mortality's end / pack a case and leave the rest

view larger

 Above Roy R. Behrens, Carte Blanche (© 2021). Digital montage.

•••

Ronald Blythe, The View in Winter: Reflections on Old Age. New York: Penguin Books, 1980, p. 103—

A man who dies at forty will usually show one cause of death, wrote Alex Comfort; a man who dies at eighty will probably show nine or ten, so that had we cured the one that in fact killed him, he would have died soon after of something else. Behind this bleak truth lies the reason why so many aged leave home for homes. They are deteriorating. Their mortality, which has been kept in check or which has been concealed for so long, is now unhideable from themselves and from their families and neighbors. The effect of these last diseases, their breaking down of the organism, is called “not being able to manage.” The pressures from inside and outside then begin, and just at a moment when the smallest decision requires a mighty effort, one is asked to make what for most people is a tremendous effort—to go on managing, and knowing that you can’t, or to be managed. To pack a case and leave the rest. Travel light has always been the advice given to pilgrims and the old people’s home repeats it, though for its own convenience, not for the new resident’s.

Long Midwestern Winters

Story Illustration © Kim Behm

Above Short story illustration by Iowa-based artist Kim Behm, who teaches at Hawkeye Community College, Waterloo IA.

•••

Richard Critchfield, Those Days: An American Album (New York: Dell, 1986), p. 156—

But the snow, the unchanging blackness and whiteness of it, the bitter cold, the ceaseless wind—it could give you a really bad case of "cabin fever" if you let it. Father [a country doctor] used to tell about finding patients in remote farmhouses, most of them women, who'd made themselves ill with depression and loneliness over the long winter. All the early settlers had tales of women on isolated homesteads going mad. Even our farm, just a half mile south and two miles west of Hunter, could get pretty lonely. In the dead of night the sound of a coyote—three short yelps and a long howling wail—can be just about the most desolate sound there is.

Alec Guinness, Hiccups and the Pope

In an autobiography, British actor Alec Guinness (aka Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars) recalled a very odd audience with the Pope in Blessings in Disguise (Pleasantville NY: Akadine Press, 2001), p. 46—

[In 1958, four days before the death of Pope Pius XII, British actor Alec Guinness was allowed to join an audience with the Holy Father, in a group that consisted primarily of plastic surgeons. Guinness stood “near the end of the line next to a middle-aged American couple,” where] I didn’t grasp what the Pope said to me...but I assumed it was about surgical alterations to the face and not about theatrical make-up; but I did catch every word said by the Americans. They both kneeled to kiss the Fisherman’s Ring, and then the man burst into loud sobs, the tears coursing down his face. The Pope [who was suffering from hiccups] patted him, took his hand, saying the Italian equivalent of “There! There!” and the man grasped his white cassock. The wife explained her husband away with a motherly smile. I imagined her to be a woman who would not have permitted him to buy his own shirts, socks or underpants. “He’s so moved, Your Holiness,” she said. “It is such an honor to meet you. Isn’t it, dear? He’s always like this on great occasions. Aren’t you, dear? Oh, he’s very moved! And just think, Your Holiness—we’ve come all the way from Michigan!” The Pope mastered a hiccup. “Michigan?” “Sure, Michigan.” “I know Michigan,” the Pope said, and managing to free himself from the plastic surgeon’s grip he raised a hand in blessing: “A special blessing on Michigan!” Those were probably the last words of English he spoke. The entourage sped him away from the audience chamber. His private doctor followed, glowering at each of us in turn as he passed.

Barberism

From Peter Quennel, The Sign of the Fish (NY: Viking Press, 1960), pp. 141-142—

Dylan Thomas [the hard drinking Welsh poet] made no attempt to conceal or excuse the crapulous disorder of his daily life; and I remember that he once advised me to use a barbershop in Soho, adding that the barber was a sensible sort of person who did not at all object should a client succumb to morning nausea while in the midst of being shaved.

A Call From Nature Put On Hold

A wonderful story from British poet Stephen Spender (1909-1995) in John Goldsmith, ed., Stephen Spender: Journals 1939-1983 (NY: Random House, 1968), pp. 310-311—

As soon as I got up to give my lecture [in October 1975 at New Mexico State University at Los Cruces] I was seized with violent diarrhea pains—a nightmare situation come true! It seemed to me that I kept on saying confused sentences, though luckily some of the lecture hung together. No one seemed to have noticed. I even pulled myself together sufficiently to do well in answering questions after the talk. Then of course everything delayed my getting to a lavatory. People asking for autographs, the ones too shy to get up in front of the audience asking their little private questions. There was some difficulty in finding a lavatory. Then when the chairman did take me to one, NOT IN USE was written across MEN on the door. We found another and as soon as I got into it an elderly gentleman emerged from one of its stalls and said, "Didn't I meet you twenty years ago? Now where was it? What did you speak about, etc." I said, "Excuse me, I'll speak to you afterwards, outside" and dashed into the place he had left.