A Pain in the Neck

As a former goth girl, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about death. Drawing skulls on notebooks, taking the occasional photo in a cemetery…and that’s about it. I wasn’t a very good goth. I really just like wearing black and listening to the Cure.

Before my black-clad teenage years, though, when I was a little girl, my mom had me read all about the lives of the saints. It wasn’t all martyrdom and gruesome ends, but of course that’s what stuck with me the most often: St Winefride, who was decapitated by a suitor when she became a nun; St. Germain, who suffered from physical ailments and slept on a bed of twigs; St. Lucy, who plucked out her own eyes; St. Maria Goretti, who was stabbed to death during a rape attempt; St. Ignatius, who was fed to lions in the Coliseum; St. Lawrence, who was grilled and reportedly said, “I’m well done. Turn me over!” (Though I was also particularly fascinated by the story of St. Felix, whose life was saved by a spider; I still try not to kill spiders to this day.)

Catholicism—particularly my mom’s brand—didn’t shy away from death, from the souls suffering in Purgatory to Ash Wednesday’s reminder that we will all turn to dust. My mom taught me this rhyme, “Whenever I go by a church/I stop and make a visit/So that someday when I’m carried in/The Lord won’t say ‘Who is it?'”

When I was in second or first grade, my mom would send away for cassette tapes recorded by a priest who had some theories. It was the early- to mid-’80s, and the priest shared his thoughts on the AIDS epidemic. On one of the tapes, he said that HIV was so contagious that you could get it just by touching something that someone with HIV had touched. Over Christmas, while my cousin and I were playing with our knock-off Pound Puppies, she told me that her sister’s boyfriend had contracted HIV. I spent a week thinking that I had AIDS and was infecting everyone. My grandparents even took me to Burger King to cheer me up (we never went out to eat, so our bimonthly trips to Burger King or Arby’s were a big deal) and try to find out what was wrong with me, but I kept the news of my imminent demise to myself. That miserable week, when I went back to school, I tried not to touch much but I was convinced I was silently killing everyone with my presence. I don’t remember what snapped me out of my gloom. I might have finally said something to my mom.

I was kind of a weird, morose kid, acutely aware of the problems of the 1980s. I was also resigned to the possibility of being obliterated by a nuclear bomb during the Cold War. I made sure to tell my mom and my grandparents every night that I loved them before going to bed, in case it was the last time I saw them.

Death has always been a presence as an inevitable part of life; I’d always known my father died when I was a baby. My great-grandfather died when I was 4. In a religious household, you’re somewhat always preparing for death, or at least living with an eye to the afterlife. In the stories of the lives of many of the martyrs, they were beatific when their eyes were plucked out or making jokes while they were cooked alive, because they were at peace with how they’d lived their lives and had an afterlife awaiting.

I have been following the blog of a friend of a former workout pal. She has been blogging about her colon cancer and has a book coming out on Random House, and she writes about death in a more eloquent way than I do. In one of her posts, she wrote about reading Piers Anthony’s Incarnations of Immortality series. “The first book was about the Incarnation of Death with the Angel of Death coming to end people’s lives when their time came,” she writes. “I don’t remember anything from those books except one statement and image. The Angel of Death said that anyone who believes in nothingness after death will experience nothingness.”

Now that the end of life is approaching, I know some may be concerned about what happens after death. Although who knows how much time I have left? I could have years or months. They have stopped saying decades. I might have a long time to say goodbye, or it might come quickly. Some people live for years with these debilitating symptoms, and I don’t want that. Some days, when I feel particularly sick and bad, I would go immediately if I could. I have little affection for this life of diapers, IVs, shots, medications, and near constant discomfort or pain.

Different people in my life have varying beliefs, ranging from nothingness to a Catholic afterlife of angels playing harps on clouds. No matter what your beliefs, though, a happy death—or being at peace with death—seems to hinge on a good life. (Of course, what constitutes a good life also varies based on belief.)

One of my favorite books is actually A Happy Death by French Algerian philosopher Albert Camus. While The Stranger is Camus’ most famous work, which we read in AP English (during my black-wearing days), I preferred this unfinished book that wasn’t published until 10 years after his death.

The book starts (spoiler alert) with the protagonist, Mersault, killing Zagreus, a man who amassed a bit of wealth before an accident took his legs and left him dependent on others for his care, and filling a suitcase full of money. In Mersault, Zagreus sees a man like himself, who thinks it’s one’s duty to live and be happy, however, Zagreus is bitter about his accident and thinks that he cannot realize happiness in its fullest state as he is. He also believes that to have money is to be free of money and to have the time to find happiness. This gives Mersault the freedom to philosophize and pal around with some of his friends in “The House Above the World,” marry a woman he doesn’t love, find solitude, and come to some conclusions that allow him to die a happy man “without anger, without hatred, without regret.”

I don’t have a suitcase full of money or a sun-baked home in North Africa, but I am, for the most part, satisfied with my life. I’ve hated a lot. Maybe more than most. Years ago, I dated someone whose family owned a funeral home, and, knowing my penchant for holding a grudge, he promised that if something happened to me, he would tie a string to my middle finger so I could show my displeasure to people I didn’t like who might show up.  But at this point, time has faded a lot of the perceived injustices, vanquished my nemeses, allowed wounds to heal. I’ve tried to forgive—or at least distance myself from—those who try to steal my joy.

I’m angry a lot. I’m angry at the disease. Like Zagreus, I’m angry at my quality of life. Sometimes I’m just angry in general, and in this particular political and social climate, it’s hard not to just be angry all the time. I’m angry at the insurance companies and that I have to spend so much time fighting for prescriptions and payments.

For the most part, I have few regrets. Most of my regrets are second guesses about selling the house in Ohio. Many things I’ve done over the years might cause me to wince upon remembering them, but I don’t think there’s anything huge. I would have maybe had children. But then I would have to leave them now, and it would be harder for me to let go. It’s hard enough to leave the cats. I’m at peace with how life will go on without me.

It’s impossible to wrap up a life into a tidy package, and leaving loved ones are the messiest parts. As for the rest, I’m trying to take stock of my life, updating my freelance portfolio, selling things from my closet, finishing up projects. I could have years left, and even if I do, I still wouldn’t be able to finish everything. I’ve been looking for a duvet cover, but it hasn’t turned into the consuming symbolism that Nina Riggs faced during her search for a couch as she died of breast cancer. I have books to read, shows to watch, projects to finish. A friend who wrote a book about her chronic, rare, fatal disease says she too is haunted by the thought of not knowing how some TV shows will end. If you can imagine your own afterlife, I hope it’s a place where you can find out how TV series ended. I hope it’s a place where I have access to the never-filmed second season of Carnivàl. (My own Sartre-esque version of hell, in case you are wondering is a constantly cold place with a ski slope, a dueling piano bar, really slow WiFi and no cats.)

I try not to spend too much time thinking about what I could have done differently. Any changes might have been at the cost of something else. I was finishing baking an olive oil cake a few weeks ago and I wondered if I should have baked more. But then I wouldn’t have time to do other things. I’ve spent a lot of time freelancing, but that’s so I could live in New York, one of my favorite places in the whole world. I’ve been lucky enough to do something I enjoy—mainly writing—and it doesn’t pay a lot and I’ve had to take on extra work here and there but I prefer it to making a lot of money at a job I would hate. I’ve written a lot of things, and while I don’t think anyone is pining to read my story about ornamental vines, I’d like to keep my articles for posterity.

Overall, I am at peace. I’m more afraid of the years or months of being sick before death. More than death and its promised release, I am terrified that I will live for years like this, sick and in between worlds.

I haven’t led an extraordinary life, but it’s been a mostly happy one. I used to have these words from A Happy Death up on my wall at various apartments, as a reminder to live well. “He realized now that to be afraid of this death he was staring at with animal terror meant to be afraid of life. Fear of dying justified a limitless attachment to what is alive in man. And all those who had not made the gestures necessary to live their lives, all those who feared and exalted impotence—they were afraid of death because of the sanction it gave to a life in which they had not been involved. They had not lived enough, never having lived at all. And death was a kind gesture, forever withholding water from the traveler vainly seeking to slake his thirst. But for the others, it was the fatal and tender gesture that erases and denies, smiling at gratitude as at rebellion.”