Longevity and Doubt

Flickr photos right.

Elizabeth Taylor just died, at 79 years of age. Now we learn that Geraldine Ferraro, Walter Mondale's vice-presidential running mate in 1984, died. I grew up with Liz Taylor, and Geraldine Ferraro was a favorite politician and pioneer, so these feel like personal losses. I feel this way about every artist, author and famous person that marked and enriched my life. I felt sad when Frank Sinatra died, and Paul Newman; when historians John Hope Franklin and Howard Zinn died; and Walter Conkrite and Lena Horne.

They were among the great signposts of an era, an integral part of the cultural fabric of my life. Thread by thread, the cultural fabric is unraveling.

My sister Andy and I talk about it; this must be one of the hard things about a long life . Everyone starts leaving. The signposts go down. The cultural markings are obliterated. The icons are dismantled.The familiar is replaced by the new and the strange.

Howard, Don and I talked about it at breakfast this morning. "When you are born, you are doomed," Howard said graphically, "to an inevitable ending." Don told of a great aunt, his grandmother's sister, who lived to 95 until a fall sent her to a nursing home, and to her inevitable end. She outlived everyone.

So has our Aunt Loretta, my mother’s sister, who at 94 is doing remarkably well 'for her age.' She still smokes, but what the heck, God love her. She's outlived everyone in our family but her cousin Bill in Columbus, including her two children, our cousins Maria and Skip, and her sister, our beloved mom. It’s been tragic, and yet she is resilient, and stubborn. I think the latter helps as much as the former. But I wonder about longevity. I wonder about living in a world of shrinking relations and continual loss. There must be some way to come to terms with endings, but I find it hard. I’ve struggled with this dilemma with my brother’s death. "But, Fran, he died doing what he loved, on a hike with friends, and quickly. No lingering painful illness. He was spared a too-long life."

"A too-long life." That's what I'm wondering about. And the alternative, " a too-short life." And on top of that, an afterlife. Maybe this is why I'm thinking about volunteering with Hospice when I get up North, although this, too, is up in the air, so to speak.

Actually, I’m finding I have less faith in some afterlife, or eternal life of the soul, than I thought. I’m thinking endings are endings, not beginnings. Howard and Don think so too. I know Loren would argue with us about this. On the other hand, maybe human beings need this belief in an afterlife of some kind to console the soul in the face of death. Maybe this faith that cushions endings and losses is worth hanging onto, whether you believe in it or not, whether you meet the angel of death, the grim reaper, at 75 or 95 years of age. Maybe. Who knows? Who among the dead can enlighten us? Goodbye Liz and Geraldine. Hello doubt.