The way we die
is the way we live
Or have lived. Is this news?
I have seen it
over and over. A man I knew who lived fast, sucked down alcohol and smoked like
a ruin died hard. At least he died quickly, opening the door of his truck by
the side of the road and collapsing. He was dead by the time he hit the ground.
Others, unable
to let go, trying desperately to stay in control, stay sick for years, and
years, and years.
I’ve seen
near-miracles, like the woman I knew through my former church who was
terminally ill and determined to die at home. This was not a cheery or positive
woman, though her saracastic digs were often howlingly funny (so long as they
weren’t aimed at you).
But something
happened here, something strange and quite wonderful. This woman’s friends knew
that her sarcastic quips were just a cover for a fragile and loving heart.
There was a sweetness in her that contrasted beautifully with the sour.
Without even
sitting down to work it out, shifts of people
began to look after her. Towards the end, this involved bathing and
feeding and taking care of her most basic needs.
At the very
end ,when she lay dying in hospital, her two sons, estranged from her and from
each other for a dozen years, stood on either side of her bed. There’s just
something so powerful about standing by someone, about being there. Attending.
It’s not a
fancy and certainly not a squishy-squashy word, but at the end, it means
everything.
A lot of
people I know, if they are willing to name their ultimate fear, say “Dying
alone.” There is something so hollow about it, indicative of an empty life with
no significant attachments.
How you die is
how you have lived.
A couple of
years ago I saw something in the paper and, before I could stop myself,
exclaimed, “Holy.” It’s a silly expression – don’t know where it came from -
that just pops out of me when I am truly surprised.
I won’t say
the man’s name because I don’t wish to be barbecued all over again, and it wasn't his real name anyway, but suffice
it to say he was a local Vancouver not-quite-celebrity, a newspaper
writer for the Sun who pretty much worked in one place all his life.
He was almost
always described as “acerbic”, meaning he could be acid, even caustic, but his
remarks caused gales of laughter among those who were NOT his target. He was the master of schadenfreude and
could summon it with a snap of his fingers. There is no way you can tell me he
didn’t get pleasure out of it.
I knew him as
a theatre critic at first, and I noticed right away the carbolic quality which
could be quite funny in a mean Dorothy Parker-esque way. Then he was assigned
the classical music beat, and was away to the races.
People
pretended to be OK with his excoriating remarks, even tried to see them as an
honour, though I don’t know what they thought in private. He did like certain artists, though he was extremely picky and seemed to
have supernaturally-sensitive hearing. If a violinist lost a single horsehair
from his bow, he noticed, and he wasn’t charitable about it.
His weekly
column, entitled Urban Scrawl, ran for a few years and could be
immensely entertaining. But that’s not the thing I want to write about today.
At some point
in the ‘90s I must have sent him something. I do remember a bizarre visitation
by Liz Taylor at the local Eatons store to promote some new fragrance, Black
Something-or-other. I sent him my newspaper column about it, and he actually
responded: “Ol’ Violet Eyes! I might just steal that one. I only steal from the
best.”
This didn’t
seem like a mean or acerbic man. Over the years I’d send him sporadic bits and
pieces, and to my astonishiment, one year he sent me a Christmas card. I
couldn’t quite call him a friend, but he did respond to most of the bits I
sent, mainly clippings from my column.
Then he sort
of went underground, wrote a few pieces for the Georgia Straight and disappeared, apparently into retirement.
So that was
that, until one day I encountered a very weird sight.
The Grand
Master of the acerbic quip had a Facebook page!
I couldn’t
quite believe it, but there it was. It had all sorts of comments from people,
stuff he’d done, etc. It certainly looked real.
It had been,
oh, five years since I’d heard anything. I knew I couldn’t “friend” him, but
tried to send a message anyway. It went something like:
Good to see you
again! Have you interviewed the countertenor Michael Maniaci? He knocked me
over on YouTube the other day. Interested to hear your view. Hope this gets to
you.”
Boy, did it.
Though I
wasn’t his Facebook “friend”, he wasted no time in answering me.
“This was a
mistake. I am not on Facefuck because I have no interest in joining the herd of
vacuous idiots. Hope this gets to you.”
Uh. If you’re not
on Facefuck, how can you answer a Facefuck message?
It was
upsetting.
I did find a
few things out. I mentioned his name to someone I knew, one of those
I-know-everybody types who was as gay as the day is long. “Oh, THAT guy. He has
a reputation, you know. They tell me he’s the most arrogant, cruel,
narcissistic, heartless, ruthless bastard they have ever met.”
Oh my (again)!
So that was
that, until my “Holy!” day: I saw a
full-page spread, which is certainly more attention than he had ever received
before. You have to die to get that.
He was dead,
so they ran a large full-color photo of him and articles by retired Sun
employees about how “acerbic” his writing was, and how wonderful, and how he
was wasted in Vancouver and should have been writing for the New Yorker. And
about how he had kept his private life private.
Colleagues
mentioned his kindness, but there was a hedge-y quality to some of it. There
were also stories of him hiding behind a post at concerts when he saw a friend
or colleague coming his way.
But
apparently, this was OK because he was dead now and already being elevated to
sainthood in that strange, strange way the dead are always elevated. I have
often wondered if this is nothing more than a superstitious fear that the
bastards will come back and haunt us.
I did not
react well. I was furious at all the statements about his kindness, his gentle
soul, etc. The man was an asshole and I wanted the world to know it.
I didn’t think
hard about it and I did use his real name, a bad idea. The blog post was out
there, though I assumed no one would read it. But I had tagged it with his name
(duh: the part of me that DID want people to see it). It wasn’t long until I
received feedback, not the kind of feedback you ever want to see.
“You mean you
are going to rip into this man and hurt his family before the body even hits
the ground?”
“I have never in
my life seen anything so merciless. You are a sick woman.”
Message boards
said things like “it sounds like she was a stalker, obsessed with him, and he
had probably been trying to scrape her off his shoe for years.”
It’s funny how
in moments like this, dynamics are neatly reversed. It drives me completely
crazy. Like a bizarre weather vane, there is a complete 180-degree turn,and ALL
the nasty things a person has done are heaped on to the person who has been
hurt by them.
It’s insanity,
and it happens all the time.
I think I hit
a nerve here, because it was obvious to me that this was a lonely, bitter old
man (not THAT old – only 67, but the lonely die young) who died without
inspiring much real grief. An article I
read later, written by a friend, was much more honest than the verbal Cool Whip
posted in the Sun. She spoke of his kindness, but then said he frequently
isolated himself and could suddenly cut off friends in the manner of Sweeney
Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
Oh my, again.
Then came the
truly heartbreaking part: as he lay dying in hospital, a few colleagues from
the old days were having trouble piecing together any facts about his life.
Where was he born ? Was it Saskatchewan? Didn’t he have a brother? Where did
he go to school? Nobody knew. Their colleague of 20+ years was a complete cypher, a blank.
As far as I
know, there was no one from his family there, no one to stand by him as his
life ebbed away.
I will never
know why he attacked me that way when I was simply trying to renew a
connection, not a close one, but one that had occasionally been fun. I don’t
know why there was a Facebook page set up in the first place when he wasn’t on
“Facefuck” and probably despised such things. (Another colleague described his
work habits as being out of the 1950s, along with his attitudes and TV preferences:
all he watched was Turner Classic Movies.)
Somebody
mentioned a wake, and even said, “Will you be there, Margaret Gunning?” I
really needed more acid thrown in my face. Still later I read a blog post which
nearly peeled my skin off in a single piece. I was described as a loony old
lady and “stinky old biddy”, and the post was accompanied by a goofy picture of
me posing with my bird on my shoulder, a clear attempt to paint me as a
lunatic.
I guess I
should’ve known better than to speak ill of the dead. I broke some sort of
primal rule, I guess, but I was just pissed off at all this glowing praise of a
man who had other traits besides kindness and gentleness. Try vitriol and
nastiness.
I did take my
post down and posted a brief apology on the Straight message board. My timing
had been bad. Fury has abated, to be replaced mostly with pity. I wonder about
that wake now, whether it ever happened with so few people. And I wonder if any of his mysterious, even chimeric
family members would have attended, because it seems to me that attending was
not their strong suit.
Just rediscovered something I wrote many years ago, on the tag-end of a piece about Paul Biscop, the small medium at large whose spirit turned out to be as mean as all the rest of him. But here's what I said about him.Something about the manner of his dying continues to bother me. It's the
same way L. D. died, and if ever a man carried a load of poison
karma, it was that one. His colleagues stood around his deathbed trying
to figure out if they could remember any details of his life.
Incredibly, he only worked in one place for his entire career, the
backwater arts pages of the Vancouver Sun, and had never spread himself
out, probably because his spirit was so small and he was incapable of taking risks. They would interfere with his opinion of himself.. No one knew if he had kin
anywhere - there were only vague, conflicting ideas. So what is a
stroke? Something backs up on you, I think. Something in your head
disastrously explodes. If you're immensely old, it makes some sense -
the vessels age, they wear out - but at 67? At 67, it's a form of
autointoxication.
I can't find the tribute from the "friend" who was actually somewhat honest about his true nature (if any of his nature was true), stating that he often isolated himself for long periods, and was known to dump his long-time friends in such a shocking manner that they never knew what hit them. His nickname (behind his back, of course) was Sweeney Todd, as in the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, who had his "friends" murdered, ground up into hamburger and made into meat pies which he sold to the public in his quaint little village butcher shop.
And one more thing! All those people commenting in the Georgia Straight mentioned they were going to hold a wake in L. D.'s honor. I couldn't help but be reminded of that scene in A Christmas Carol where the ghost of Scrooge overhears his colleagues (who have known him for decades) discussing his funeral arrangements. One exclaims, "I thought he'd never die!", and another states that he would go to his funeral "only if a luncheon is provided. But unless I am fed" (pats his paunch with both hands) "I stay home."
This wake never happened. It didn't. I didn't need to be there to know this. No one cared enough about this bitter, nasty old man to want to honor him in any way. The most elegant and tasteful luncheon in the world couldn't help his colleagues and faux friends to overcome this repulsion. I still don't know why this "don't speak ill of the dead" thing is still around, because it's nothing more than rank superstition based on heebie-jeebies, goblins and ghoulies, and things that go bump in the night.
And L. D.'s legacy is macabre enough without all that.
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