New Zealand Herald (Writing Sample)

A Time to Die

I want Morris, a man I love, to die.

Morris is kind, smart, witty, and charming.

He is the color of mustard.

Morris has travelled the world. He speaks Yiddish and knows how to use chopsticks.

He has lost 80 pounds and 18 inches in two years.

Morris discusses politics as easily as he discusses putting.

He no longer remembers our conversations.

Morris reads the Wall Street Journal, Wallace Stegner, and How to Improve Your Bridge Game, all in the same day.

He needs to wear a diaper to bed.

Morris Older is my grandfather. He is 86 years old and dying of pancreatic cancer. Since it was diagnosed a month ago, he’s been declining quickly, for it is one of the most virulent forms of the disease.

Thank God.

Even though I’ve had a living will since I was a senior in college, and even through I buried another beloved grandfather, as well as a respected teacher, a few years ago, I haven’t thought much about death. Actually, that’s not true: I’ve often thought about death. It’s dying that I haven’t really considered. Until now.

Dying, I realize, is what stands between the joy of life and the relief of death. Dying should be quick, painless, and dignified. More often it is prolonged, painful, and humiliating. Death is an entirely individual act. Dying, on the other hand, demands group participation.

When I see my grandfather’s skin glowing with jaundice, I am moved beyond pity or sympathy to empathy. In his yellow eyes, I see myself staring one day into an unforgiving mirror. How will I feel, seeing my face and hands and body so changed? How do you feel, Grandpa?

“Uncomfortable,” he mumbles weakly. “I’m just waiting…” He doesn’t finish that sentence. He doesn’t need to. When an active, eloquent, quick-witted man is too tired—or too uncomfortable—to finish his sentence, the silence speaks for him.

If he had finished the sentence, here’s what I think he would have said. “I’m just waiting for all this waiting to end. What else can I do? No one’s telling me to build up my strength with exercises in the pool. No one’s telling me to eat this or not to eat that. What would be the point? I can eat as much chocolate ice cream as I want. Too bad I haven’t been hungry in weeks. So what can I do? Just wait. Just lie here in bed, and wait.”

It’s what we’re all doing. Loving, supporting, talking, remembering… and waiting. Wondering how to speed up the dying process, yet dreading its completion.

A few years ago, I interviewed my grandmother for a graduate seminar project. She recounted family history, told me about the first time she met my grandfather, and described how she felt when her own mother died, away from home and living on the other side of the world.

“I was never offered her ashes,” my grandmother told me. “But they wouldn’t have meant anything to me anyway. To me, dead is dead. I mean that in a good way: Sometimes, death can be a friend. I won’t know for sure until it hits me, but I think life, at a certain point, should welcome death.”

Death, please come in. My grandfather is dying to meet you.