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Compact Deaths
And I’m not only grieving
For several decades, some well-intentioned people in my life have been trying to get me to face and talk about death. The first time, as I remember it, occurred when I was nearly forty — you know, that time of life when all middle-aged people’s minds and fancies turn toward death.
We were on a getaway to a mountain retreat, my wife and I, and joined by two other couples, roughly eight-to-ten years older than us. Besides me, everyone else was either a therapist or a philosopher, and given my own academically literary background, we all did what any good get-a-wayers do:
We got really stoned.
And that’s when the talk of death began.
With a hint of laughter, two of these sages asked,
“Why don’t you want to talk about death, given how important it is and how, after all, it comes for us all?”
They said this as if the thought had never occurred to me.
Shit. We had only recently given birth to our second child, meaning that we had two little girls under the age of six. So why wouldn’t I want to be contemplating death at such a time? After all, nothing cheers a fairly new father like considering the moment when he will be parted from his daughters, and wife, forever.