Letters to the Editor
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Obsessed is right
It would seem to me that the appropriate comment to this gentleman would be, "Get a life".
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obsessed is wrong
This article and these people exemplify who we are. 'We' want to deny aging and death. Don't we? Don't you? Please argue.
I don't. I accept it. Death is coming for this guy born in 1952 at Great Samaritan Hospital in Zanesville, Ohio. Sooner or later, I am going to stop breathing. And die. Love you all.
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most people
but especially americans, cling too strongly to life. for some, death comes unbidden and too early. for others, death hovers just out of reach - tantalizingly close, but not close enough.
i have personally seen family members die painfully, slowly. though close relations (er, icu doctors) i hear stories almost daily of families that won't let their loved ones pass from this mortal coil. (had to be the first one to use that phrase in this thread - couldn't resist). it is time to revisit our dedication to life at any cost.
life is a gift, not a right, and to each one of us a certain amount is apportioned. the lucky among us will find our end quickly and peacefully. the vast majority of us will die slowly, without grace.
at 41 i don't fear death, only the manner in which it will come to me.
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Death is Small Potatoes
It's living while one is alive that is the daunting prospect for most. The loss of a loved one is an enormous trauma at any age, and of course especially at a young age or with serious unfinished business. But for the Guest of Honor at a funeral the dying was the easy part usually. Getting dead may have been rough, but before that, trying to live life to the fullest was probably the toughest challenge of all.
Bayard's obsession (and I think it is rightfully named that) with stasis, death, attrition, etc., is really a sad thing to read -- or to listen to, as I so often do, especially when it comes from people my age or younger. Everything that happened to us on the way to the far side of, say, sixty, is attributed to youthful idiocy, but everything that happens now is suddenly written off to "falling apart", that inevitable process which sets in upon achieving some magic number (it used to be 40; I think it's 60 now). Hell, a few years ago when I was a mere boy of 60 I flipped off a ladder and landed in a bathtub (a long story and a funny one, but never mind). I broke my left shoulder owing to a horrible landing that could not be avoided. First thing I hear from my slightly older cousins was "What the hell were you doing on a ladder at your age?" What indeed! Changing a lightbulb you morons!
At 49 I got my heart attack out of the way. It was a near thing, too. But everyone then said "You're too young for this stuff!" I agreed with them then and I'd still go with that thinking. Bayard, I suspect, would just take his pencil and check it off his list of failing systems.
Finally (rejoice! The Old Fart is almost done!) why, if we lose so much so early, did my basketball game (I played varsity high school ball) improve so damned much at age 50, a year after a near-fatal heart attack and emergency bypass surgery? Why was I so much more aggressive and dangerous as well as a far better shooter from 20 feet out? What went wrong with the program?
It all does argue ably against Intelligent Design, but at 63 I don't have an enlarged prostate, I have no problem with the shoulder I broke in that dive into the (thankfully empty) bathtub, I've worn glasses since I was 15 and have to keep getting new prescriptions but only because my vision has improved, and though I've been off women for over a year (that last breakup really hurt!) I have my ways of knowing the hydraulics still work fine and the capacity is there; further (damn! He said he was done!), my cardiologist now tells me I have no evidence of heart disease. What the hell is wrong with me?
Hey, I'm not bragging, and I knock on every piece of wood I see, but I've found that I was a lot feebler and sicker (and sick a lot more often) in my teens than I am now. What does it all mean? My hair turned grey in my mid-20s, so I can't blame that on my current senility.
I'm just not sold on Bayard's obsession, but admire the hell out of his dad and only hope that out of simple decency he doesn't live to dance on his kid's grave. Because that would be wrong, no matter how morbid the kid may be. And if, as my old high school buddy says, "There's nothing more dangerous than a sixty year-old man with nothing to lose", then imagine the mass-destruction potential of a vigorous 97 year old man.
I'd just cross the street if I saw him coming.
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The Senility Was Showing...
...where I wrote "Bayard" when I meant "Shields." My apologies to both. Hey, I'm old!
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About that mortality thing
I just may be even more morbid than Shields, because I have a really strong feeling his dad is going to outlive him.
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If only he'd been as good a professor...
...As he is a writer, I can't help but think that perhaps David would've had an easier time finding that evanescent sense of contentment that comes from throwing yourself entirely into your own interests. Those of us who studied under him hoped to learn at the foot of a great writer. Instead, we found cause for celebration whenever we received a mere four sentences of ambiguous commentary on our work.
Ghoulish and obsessive attempts at measuring up to others, instead of reveling in our daily lives, is the eternal pitfall; it's the reason that when Death finally knocks on our door, so many of us say "What? How can you be here already?"
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Abel3k
I took a creative writing class with him in the mid 90s. You consider him a great writer, really? I think his style is obsessive and just odd. I read A Handbook for Drowning when I was taking his class, and it struck a chord with me because my dad had died a year earlier, but the only thing he really taught me was to get out of my head and out of the library. He is just such a strange man. I hope he enjoys life more than he seems to.