It is Lent, so I get to be a little more somber. And Satan’s big lie to Eve is the bald assertion that “you will not surely die.” And it is a completely unfair lie. Did Eve even have a concept of death? Or maybe a better way of expressing that would be that Eve only had a concept of death. The naked reality of it is not something she was acquainted with. So even if she had a concept, she was working in the realm of theory. And we all know what happens to theory when it meets reality.
I watched a recent interview with former Senator Ben Sasse. He is 54 years old, about the same age as I am. Also has three kids with the youngest being 15. This past December he was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer and given a plus/minus of 90 days. He has not “given up” as the saying goes. A podcast he is recording with another friend is entitled Not Dead Yet. He has turned himself over to an experimental treatment delivering massive amounts of chemo drugs (i.e. poison) to the cancer. But the reality is still the reality. Unlike my 80-something father whose pancreatic cancer was caught in nascent stages because his appendix just happened to go bad and the surgeon saw something, Mr. Sasse has it all over including in the spinal column which requires massive doses of morphine for the pain. The entire interview is worth your time to watch (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8MO-i3CBZQ, Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson) and to listen to what he has to say. And I don’t pass it along lightly. He is that exceedingly rare voice who is honest enough with himself, and open enough to share, and verbal enough to express it. And his message is that most rare of things – good.
It got me thinking about comparable works on grief and death and advice to the living and they are rare. The poets have an advantage: John Donne’s Death Be Not Proud and Dana Gioia’s Planting a Sequoia come to mind. Both of those are by people who have a functional theology and are struggling to live it. From a different place of white hot rage Mary Karr’s Face Down. “What are you doing on this side of the dark?…” Now Ms. Karr also has a theology, or she did last I knew, but sometimes it takes a while to travel from head to heart.
The prose writers are at a disadvantage. I know quoting C.S. Lewis is getting to be a cliché, but A Grief Observed is without peer. Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy was maybe the first Christian work on the subject of “A Good Death” or “Advice for Living from those at Death’s Door” written as he awaited the carrying out of his death sentence. Any critique I have of it says more about me than the work, but it’s a bit too much consolation and philosophy, compared to Lewis who truly lets you in the door. There are some others. Richard John Neuhaus attempted it in As I Lay Dying. But he survived, and I always had a feeling he “knew” he would survive. He was already thinking about the book he could write as he lay dying. Tolstoy fans would put forward A Confession. Marcus Aurelius has portions in his Meditations. Simone Weil and Joan Didion both attempted and they have their adherents. But it is a hard thing to pull off. You have to be remote enough from yourself to think and translate, while being close enough to feel.
That is where Mr. Sasse’s interview excels. He has something to say while he is on death’s door. For all of us creatures of dust, who might want to gather our rosebuds while we may, it is worth your time.
