Voices in the Fog

Caveat lector: some may find this entry a tad depressing.

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Tuesday was rough. Already sleep-deprived and sick with the flu since Sunday, I was at my computer as the day dawned, trying to get a jump on my sprawling to-do list (”feeding the robots”, as I call it).

The sun was just coming up in Montreal, but elsewhere it had set. Definitively. My in box had one message unlike all the rest. The message you never want to receive. I read it several times, trying to understand. There had been a sudden death in my family. My cousin’s husband had passed away much before his time.

This was the second time in a little over six months that a member of my extended family had left this Earth precipitously. The death of someone you know is upsetting under any circumstances, but when it happens suddenly to someone you fully expected to see again (in a matter of weeks, in this case), it turns your world inside-out. I spent an hour composing a two-sentence reply to the short email my cousins had sent. What does one say? Especially to my cousin who lost the man she was so evidently in love with–and to whom she had been married such a short time. At times like this, words seem clumsy, unworkable, inappropriate.

One reason this is so upsetting is that it is a stark reminder of our tenuous voyage on this planet. Carpe diem leaped to the forefront of my mind once the shock had subsided somewhat. Life is indeed short, and there are no guaranties. We must make the most of every day, follow our passions and be content with what we have.

Since I received this unwelcome news, I’ve become more acutely aware of the extent to which our modern culture in the industrialized world is both obsessed with death and very much inured to it. Death is what sells papers and keeps news programs on the air. We blithely read about it while having breakfast; it is a dinner companion that hovers silently in the shadows. Perhaps because of this constant, sensationalized exposure to death, we end up blocking it out. It is something abstract that happens to someone else, far removed from us. Then, when it becomes personal, it is all the more terrible to deal with.

Perhaps one explanation for our obsession with death in the industrialized world is the fact that premature death has become a relatively rare occurence, whereas in some places it is a daily fact of life. In certain cultures, having as many children as possible serves a very specific purpose: offspring are their parents’ retirement plan, and since several are fully expected to die before they reach maturity, strength is found only in numbers.

This acceptance of death as an ever-pleasant reality is foreign to those of us with pensions, a public health system and a plentiful economy living in a time of peace. We are privileged, yet we tend to forget it. This was one of the sub-themes so masterfully addressed by Alejandro González Iñárritu in his most recent film, Babel. The value of one’s life is largely based on the prestige of one’s passport–if you are fortunate enough to possess one, of course.

Even the way we speak reflects the arrogant certainty that we are, in our technological modernity, invincible. Instead of the Godspeeds, farewells and Adieus of another, harsher era, we say “see you soon” and “talk to you later.” Which is why we are so unprepared to deal with the sudden passing of someone we care about.

All in all, Tuesday was a very difficult day. Yet there is something salvatory in being reminded, however harshly, that life is meant to be lived without reserve and without regret.