musingsonwomenshealth.com

Reflections on 40 years as a doctor in Women's Health

When the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance


I wonder whether kids are growing up too quickly nowadays; I waited until retirement to fully engage with what it meant to be alive, I think. But even now, my questions are personal; I can’t remember seriously canvassing others about Death except maybe late at night in university dorms after a few beers. I certainly can’t remember talking about it with my friends on a bus when I was young. Things were fresh and full of promise then; Life wasn’t merely a colourful veneer plastered over the dark innards of Existence. I don’t think I ever thought about things that way until I was exposed to the writings of Arthur Schopenhauer in university: he argued that life was an endless cycle of unfulfilled desires, suffering and boredom: the world, he seemed to think, was the worst of all possible worlds… Really? Come on, eh?

Still, I suppose there were times when I was full of exam timetables, and existential worries about who I was and how long I would last if I didn’t make up my mind about where I was going in Life. But I was a bit older then; I had met angst many times late at night while studying for an exam the next day… That’s all behind me now, and anyway, I was never a child on a bus discussing the meaning of death with my friends with adults listening with curious ears, and elderly ladies inspecting us with religious eyes. But perhaps that’s what youth is for: canvassing opinions, thinking out loud… It’s just the venue that I sometimes find troubling though.

But perhaps Gen Z sees things differently than I had; perhaps they have new ideas I hadn’t considered; perhaps I should have been taking notes… Of course with todays’ bus etiquette, it’s the youth who sit in the back where some of the seats are facing backwards, and where the very back seats are arranged like a long bench; elders like me, while we are tolerated, have to accept that it is not our realm. Old people, with our grocery rollies, canes and walkers are expected to sit in the disabled and stroller-accommodating section at the front of the bus. I do not travel with a cane, or rolley but there was no room up front, and anyway I was curious about what went on at the back.

Upon my unexpected arrival in the youth section, there was a moment of respectful silence while they decided whether or not they could speak their minds freely with an elder around. Most of their phones were on their laps, though and I had to wonder why. Eventually -when I had earned their trust perhaps- they began to talk again, but, interestingly, still not into their phones, but to each other. It was a group of girls that couldn’t have been more than13 or 14 years old, so I’m not sure whether to call them Gen Z, or Gen alpha…

I gathered that someone had died -a grandfather, I think- and one of the girls wondered what that would be like. They glanced nervously in my direction at first, but after a few minutes decided that I couldn’t really hear their conversation.

“Do you think it hurts?” one of them said, in a whisper loud enough to be heard over the rattling of the wheels and the bus motor somewhere below us.

“He looked peaceful,” one of them, likely the granddaughter, answered.

Several eyes flashed widely open. “You saw him after he died!!” one of them almost shouted, and then lowered her eyes after the granddaughter glanced at me.

“Mom insisted on an open coffin at the ceremony… she was old Irish,” she added in case I’d overheard. “We did it at the funeral home, though… We didn’t hold a wake,” she hastened to point out.

“They always make them look peaceful when they embalm them I think,” a quiet little girl with Shirley Temple hair volunteered.

“I asked my Mom why they needed to embalm grampa, but she just stared at me like I wouldn’t understand.”

Shirley Temple looked at her friends with a knowing smile. “I don’t think they want the dead person to look anything like the ones they ask the relatives to identify on the TV crime programs.”

The granddaughter shook her head. “I think Grampa died of a stroke, or something. I saw him a few days before he died, and his face looked all crooked. I don’t think anybody would want to remember him like that…”

“We all change when we get old,” a rather heavy girl sitting on the bench seat at the very back, volunteered; I don’t think she was really part of the group. The others all risked a quick glance at me, then pretended they hadn’t.

Shirley Temple smiled and brushed me with her eyes again, and then quickly looked away. “Sometimes it’s not so bad to  get old,” she said, staring at the girl at the back. “There are some people who age well, and then just…” she was obviously thinking about what words to use, “…just, well, die looking the same: peaceful, I guess… Like they enjoyed their life and had no regrets.”

I smiled at her innocent expression as if just returning her smile. But I’m sure she knew I had been listening, and blushed. They all turned to risk a glance at me; they were all embarrassed, I could see.

Shirley Temple was the first to apologize; her friends just stared at their laps. “I’m sorry sir,” she said, trying to choose her words carefully, respectfully, again.

“It’s an important thing to think about when someone dies,” I said with another smile. “Not all of us want to ‘Rage, rage against the dying of the light.’

All of the girls, except Shirley wrinkled their brows at the words they didn’t understand. “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night… Dylan Thomas wrote that when his father was dying:  ‘Do not go gentle into that good night. Old age should burn and rave at the close of day. Rage, rage against the dying of the light,’ he wrote.”

I couldn’t help but stare at her as my smile widened, and my eyes twinkled.

“My mother is an English Professor at the university,” Shirley explained. “She’s also a poet…”

‘Out of the mouths of babes’, I thought. It’s amazing what you can learn in the back of a bus.

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gozzter

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