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27 Apr 2008 02:33 pm

Lessons From Dying

A few paragraphs from Michael Davitt Bell's 1996 article recounting his experiences with cancer and mortality:

I doubt that I can account fully for the level of happiness, even euphoria, I've now reached, three years later and in the face of much worse news. But some of it comes, I'm sure, from the fact that since the cancer's appearance in my lung in the summer of 1994 revealed that the original treatment hadn't eliminated the disease, and thus the statistical odds of my surviving were close to nil, I have determined to be open and honest with other people about my disease and my prognosis. I think this has also allowed me to be open and honest with myself.

My relationships with friends and family -- above all with my two daughters, now in their twenties, whose mother and I divorced when they were small -- have thus taken on an emotional openness and intensity almost inconceivable for someone who, like me, grew up in an upper-middle-class WASP family in the Midwest, a family in which the word "love" was never spoken or heard except, perhaps, to express admiration for an object or article of clothing ("I just love the way that sweater looks on you!"). So I find I'm not overcome with remorse or anger, or with terror of the fate awaiting me; instead I'm cherishing each moment, each mundane experience I have left. This is, for me, a magic time.

I felt the same urgency and magic in the years immediately after being infected with HIV. I fully expected to be dead by now. The news did transform my life, and my view of the world, and my human relationships, and my faith in ways I am still grappling with. It forced me to understand that I am not in control of my own existence, and that humility before what we cannot know, along with love for those we do not easily love, is the important thing. I didn't lose faith; but it changed in its tone and nature. It became deeper and yet less certain. That is partly how I came to relinquish the attraction of fundamentalism. Because in the face of the last things, its brittleness is what stands out.

As the immediate threat of mortality recedes, you return of course to the rhythms of forgetfulness and shallowness and trivia. Humankind cannot bear very much reality. But you never quite forget "the infirm glory of the positive hour." I'm glad that I wrote it all down before it receded from memory.

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