The Death of Death & Parenting

Image by law_keven via Flickr

Death & Parenting’s life was too short. There’s so much more I’d like to write. About death: Paul Harding’s Tinkers is the best book I’ve read all year. About parenting: the kid has discovered the joy of calling his friends on the phone. “Hello,” he says, “I am talking to you on the phone because…” It’s very funny. More about death: Letting Go, Atul Gawande’s article about end-of-life care in the new New Yorker is crushingly powerful and very wise and should be the start of lots of important conversations. It’s making me think today about my grandfather’s death, the terrible month after he’d been resuscitated, against explicit instructions, during a third heart attack at his home. Of going to visit him in the hospice center where he was gaunt and wide-eyed, conscious but unable to talk, only to cry out like an animal—or, more accurately, like Chewbacca from Star Wars. A terrible, primal emoting that I was pretty sure meant something along the lines of “Please kill me.” Needless to say, it was very difficult to see him like this. And I’ve spent a long time wishing he’d been let to die at home, with what I imagined would have been more dignity. But then, while unable to speak, lying there in his hospice bed, he was able to pucker his lips and give kisses. And I’ll never forget the feeling of his unshaven stubble on my cheek the last time I saw him. That counts as a goodbye, I guess. One that we were only able to share because of the resuscitation. So maybe he would have actually chosen to die in the manner that he did. I don’t know for sure. This stuff is complicated. But for sure, the country’s medical system could be improved in this area. And Gawande gives the topic the careful thought it deserves.

But I’m out of time. So what I’ll do now is just say a huge thank you to you for reading this. And to Coates and Michael and Lewis and the rest of the team that made True/Slant such a great place to write—and read the writing of others—over the past six months. Thank you!