This much I know is true

So much that fills our life is underscored by the subconscious assumption of recurrence. We take eager note of first times: first meetings, first travels to particular countries, first times we have thought a certain thought. But mostly we ignore the existence of the last time we will do something. We dress, and we know we will dress time and time again, we speak to a friend, eat scrambled eggs, read a book, remember a scene from childhood, walk down a particular street and stop at a particular tree, always assuming that these things are repeatable. Of course, most of the time, they are: we do eat scrambled eggs again, and maybe re-read that book, but there will eventually have to be a last time we do all of those things. In our final moments, we might look at a lifetime's collection of books, or think about people we have known, and realize that some of these things have already done what they were to do in our lives, and are not meant to do any more. One day, we will all eat scrambled eggs for the last time.

Of course, a last time is usually recognized only in retrospect, when we reach a certain age or condition and reluctantly accept that our time is finite. I imagine it like moving house, except much, much sadder, as when you have two boxes to ship and must decide what goes in: will I read this book again? are these old letters worth keeping? what music will I listen to again, what can I leave behind? When we know our life is ending, the process of selection becomes a kind of insistence on individuality, a laundry list of that which we find singularly valuable and beautiful. Things we became jaded to in the long course of our lives become new once more; we see things as if for the first time, not wanting to miss any detail, not knowing what might never come again.

Last times are usually recognized in retrospect, but I think there are certain rare and mysterious moments in our lives when we know, while they're happening, that this is the last one of its kind, this is something that will not come again. These moments become more and more frequent as we get older, as we experience more and more and run out of time to experience the same things again. Eventually we reach a point where all we do is last times, files snapping shut one after the other, until we run out of things to do for the last time. And each thing we leave behind is a step in our leaving of the world.

I am afraid that, when I enter the chapter of Last Times, I will watch helplessly as parts of me close themselves off like so many folding chairs, removed one by one from the floor and tucked away for night. At that point, of course, it will be too late to do anything about it. One day, I will never again be able to visit South America; I will never learn to speak Russian; I will never read that book that someone told me I'd love. There won't be the time. We arrive tumbling, sprawling exultantly into the world, creatures of infinite possibility; as Robert Heinlein says,

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

Yes, we can do all those things and more, but as we run out of time we need to say goodbye to each of the possibilities that didn't work out, the things that always existed as "maybe" because they were still possible. The promise of our selves collapses into the reality of our selves. At the end, there will be no more use for ambition or discipline, no such thing as promise; there will only be what you have built and what there is.

So out of this frustration let there come a cry for love, love, love. The world is ending all the time, here and there, as pockets of it that you will never see again flicker and disappear. All around you, it is dismantling itself, shrinking and tightening its circumference as the Last Times of your experience pass by and never come again. The only way to push back against this inevitable constriction, as I see it, is to imbue every single fucking thing with an exuberance of love, love being energy and curiosity and patience and understanding. Love the whole stupid world and every stupid thing in it, and you keep it open until it comes down around you and drops like a curtain, as it must, in the end.

Devastated and lost

An article about grieving in this week's New Yorker mentions the interesting phenomenon of social grieving, which is what happens when a public figure, such as Princess Di or Michael Jackson, dies. For me, the defining aspect of public grieving is the fact that most mourners don't know the deceased personally. When a non-celebrity dies, each person who mourns will mourn in a highly individual way: as a husband, sister, mother, friend, daughter, acquaintance. If a man is survived by his father and his wife, I've wondered, can those two help one another in their grief? How different, or how similar, are the loss of a son and the loss of a husband?

I have never lost anyone close to me, but I would think that I would consider my memories of those I love personal, and would want to protect them. After all, no one else has shared x with this person, no one else had a conversation about y. Death brings people together, but it also separates them; death splits a person into versions, one for each survivor. In life there was a body, a mind where all our impressions were centered - I may have known him as a friend, you as your father, but the real he exists somewhere, anchors our divergent experiences. Death is like a cord cutting: in our grief, we take our different pieces, our separate versions, and hide them away in ourselves.

But social grief is different, because in social grief we all share the same memories, to a large extent. If neither of us knew someone personally, then we are on even ground with respect to what we have lost. This is why social grieving, I think, establishes communities, and why it feels like people pouring into the streets when private grief is more like the drawing of curtains. If someone in our mutual circle dies, I cannot say I know how you feel, even if we both loved the one who is missing. The thing that makes social grief different is the acute sense that people all over the world are feeling precisely what you are feeling, that you are united with others in a mutual and corresponding sense of loss.

The reason I am writing all of this is because the article made me think of my one experience with social grieving, which happened not with Princess Diana nor Michael Jackson but with the American writer David Foster Wallace. And as I sit here and ponder this, DFW begins to fill my thoughts as he tends to do; thinking about it is making me go through it all over again.