I am lucky enough to have been married for more than forty years. In that time, my wife and I have seen our careers mature and then move into retirement. We have seen each other through the death of loved ones and the physical challenges that come along with living. We have travelled the world together, owned homes, endured losses and celebrated triumphs. We are fortunate that we have always been able to talk to each other about our lives. We enjoy the melding that occurs when two people commit themselves to each other. In our seventies now, we have the discussion about of us will be the first to die.
This is a conversation that many avoid and call maudlin or morose, but it is not just an esoteric question. It is also a question that involves legacy and the dispersal of assets. The romantic wish is that we expire together, but we know that is not likely. One of us will probably survive the other.
When the topic first arose, it was dismissed as being too depressing and frightening to discuss. Neither of us wants to leave the other alone. We made the promise of a lifelong partnership. How then can one imagine life continuing without the other?
Aging requires that we make some decisions. There will be plenty of time to think about one of us dying once it has happened. Why spend time thinking about it now? We know each other’s hearts. Instinctively, we believe that we will know what to do when the time arrives. But the subject comes up out of nowhere, like a mushroom that grows in the dark and just appears without announcement.
Cancer runs in my wife’s family; heart disease runs in mine. When my wife contracted cancer, she thought about the end of her life. My goal was to redirect her thinking towards recovery. When a heart condition was thought possible for me and they put me in a cardiac unit at the hospital, she did the same thing. But silently, we both considered the inevitable.
We are both spiritual people but neither of us is a churchgoer. Although going to church was part of each of our upbringing. There is a desire to somehow return to that certitude that came with a child’s belief in eternal life. That belief that we will reunite with our loved ones and that the reunion will be eternal. I am not sure that will happen. I am not sure that there will be a me with whom to reunite. Valerie believes otherwise. She has more faith in God than I seem to be able to muster. There is a line from a popular song that sums up my situation. “I am not sure what I believe, but I believe.”
What are beliefs anyway? Are they more than a desire to have things a certain way? Are they the place where mental constructs and emotions meld? We are satisfied with the notion that says what was once mine is now yours? For property and money and other possessions, we each know the exceptions.
My wife has an extended family that she would wish to have remembrances of her. I do not. We have a daughter and a granddaughter that we would want to see enriched by those things that we did not have a chance to use. We trust each other to carry out these seemingly mundane requests.
There is an ultimate intimacy in this conversation. It is about what is to be done with the rest of us. We do not wish to be buried alongside one another. We have each expressed the desire that our remains be cremated. But what to do with the ashes? Perhaps they should be mingled with ashes of departed family members. Maybe we should be spread across graves, and either be blown away or turned into fertilizer. I have the fantasy of being buried at sea. But I sincerely hope that I am not alive to experience it. We can say these things to each other and smile a chastened smile at their implications.
We have considered how much of us will stay with the surviving partner. It would no doubt take time and work before either of could embrace that sweet sadness of fond remembrance. There is the element of anger when either of us sees the other faltering in a desire to go on. “Don’t you dare die on me. I will never forgive you.” This can be both an expression of love and admonition.
This is not a discussion we can tolerate unless we are both present. I cannot see discussing it over a drink with a buddy. I do not think she can either. However, if we both are present, our living selves contradict the inevitably of the subject matter. We are able to hedge with this perception of truth.
So, the conversation is ongoing, not every day or every week but it is there. My wife, who specialized in gerontology, tells me that the decade of one’s 70’s is the most difficult to endure. Strength fades. Not everything is at the fingertips of memory as it once was. These are harbingers. She tells me that once a person reaches the age of 80, those fears seem to subside and an acceptance of life and death is easier. I hope we live long enough to experience that.
I want to believe that there is a place to which we travel. I want to believe that my soul is eternal. I want to believe that all our souls are eternal and that life is just a dream inside of a dream, but I have my doubts. Maybe it is because I live inside of this finite body that I cannot grasp eternity. Maybe there is no eternity to grasp. I guess we will all find out.
For now, I live in hopes and dreams, but perhaps I have always done that. It would be the delight of forever to find her there with me. But then we would both be living dreams, wouldn’t we?