man was (half) dressed in a hospital gown and presumably had gone through some sort of scan. I doubt he was in a “two thumbs up” sort of mood." I know after I have a scan, I'm certainly not.

I am sorry that his time had come. He was inspiring to many people – both with and without cancer. I hope both he and his family are at peace.