Wisdom's Going to Be the Death of Me

"By three methods we may learn wisdom: first, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third, by experience, which is the bitterest." Confucius

I would add a fourth—nearly getting killed, which is scariest—although you could argue that this is just a part of bitter experience.

I emerged from all my nearly-getting-killed experiences relatively unscathed. What I learned is that the difference between living and dying is sometimes measured in inches or seconds or amperes, and while a near miss may be good as a mile, that doesn't mean you shouldn't try at least to draw a lesson from it.

Periodically I review the ways I have been nearly killed in order to refresh my sense of good fortune at having survived this long on the planet. So far, I have:

• tangled and lost with an electric arc welder
• dived headfirst into a shallow pool, cracking my head on the bottom in the process
• rolled over in a loaded feed truck
• passed on a ride in an airplane that crashed
• pulled out onto a highway in front of a speeding car
• skidded across an icy interstate between two tractor-trailer rigs going the opposite direction
• spun out in heavy traffic on a wet interstate highway
• been held up at gunpoint
• toppled over a low iron railing from a concrete stairway onto an asphalt drive

I could probably add being diagnosed with cancer, which certainly gives pause for reflection, but it doesn't quite fit with the potential for instantaneous finality that characterizes the rest of the list. With cancer you get to think about your imminent demise before it overtakes you.

So what lessons have I learned from all these there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-went-I events? Not much it would seem. I'm more cautious than I used to be, but who isn't?

I used to want to sail around the world single-handed. I idolized guys like Joshua Slocum and Francis Chichester. Now I'm afraid to go out of sight of land.

I used to want to ride a motorcycle across the U.S. Now I'm afraid to get on one for fear I won't be able to keep it upright at a standstill.

I used to want to race sports cars. Now I drive slower than anyone I know. Friends and family make fun of how slowly I drive. People stuck behind me in traffic who don't know who I am want to kill me. That's the only thing that keeps me moving along at all. I'm almost as afraid of being shot by a road enraged motorist as I am of being sucked under a truckload of cattle bound for the slaughterhouse.

Another thing I used to think is that I was somehow being saved from all these near deaths for a higher purpose. That there was something important I was supposed to do, and I wasn't going to shuffle off the mortal coil until I had done it. I'm still trying to figure out what it might be. I've cataloged my singular talents, hoping the things that I am good at would give me a clue as to my purpose on earth.

The one thing that I do better than anyone else I know, better than you, and better than anyone you know, is to fart. I've always been pretty good at it, but since I lost 14 inches of south-bound pipe to colorectal surgery my skills are world class. I'm not talking just volume and duration either. I have tonality and pitch control that would make an opera tenor proud. If I went onto America's Got Talent, I would blow the competition away. (pun intended because, you know, who could resist?) As a bonus, my farts do not stink, although my wife maintains that the only reason I think this is that I have burned out my olfactory nerves with Afrin and Mucinex.

Even I know, however, that this is not the kind of talent for which one can reasonably expect to be preserved because it is so unlikely to ever be the fundamental impetus of some august achievement. If anything, trying to capitalize on a penchant for flatulence should be cause for being struck down early. Alas the fates and the rules of natural selection do not work that way. A spectacular paucity of anything meaningful to contribute to society is not, apparently, reason enough to be excised from the fabric of modern culture. Else why would Pauly Shore and Perez Hilton still be with us.

 

A part of me harbors the idea that, so long as I fail to realize my appointed purpose, I will be safe from the grim reaper. I know this is probably ridiculous, but the notion panders to the same part of me that thinks it wants to live forever.

“How do you want to die,” someone asks.

“Last,” I say.

“Last among whom?”

“Just last...or not at all.”

Many are happy to point out the error.

“No one lives forever.”

“So far,” I reply.

Lately though this too is a thing I used to think that no longer holds the same fascination for me. I am so riddled with pains and diminished capacities in my sixties that I can scarcely imagine going happily into my nineties. I figure by the time I get to eighty, the only thing holding me upright is going to be the gas.

The Accidental Decedent: Untimely Death and The Law of Attraction

While I wonder if my mother holds herself accountable for devoting several of the last seconds of her life to shooting the skunk eye at a hapless volunteer because he interrupted us, I also wonder if she blames me for attracting the interruption.
          Like I said before, I’ve been interrupted so many times in my life that I’ve begun to believe that it must somehow be my fault. I don’t know if Mom shared my view on this, but she never in her life hesitated to take me to task for whatever she thought I had done wrong. It was not in her nature to allow flawed behavior to go unmentioned or uncorrected.
          She gave me a lecture on her 90^th birthday for something I did 45 years ago. Personally I didn’t believe that I had that one coming, but I wasn’t about to deny her this small pleasure on her birthday. Nor would I have denied her the satisfaction of one last scolding from her deathbed.

          The concept of attracting unpleasantness is one for which I must thank the disciples of the Law of Attraction. Principal among these is Dr. Joe Vitale, who, because he loves me (really...he says so repeatedly), sends me an e-mail almost every day telling me how I can clear my mind of negative notions and begin to attract the success and possessions that I so richly deserve. Usually finding the key to this abundance involves first sending Dr. Joe or one of his affiliates some money. I imagine that if I did this, Joe would love me even more than he already professes.

My collection of bicycles, which I bought with money that I worked for rather than manifesting through attraction. Dr. Joe Vitale has a collection of very nice cars that he manifested through attraction. For $5,000/person you can take a ride with Dr. Joe in his Rolls Royce Phantom, have dinner, and discuss ways to get rich. For a mere $500 you can ride my road bike (the blue one above on the left that was designed by Grand Inquisitor Tomas de Torquemada) and accompany me to a Starbucks drive-up window for a delicious espresso beverage while we discuss ways to avoid attracting collisions with Rolls Royce Phantoms.

          The gist of the law of attraction can be found in a slim little book titled The Secret, written by Rhonda Byrne. Dr. Joe is quoted in it with some frequency. The Secret was made into a movie, and now there is a sequel publication called The Power. Their website is here in case you are overwhelmed by curiosity about how to make yourself a magnet for all the good things you think you want. Many of these people also believe that Jesus was a prosperity teacher and lived a life of opulence and ease. You can read my take on this incredible twist on Christianity here. If you are not overwhelmed with curiosity—enough to click on the link at any rate—I will tell you the law of attraction in a nutshell. This is easy because it is a nutshell concept.

To get anything you want you only need do three things: 1) specifically wish for it, 2) believe and expect that you will get it, and 3) accept it when it comes. If you do those things the universe will hear you and provide you what you ask. Nothing could be simpler. It's a law of nature. It's scientific. (for a look at the real science behind the law of attraction, click here)

          The truth is that it’s not simple at all. It’s extremely simple to say, but it’s quite difficult to do. If it were easy, Dr. Joe and his affiliates and compatriots, imitators, fellow disciples and co-conspirators would not be making money selling secret keys to facilitate the process. It doesn’t stop with wish, believe, and accept because there are very specific and yet incredibly nebulous adjuncts to each of those steps. There are any number of outs that all work in favor of the people who are selling programs to make the simple accessible to simpletons. Here are a couple of examples:

          Didn’t get what you wanted? Well, you didn’t wish for it specifically enough. Your wishing needs to be very concrete and definite. You need to visualize yourself enjoying what you wish for with great regularity. We can help you with our special program of exercises, word cues, and self-hypnosis techniques to make specific wishing integral to your daily existence. Just send $89.95 to…

          Didn’t get what you wanted? You probably weren’t believing enough. Maybe you have a nagging doubt in the inner recesses of your mind that is blocking your access to what you want. Maybe you don’t believe that you deserve it. Maybe you think it would be wrong for you to get what you want. Maybe, horror of horrors, you think that what you want is an evil thing. We can help you clear yourself of these impediments to self-realization. For just $119.95 we will show you how to eradicate guilt from your psychic make-up and change your inbred attitudes about what it means to be rich and famous and privileged. We will put your sense of entitlement on steroids. When we are finished teaching you to remove all moral and ethical constraints on the accumulation of wealth and the artifacts of leisure, you will free yourself to amass an epic collection of homes, cars, yachts, and companions.

I’m sure you get the picture. Near as I can tell, the only people who are succeeding through the law of attraction are those who are selling the law of attraction. The rest of us are failing, one way or another, to apply the principles correctly. Shame on us.

          One danger in trying to use the law of attraction without adequate guidance is that you will accidentally attract the opposite of what you want. Dr. Joe and his like-minded friends are happy to tell you this much for free. They talk about it at length in The Secret. They like to give a lot of information away for free. They make a big deal of this. For instance, Joe’s book is available at no cost through his website.
                    Who gives a book away for free? Someone who has written a book that is a cover-to-cover sales pitch, that’s who. Joe’s all about making you a believer. When you’re a believer you won’t mind paying Joe a little money to get access to the super secret stuff that's not available in the free program—the stuff that you need to make the incontrovertible law of the universe actually work once you realize that you have somehow controverted it.

          The absolute worst way you can controvert the law of attraction is to sidetrack yourself into the negative law of attraction. This is accidentally attracting the opposite of what you are trying to attract.
          Here’s the way negative attraction works. Say you notice a little lump under your armpit. You go to the doctor. The doctor says it’s probably nothing, but he takes a sample to send to the lab just in case. Better to err on the side of caution. It’s a pretty sure thing that you are going to worry about this until the lab results come back. You turn to the law of attraction. The Secret says you can attract good health. You can use the law of attraction to heal yourself. This is excellent news. You just have to visualize yourself as completely healthy. BUT, if instead of just wishing yourself to be healthy you start wishing for the tumor to go away or for the lump to be benign, that will only attract what you fear most.

You have to be very careful not to think about that tumor because the universe is not capable of differentiating between what you want and what you don’t want. The universe is only going to bring you what you are thinking about. So you have to think about being completely healthy without thinking about the potentially malignant tumor at all. GOOD LUCK WITH THAT SHIT! I mean really, do you honestly think it will be possible not to think about a malignant tumor until the lab results come back. This instruction is fraught with peril. There is no way to not think about what you fear most in a case like this. It would be better for you not to know anything at all about the law of attraction because, knowing it, you are screwed.

Of course you could pay a law of attraction guru to teach you how to forget all about the fact that you are now dying of cancer. You pretty much have to do this at this point. If you are a believer you are going to attract cancer unless you can figure out how to stop thinking about cancer. Unless you pay someone to teach you this little secret, you are going to die.

There is another way out. You just need to stop believing in the law of attraction. Believing it is killing you. You need to quit. It’s just that simple. If you quit believing bad stuff is going to happen, bad stuff will stop happening. If you find that you are having difficulty suspending your belief, I believe I can help.

My amazing new series of CDs, Turn off the Magnet and Survive: the New, Super-Secret Guide to Becoming Unattractive, provides a guaranteed step-by-step program to eradicate pesky beliefs in the law of attraction. My mind-blowing program will elevate your unbelief to monumental proportions or you get your money back—all of it. I’ll even pay the return postage.

Here’s what you get for the incredible introductory price of just $49.95:

1.     6 CD set

a.     the 1^st CD contains my personal experiences becoming an unbeliever and thus liberating myself to die in my own time…instead of by some accident of attraction action

b.     the 2^nd through the 6^th CDs each begin with a different meditation, led by me, on a variety of topics that point out the futility of wishing for stuff you only think you want and the perils of thinking in general

c.     following the led meditation each CD then goes on to repeat a specially composed mantra, tailored to that CD’s particular meditation, and backed up by a custom mixed soundtrack of alternating heavy metal music and Barry Manilow songs calculated to elevate your inner nihilist

2.     A companion book, beautifully bound in 200 lb. recycled card stock, and suitable for display on the finest glass and chrome or pressed board coffee tables

3.     A lifetime membership in The Faithful Unfaithful, my super secret survivors club, entitling you to a daily inundation of e-mail appeals to purchase whatever new hair-brained idea I come up with to separate you from the money you attracted when you still believed

Trust me. This stuff is the real deal—just the kryptonite you need to render even the most super-charged faith limp and useless. When you are finished with my program, you won’t even be able to attract a cold in a day-care center.  $49.95 (plus shipping and handling) is a small price to pay to avoid being killed by The Secret. 

Death & Taxes

Patriotic to her last breath, Mom used these to celebrate Independence Day on her deathbed.

          I watched two people die last year. I don’t mean I watched them become gradually overwhelmed by terminal illness, although that was certainly part of it. I mean I was in the room with them at the moment they died. The most recent one was my mother. Both deaths were remarkably similar in their physicality—the urgent, rattling gasps, the arched neck, the open mouth—all suggesting a desperate clinging to the last shards of life—the final opacity of lifeless eyes. It is a moving experience for the survivors, and one that seems to resolve itself in peace at the end, possibly just in the knowledge that a loved one is no longer suffering, and possibly because, on balance, dying seems such a natural thing.

          In the aftermath, of course, we still living are left to confront our own mortality. This too is natural. How could it be otherwise? One needs to prepare for one’s demise. There are many paths to this preparedness, and they all have to do with the degree of self-absorption involved.

Mom was prepared. She was 90. She had been getting ready since my dad died 15 years ago. She did it for her heirs. She took care of all the arrangements. She prepaid everything. She left explicit instructions, and even included a few choices for her children to make us feel involved in the leave taking—involved, but not burdened.

          She also saw to the disposition of her soul. I think it was that she had taken care of this that she was able to take care of us. Her faith was a primary thing in her life. In twenty years I have not had a conversation with her in which she did not mention prayer, church, scripture, or the Lord. In that time and to my knowledge she never watched anything on TV that wasn’t broadcast on EWTN, the Catholic cable channel, or read anything that wasn’t primarily Roman Catholic in origin. (For those prone to doubt the connection, this includes the Bible.)

Mom was a woman of unflagging faith, and she had professed her willingness and desire to pass into an eternity with God on numerous occasions. She was ready to go. She stayed ready. It was a good thing that she did, because even though she was 90, no one expected her to go the way she did.

          She had a stroke on a Monday morning. My sister’s husband was with her when it happened. They were at the checkout counter at her regular grocery. EMS was dispatched almost immediately, and arrived within 10 minutes. She was stabilized and rushed to a nearby hospital—the hospital where my sister works, a hospital that is famous for its stroke unit.

She got the best possible care in a very short period of time. By Monday evening, she was alert and responsive. The prognosis for a complete recovery was pretty good—right up until the time that it was very bad.

          The doctors determined that they should give her an anti-coagulant—something to bust up the clot in her brain. They have tests they administer to determine the feasibility of the anti-coagulant. Apparently it’s not an easy assessment. There is considerable risk with the drug, and a lot of factors have to be balanced to determine whether or not the risk is warranted. Mom scored a 20 out of 22 possible points on the efficacy charts. She looked like a good candidate for the procedure. She was not.

          The drug caused multiple bleeds into Mom’s brain. This was the risk—the one the doctors thought was acceptable, but which was not. When the seeping and swelling finally stopped sometime on Tuesday, half of Mom’s brain was gone. I saw the scans. The medical staff was amazed at the amount of tissue involved. They had never seen anything quite like it. Mom had set some kind of record for a medical “bad beat.”

          “Bad beat” is a poker term. Mom didn’t know anything about poker, and probably wouldn’t appreciate the analogy. A bad beat, at its simplest, is a hand that should have won but did not. It is a hand that started out with a statistical advantage, and was correctly bet, but was subsequently beat as more cards were dealt—usually as the result of the winning player making a statistically unsound call and then sucking out a winning hand with the final card.

This is the equivalent of what happened to Mom. She had the statistical advantage on Monday evening, but fate sucked out a spade flush on the river. Mom got screwed. Well that is until you consider that what she really wanted to do was cash out her chips and go home to Jesus. In that regard she made out pretty good.

There was an incident of sorts right at the end. I hesitate to say that it was miraculous because I’m sure there are any number of logical explanations for what happened. Whatever it was, it was special to me. I’d like to think it was special to Mom too, but that would depend on whether or not what happened was actually miraculous.

We had moved Mom to Hospice after the doctors at the hospital determined that there was no chance of recovery. I rode over there in the ambulance with her on Thursday evening. She had not been alert, responsive, or even opened her eyes since Tuesday. She had not acknowledged anyone’s presence in any way although we all talked to her as if she could tell we were there. The doctors felt that was a waste of time, I’m sure, but they had the good sense not to say that to us.

By Friday afternoon it was clear that the end was near, although I think that most of us felt that she would probably last until Saturday. There was a shuffle of family around lunch time. My youngest brother went to pick up his daughter who had got a ride in from college. My other brother went back to his hotel to catch a nap because he had spent the night with Mom in her room. One sister had left with her family to get some lunch. The rest of the family trooped down to a central sitting room to listen to one of my nieces play piano. I took advantage of the moment to have Mom to myself.

I sat next to her bed, held her hand and stroked her forehead. I have no idea if this was a comfort to her or not. It was just something that felt right. Mom would have done it for me.

I gave her permission to die. This is something Hospice recommends. I have no idea about the need for or the propriety of this exercise either. For one thing, Mom was the last person on earth who needed my permission for anything. Mom was the person I had to get permission from...even now. This felt right too, however, in the circumstances, so I did it.

I said, “It’s okay for you to go if you want, Mom.”

Her right eye popped wide open, and she looked right at me. This was the miraculous part. The only thing she had done for three and a half days was breathe, and she had trouble with that. She had not opened her eyes once in all that time. She had not blinked or squeezed anybody’s hand. Now she was suddenly fully engaged in what I was telling her. It seemed I had her attention.

“Really,” I said, “You can go if you want. Go to Jesus. We’ll be okay—all of us. We’ll be fine. I love you.”

She kept looking at me with that one eye the whole time. There was an intensity to her gaze. It took me by surprise. I had not expected it. I didn’t know what to make of it, but I knew it was special. And then, right in the middle of this special moment, in another life-defining instance of incredibly unfortunate timing, a volunteer decided to come into the room to deliver a flag fan and a fact sheet about the Statue of Liberty in honor of Independence Day. He was blissfully unaware of what was going on between Mom and me, although, surely, he understood that people come to Hospice to die, and that he ought to take some pains, therefore, to see what was going on before just barging into a room.

This guy was on a mission. He wasn’t content just to deliver the goods. He felt a lengthy explanation was in order. He felt that Mom and I needed to know who had slapped red, white, and blue construction paper around a tongue depressor to enhance our 4^th of July celebrations. He wanted to point out the highlights of the fact sheet. He thrust it into my hands and started ticking off the various entries on it as if I might miss them. I was flabbergasted.

I guess I should point out that I am used to being interrupted. Interruption seems to be a hallmark of my life. It is an adjunct to the unfortunate timing thing that I discussed yesterday with regard to my hair…among other things of course. Getting interrupted is a pet peeve of mine, but something I seem unable to get under control. No one seems to care what I am doing or saying. Whatever it is they have to say is almost always more important than what I have to say. This happens so often to me that I have come to believe it is more about me than it is about them. It is more than mere rudeness or self-absorption on their part. There is something about me that invites interruption. It’s not that their sense of entitlement is over-developed. It’s that mine is under-developed. My sense of entitlement is infirm and eminently trample-able. It must be my fault else I wouldn’t be interrupted with such frequency and with such unerring inconvenience. I fully expect to be interrupted on my own death bed. It would only be fitting.

I put my head down and willed the guy to go away. I tried to shrink into my shirt and disappear. I tried to fill the room with a sense of privacy. I tried to exclude the guy by sheer force of will. Mom was more effective. She gave him the skunk eye. She’d always been good at it. A withering look was one of her most formidable weapons. It is the kind of thing you have to perfect when you do not curse or swear. She could stop you in your tracks with a glance. She apparently kept this skill to the last. The guy turned and almost ran out of the room.

Mom looked back at me, closed her eye, and breathed her last. She took several more gasps, but she essentially quit breathing at that moment. My youngest sister came in the room with one of my sisters-in-law and our aunt. My sister checked for a pulse and called a nurse. The nurse checked with a stethoscope. She said there was some activity in the heart yet, although it was very faint, sporadic, and failing—not a beat really, more of a gurgle. She said she would check again in a minute. When she did there was nothing.

For some reason I have found joy in this last exchange. I am gratified that Mom had her last moment with me. I am amused and edified that she was still able to wield the full strength of her personality at the very end of her life. It is the kind of thing that defines her existence just as getting interrupted seems to define mine. I have to wonder if there might have been more between Mom and me if the volunteer had not come into the room at the most singularly inconvenient moment in the entire history of my relationship with my mother. I have to wonder what I might have been cheated out of in those few fleeting seconds of boorishness. I wonder what Mom thinks—if she’s disappointed that she wasted the last bit of energy she had for living and loving to shoot some bozo the skunk eye.