Mortality, Bill Murray, Art Lessons, and Avatar

“Two years he walks the earth.  No phone, no pool, no pets, no cigarettes.” – Into the Wild

I’ve left a map.

“That’s so you, Dad.”

It’s an unusual thing for The Boy to say when discussing death.  In this case, my death.

First, some context.

I’ve made peace with the idea that I’m going to die.  I have no desire to die anytime soon, mind you, but I realize that it’s something that, statistically, happens to 100% of us.  Not 99%.  Not 99.999%.  Not even 99.9999999999%.

100%.

I think the human mind has developed safeguards to distract itself from facing this inevitability, primarily so we don’t spend our days in a corner sobbing uncontrollably when we’re young, muttering, “What is it all about?  Why do we even try?  What if I never meet Bill Murray?”  However, there comes a time in life when you begin to understand that death will come.  If I am statistically average, this fate is decades away and again, I’m not particularly interested in hurrying it along.

I’m not sure the exact moment I made peace with the idea of death.  It might have been when I was stuck watching a DVD of Avatar®.  That will make anyone long for death, so that was probably it.

I kept waiting for Papa Smurf® to show up during Avatar©.  Or the movie to be good. Neither of those things happened.

As luck would have it, Pop Wilder lived to be quite old, and was in generally very good physical health throughout his life.  At the end he was taking in more calories in pill coatings than food, but he was in good enough shape to walk for miles.

His physical health was fine.  What happened to Pop Wilder was that he started forgetting.  Perhaps the biggest blow was that, at the end, he had forgotten me entirely.  I’m fairly certain that the last few times that I saw him he had no recollection of me.  His eyes were blank – worse than blank.  When he looked at me he had the wariness one reserves for a stranger or a congressman.

I had been prepared for this – it was obvious that his memory loss was increasing exponentially each time I saw him.  I think that the last time he really knew that I was his son was several years before he passed on.  And that was okay.  I won’t say that it wasn’t difficult, but I will say that I had said everything that I needed to say to Pop before he lost his memory.  I was at peace.  Again, not easy, not happy, but at peace.  I understood that there was nothing that man nor medical science could do for him, so there was no reason for anger.

I hadn’t, however, realized the impact it had on The Boy.  The Boy saw the same things that I did, and knew that Pop Wilder was no longer the grandfather he knew.  The Boy could sense that Pop Wilder wasn’t present anymore.  Perhaps this is the most basic element of horror – watching a human transform from the person you know very well into a person you don’t know at all.  It’s implicit in every horror transformation story from vampire to werewolf to zombie.  Seeing it when you are young hits you even harder.  That transformation is made more terrifying because you didn’t even know it was possible.

Fast forward to Saturday, six days ago.  We were driving home from an event, and I mentioned that there were some things I wanted to see from him in the next twenty or thirty years.

“Don’t dawdle.  I don’t want to have to wait to die when I’m ready to die.”

It was really meant as a joke.  The look on The Boy’s face as he drove, though told me he was thinking about it.  Deeply.

“I saw what Grandpa Wilder went through.  That was tough.”  Pop Wilder had passed on years ago.  “I like your idea better.”

“My idea?”

“Yeah.  The one where you’re going to go off into the woods with just your .30-06 and enough supplies to live.  Or die.  That’s so you, Dad.”

It’s true.  I had shared with The Boy my thoughts that, should I be judged to be terminal, or if it was pretty clear I wasn’t going to make it, that rather than lingering, undergoing chemotherapy, or having to sit through another Avatar© movie, I’d sling my rifle and enough physical supplies that if I worked at it and was skilled, I could live.  Until, of course, I couldn’t.  It would be an adventure.  Maybe I’d keep a diary.  That would be some great blogging from beyond the grave.  I could even sketch memes in pencil.

See, drawing is easy!

“I hope that you’d drop me where there are bears.”

“Why?”

“Well, one might attack me and I could fight back with a knife.  It would at least allow me to go out of this life like I came into it – screaming and covered in blood that wasn’t mine.”  Okay, I stole that joke.  At least The Boy thought it was original.

He laughed.

But the point was a clear one.  I know that I certainly couldn’t have dropped Pop Wilder into the forest – that certainly wasn’t anything he had ever asked for.  Watching him decline, however, was tough.  In my mind he will always be 45, at the height of his business acumen, personal physical power, and filled with the vitality that kept him always going.  When I think of him, that’s the man I see.

I can’t square the conception of my future as one that ends in a nursing home, surrounded by the never ending too warm room and hollow echo of footsteps on beige vinyl tile and antiseptic smell of hospital grade cleansers.  No.  The frozen morning’s icy touch on my cheeks, the sound of the wind rushing up the snow covered valley, and the harsh smoke of a campfire.  That has a better feel.  A truer feel.

An adventure to cap off an adventure, my next day of life dependent upon my wits and the cold steel of my knife and rifle.

If there or no bears to fight, I’m sure I can pick on an owl to fight to the death.  Plus?  Owls are easy to draw – only two steps.

I’m not sure that walking away into the woods will happen – there are certainly plenty of things that would prevent this from being my destiny:  obligations and events beyond number, that chance to hang around and become drinking buddies with Bill Murray.

But right now?  This adventure continues.  It’s time to make the most of the next few decades . . . there’s only so much time.

Get busy.