The End

(Again, the long pause, as I try to figure out what I'm going to write.  This, in spite of the fact that I know the only way to figure out what I'm going to write, is to start writing...)

And here's what I don't want to write about today.  Or, really, ever.  Which means that I'll force myself...

Does anyone remember an episode of 'The Simpsons' that featured Grandpa Simpson constantly pointing at some random person or object, and screaming 'Death!'?  I just thought it was hilarious at the time.  But like many funny things, there was something true and awful underneath.

And I'm calling that true and awful thing 'Death Flu'.  For which, apparently, there is no known inoculation.  (Besides drugs and alcohol, that is.  Which are starting to look more and more attractive)  And I have it.

My first bout of Death Flu came over me while I was still teaching in Philadelphia.  To save money, I was staying in a motel in New Jersey, about twelve fun-filled miles from the Ben Franklin Bridge.  The rooms were serviceable, though someone had taken a great deal of effort to put a 'decorative' border of contrasting paper at the top of the walls, all the way around the rooms.  This sop to beauty featured an aggressive motif of stylized, almost architectural sprays of lily-like flowers.  It was so wrong, it was captivating.

The room also had a small refrigerator, where I could store the leftovers from my many diner meals, and of course there was a TV.  I would usually crash on the bed after school, surf the channels, and fall asleep to 'Law and Order', or some such.  But one night, to my surprise, I stumbled on an excellent biography of Elizabeth I, with Helen Mirren playing the title role.  Being a sort of monarchist at heart, and having read at least two accounts of Elizabeth's life, I fell into the program gladly.  Gorgeous costumes, great acting, accurate history.  Plus, it distracted me from that wall paper trim.

So I was unprepared, when in about the middle of this condensed retelling of one life, I developed a terrible feeling in my chest.  I think we were watching the betrayal of Essex, or something similar, and a death sentence had been handed down.  It may have been Mirren's acting, but I don't think so.  How many 'deaths' have we all seen, fictional or otherwise?  It's just that this time, in a way I was truly unprepared for, and didn't understand, I understood that this death, though being reenacted, had in fact been real.  Real, for the human who faced it.  And of course, by extension, real for me, sooner or later.

It was really a terrible night.  I couldn't turn the program off.  The tale continued, unreeling the inevitable course of history, and I felt paralyzed with terror.  As though I were next in line, no matter that the drama playing out on the screen had already taken place hundreds of years ago.  The scenes where Elizabeth herself went into her final illness were devastating for me.  I didn't sleep well that night, at all.

But then, I had a regular job to keep me occupied.  Classes to teach, students to advise, faculty meetings to wish I wasn't sitting through.  And those twelve fun-filled miles of commuting into Philadelphia every day, and then back again -- so this dreadful night receded a bit.  Distraction can be a wonderful thing.

Now, though, I have fewer barriers between my mundane daily life, and the dizzying prospect of my own death.  Like Abe Simpson, I see my death in TV commercials, in old movies, in the Facebook posts I sift through almost without ceasing.  I hear it, when I'm listening to classical music.  I'm reminded, in this dizziness, of a time my father took me with him, to see what he did for his job.  I'd just been brought home from the orphanage, and he was working for a vending machine company in Pittsburgh.  We had a long drive, early in the morning, to get into the city, and as usual, he didn't say much of anything.  And once we got to our destination, he loaded up the car with boxes of candy bars and bags of ground coffee, and we went back out, driving through the nearly-deserted town, to visit the various locations where he filled empty slots with Mars Bars, and changed the coffee filters.  One of our stops was in a tall office tower, with a deep, wide inside opening, probably ten or twelve stories deep.  My father was busy opening a candy machine, and I went over to the low stone railing that went all the way around this tall indoor void with the patterned marble floor.  Although I've never thought of myself as having a fear of heights, there was something seductive and terrible, in standing there, with so little between me and a plunging fall to a certain mangled end.  There was a deep cold thrill that ran through me, that seemed to keep me standing there, behind that insufficient barrier.

And this is what I feel like most of the time now.  Only there's no literal, giddy drop creating this dizziness.  This is the ordinary unshakeable awareness of ending.  When this 'Death Flu' takes hold, even my white tile kitchen floor seems paper-thin, and liable to give way at any moment, with nothing beneath it but darkness.  I get shocks, all day long, as though catching a whiff of something pungent but familiar.  I can function well enough, but there seems to be no real meaning to, say, putting the white clothes in the washer, or moving the newspapers from the kitchen table.  To say nothing of the emptiness of making art. 

And I feel profoundly stupid saying this, but I feel shame, too, at my impending death.  At some level, I guess I've always thought (? hoped? suspected? pick a verb) that I would be clever enough or lucky enough, or even insignificant enough, to avoid and evade death.  Without really examining this mirage, of course.  It's just been a kind of unexamined, underground belief, that has now been exposed to shattering daylight.  And, as with the more mundane flu, I ache and sweat and feel queasy.  Each attack seems more emphatic than the last.  Because, of course, irreplaceable days have gone by, and that means...

So, I drag myself about, doing things mostly because of other people, I guess.  I feel like Dorothy's  Scarecrow, when all his innards have been scattered all over the place.  Hollow, and only apparently whole.                

Maybe I should take up sky-diving.  Or bungee jumping.  Something that would approximate that riveting terror I felt, looking over the stone railing in the Pittsburgh office tower.  But really, I don't think that would work, because (probability and safety precautions being what they generally are) I would still end up back on the ground, back on my feet, and back to feeling electrifyingly tentative.

I usually try to find my way, in these posts, to some sort of remotely comforting resolution.  In this case though, I'm at a loss.  I so wish this 'flu' would go away, and that I could sink back into what my experiences, and the general culture, tell me is 'normal life'.  But this echoing chill isn't just a symptom of some transient illness -- it's the central human issue.  I am shamefully naked, and weak, alone and stupid and stunned before it.     

The end.


©  2012   Walter Zimmerman