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Spring
Books Author unveils what makes us human: death
A TROUBLED
GUEST: LIFE AND DEATH STORIES By Nancy Mairs Beacon Press, 195
pages, $23 |
REVIEWED By JUDITH
BROMBERG
You have to understand that for some
of us, death is not an enemy. With this simple pronouncement, author
Nancy Mairs sent a young medical resident packing and set a tone for her
provocative book, A Troubled Guest.
In 10 essays Mairs looks at the almost taboo subject of death from
almost every possible angle. Noting that as a society we have no
legitimate form for directly expressing and sharing grief, it is
understandable, though not necessarily desirable, that death is one subject
that most people prefer not to talk about. (Just consider how many people do
not have wills. Take a poll, I bet youll be surprised.) But Mairs has
long since shed these inhibitions about death and takes us along as she
examines this elephant in the living room, a troubled guest as she
calls it.
I am willing enough to die, Mairs reveals. Some
mornings I have waked weeping to find myself still alive. This
disarmingly honest assessment comes from a woman who was diagnosed with
multiple sclerosis 30 years ago, and suffered from the symptoms 10 years before
that. She is mobile thanks only to her wheelchair, and needs help with all the
basic functions of living, which makes her, in the eyes of some segments of our
society, already less than fully alive.
In these essays she explores a whole range of topics pertaining to
death including, to name just a few, the death of parents, of children, of
pets, near-death experiences, capital punishment, euthanasia, suicide (her own
attempt in particular) and murder (her sons). Whereas she never minces
words or backs away from strong opinions, neither does she aim to shock. She
says in the afterward that whenever she begins a project like this, it is her
temptation to track down every scrap ever written about it, but goes on to say
that unless you want to produce literary turds you have to arrive
at what you think. Your thoughts may be wrongheaded or silly, but
at least theyre yours.
Not silly at all, these are essays in the truest sense of the word
as the French writer Montaigne coined the term, essais; that is,
attempts as opposed to complete, formal philosophical tracts as was
the fashion of his day. Mairs attempts and succeeds in opening up the subject
most of us would be content to have no thoughts about at all, silly or
otherwise.
She relates an incident already referred to from her mothers
final days. Dying from lung cancer, her mother decided that the few weeks
remaining to her offered nothing of value and mouthed to her pulmonologist the
words, Im ready. Shortly thereafter, a young resident
approached, visibly shaken, and tried to talk her out of her decision, citing
all the experimental flimflam still waiting to be tried. Her mother was not
persuaded. Mairs herself spoke up: I know this is hard for you.
Im sure you went into medicine to make people well, not to let them die.
But you have to understand that for some of us, death is not an enemy. He
couldnt understand. He went away, and we didnt see him
again.
Death, she has come to understand, far from being an enemy, is an
integral part of what makes us not just mortals, but really humans in that both
our physical and psychosocial selves rest in the reality that we
dont have all the time in the world.
Our relationships gain much
of their piquancy from our awareness that every beloved is frail, imperfect and
subject to loss. If we lived forever, the impetus for and the premises of all
our activities would be wholly alien to the ones we have now. Death makes us
who we are.
Mairs leads into one of the most poignant essays in the book, the
death of her son, by telling us how she had kind of backed into some pen pal
relationships with inmates on death row. Of their guilt, she had little doubt,
but of the right of the state to kill them in her name she had plenty. Nor did
her convictions waiver after her adopted son had been murdered. Forty years
old, with grown children of his own, he was shot in his own bed by intruders
demanding money. The shooting has not been solved or even explained, but,
gruesome as the assault was, Ron did not die that night.
Having every reason to expect imminent brain death, Rons
wife and parents had agreed to donate whatever organs and tissue could be
harvested, but when he continued to linger, for their own sense of
closure, they asked for the life supports to be removed. Family members drifted
away to their various lives, but his mother, Nancy Mairs, stayed by his side,
holding his hand, speaking to him softly. I needed to stay. I knew that
my Ron had died days before
yet I couldnt bear that even his body
die alone. Also, having sat by my mother and stepfather as each died, I knew
the sense of closure such witness could confer. Perhaps I kept watch as much
for my own sake as for Rons.
A friend, referring to Rons death, said, It seems so
unfair. But early on, Mairs had made the point that there is no
fair or unfair when it comes to death. Which brings us back to
Mairs opening chapter, A Necessary End, and her
uncompromising approach to this troubled guest.
Because I look for enlightenment as much in the compost heap
as in the lilies of the field, I view death with equal measures of reverence
and humor, and I hope everybody gets to laugh out loud at least once. She
concludes her opening essay with this invitation. Because I have a
certain facility with language, what I am good for is putting our stories into
words. It is my way of taking hands in the dark. Hold tight.
Judith Bromberg is a regular reviewer for NCR.
National Catholic Reporter, February 1,
2002
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