by Sandra Butler
How old do I have to be before I can put an end to my lifelong task of
trying to improve? Shouldn't there be a cut-off expiration date for all that
energy-consuming labor? Can there still be more to unearth after I've
reached the august age of 86?
I don't want to give up being my best self and come to the end of my
life stuck like tires on a muddy road, going over the same ground again and
again, asking the same questions and repeating the same answers.
Why was I who I was? What stories and behaviors did I create to protect
myself against re-experiencing the patterns of my childhood? Have I
recreated them in my adult choices or papered them over --just a little? How
would I know? And on it goes. Deeper and deeper into my autobiography.
It's a narrative where I play the lead, and everyone else is somewhere
between a co-star and a bit player. Oneself is an endlessly riveting subject
matter. Until it isn't.
My storage unit has three bankers' boxes of journals, letters, dreams,
and odd, once-meaningful objects. I think about the me who recorded her
life as she was living it, searching for clues to who and why she was as she
was, and I want to put my arms around her. The young me, the middle-aged
me, casting around for the key to unlock all these unfathomable mysteries.
Now, all these decades later, I'm less stubborn and more curious
because being right no longer has the same urgency as it did when I was
younger. Making mistakes, not understanding, being confused, and
forgetting come with the territory in one's late 80s.
Have I explored my psyche deeply enough, read enough books, and
had sufficient conversations to have fulfilled my efforts to improve? Is more
emotional labor required? I no longer think so. I've developed as much as
I'm going to. This is the best me I will ever achieve; there will be no more
unpacking and investigating.
Still, the issue of what happens next remains. At the end of this
chapter of my life, I'm going to die. That's what's next. What's left is
confronting the end of me. It's not like I'm dying next week, but it will be
soonish. I have a couple of years to go. That's why I'm living in Tucson now.
To have the best life I can near my daughters until I don't have any life left.
All the while I was paying attention to my interiority, dying became an
accomplishment. Like doing your own taxes or learning to throw pots. There
is a new goal described as a "good death." And therein lies the next self-
improvement hurdle. One wants to have a "good death"? It seems like a
worthy ambition, but who decides what that is? Are my daughters going to
assess my death after I can no longer join the conversation? Mom seemed
peaceful. Mom felt anxious. Do you think that Mom knew what was
happening? I hate the idea that I won't be a part of the conversations that
will concretize their story about Mom's death. It was mine, and I should be
the one to tell it. But it doesn't work that way.
Since I moved to Tucson, my daughters have urged me to think
through all the details that will, of necessity, accompany my death—the
good one. I've made all the medical decisions, which have now been reduced
to an orange laminated sheet attached with charming Parisian magnets to
my refrigerator door for EMTs who may need instruction in the case of, or
the inevitability of, an emergency in the middle of the night when most
emergencies take place. Whatever takes me out, no one will ever sadly
murmur; she died too young. I'm way past that marker.
Then there are the legal papers, which were also uncomplicated
because I don't have much of anything, and whatever I do will be divided
among my daughters. There is the list of my doctors, medications,
passwords, credit cards, the need to identify everything jumbled in boxes in
2my storage unit down the hall, and what I want to be done with them. And
lastly, where I want to be at the moment I'm leaving and who I want there.
My afterward is left to them. Whatever ceremonies and rituals will comfort
my daughters is OK with me.
My attempts at deflection at this exhaustively pointillist set of
conversations initially were,
"Let me think about it." "We'll see." And "When the time comes."
None of them worked. My daughters were prepared to skillfully but
firmly bat my hesitations away and move on to the tasks at hand. And there
were so many tasks. There were papers to be reviewed, rediscussed, and
notarized. There were questions to be considered. There were wishes to be
expressed. Wasn't it enough that I was going to die? Why did I have to have
all these conversations about it? But they persevered. What did I want?
Well, the main thing I wanted was not to die before I had a chance to
create a life in Tucson. But other than that, when I am dying, do I really
care what music is playing, what scents are scenting, whether the window is
open or closed? I'm dying and doubt that I'm paying attention to my
environment. Maybe I'd try for a couple of final words or a tender smile, but
beyond that, I don't think I'll be up for much of anything except the task at
hand. Yet I yield to what they need. All the details are complete now, and
my wishes have been identified (John Coltrane, eucalyptus candle, open
window, friends visiting for individual goodbyes).
Then there’s the last part. The final words, the deathbed whispers, the
moments children wait for when the dying mother finally says what they
have waited for all their lives. I'm proud of you. I love you. Even though
your choices were hard for me, I see how brave you have been—something
like that. Books and movies revolve around these pivotal moments that
release decades of grief in the child. I always thought that was both corny
and manipulative. Why wait till the very last second?
Instead, I have had a series of what my daughters call "mom's deep
talks" more frequently than they might have wanted. My preference has
always been to talk through my life and not wait till the end to murmur a
declaration or two. Over the past few decades, we've talked about what it
was like for them to be the daughters of a young mother trying and failing to
balance her own longings and ambitions with the stable domestic life they
deserved. I offered them my guilty regrets about the mistakes and wounds I
had caused in those years. Eventually, as they moved into middle age and I
became old, they found the spaciousness within themselves to forgive me
my trespasses, and I became better able to forgive myself. Mostly.
Now, accompanied by my increasing physical and mental
diminishments, I try to calibrate the precarious balance between my prideful
need for autonomy and lifelong vulnerable yearning for dependency. (Back
to the early childhood part of my explorations.) I'm patient with my
daughters' overprotectiveness, a result of their fears about living without my
strong presence. But for now, the overstuffed folder marked My Death has
been filed, and I turn back to this final period of my life. It will not be
examined. It will be lived with a full heart, a curious mind and orthopedic
shoes.
Sandra Butler’s latest book is Leaving Home at 83.
A good death will follow, no doubt, your good life.
This certainly resonates with me, at the age of 86 as well. Jealous of Tucson, which I love, but comfortable in Ithaca, where two of my three children live, along with my five grandchildren, and as of next April (when, Bezrat Ha'Shem I will still be here), the anticipated birth of a great-grandchild. I will become Saba Raba then. I too think about the end, what I neglected, often about what I lost to cancer over twenty years ago, namely a perfect wife. But life goes on, the birds sing, and even in the terrors of the day (and there are many), I keep writing my poems, and making challah for Shabbat.