Life, dying, death, cancer and hope through the Dark Night of the Soul

It wasn’t just that I could die. It’s that I probably would.

In my head, I had this idea that once I got to be about 70 years old, I would be ready to die. That was how old my dad was when he died. All my grandparents died in their 70s. I would be retired by then. Done raising my kids. And then I would be ready for whatever was next.

But then I thought about the people I knew in their 70s. My mom is 72. All four of my wife’s grandparents are in their 80s. One of her grandfathers still skis every year. I have never talked to him about it, but he certainly doesn’t seem ready to die. He’s probably like me before I was diagnosed. He knows it will happen at some point in the future, but does his best to block out the inevitable reality.

Jonathan Tjarks, a 33-year-old cancer patient, diagnosed with a rare form of sarcoma.

It’s always a shock when you read about someone so young facing the ultimate questions in a very immediate sense. And here I am, just turned 70, the same age he’s talking about as the age he might never see.

Frankly, and I’m so grateful, I’ve been blessed with remarkably good physical health (Mental health is another issue entirely, as I’ve suffered with anxiety and depression for much of my life). I never really thought about death and dying that much until two realities converged about five years ago when I was 65. First there were the changes my mother was undergoing in the progression of her dementia and diabetes and her 90th birthday, combined with my first frightening surge in blood pressure, after which I started on medication to control that for the first time. It’s quite possible that the stress of working full time plus caring at home for my mother 24/7, resulted in this change in my physical condition. But I have always experienced remarkable stamina and endurance for my age and so I marched on, trying to find fulfillment and escape from my caregiving role in my writing and photography.

After retiring in 2017, I struggled with depression again less than six months after that. I began taking an antidepressant I had never taken before, and things began to stabilize. Then in the fall of 2019 my mother’s decline became much more than gradual. I began to both deny and accept the reality of losing her. Something unfathomable until then.

Mom passed at the end of January 2020, and I was doing okay accepting that reality and trying to move on.

But then the Covid pandemic swept out of nowhere and upturned everyone’s lives. I settled into a period of drastic self-quarantine, limiting my only outside activity to walks in nearby parks because I was very worried about how deadly and devastating this new disease was to older people like myself.

That situation basically lasted until about a month ago when two weeks had passed since my second Covid vaccine. I felt liberated and began making plans to see new friends, shop again at all my favorite stores (which I have), and start to rejoin society in whatever limited capacity I am able to.

The first harbinger of some not so pleasant things to come was when I happened to look closely at my lower teeth about three weeks ago, and saw one tooth with a large opening at the gumline which looked like I could simply reach in and pull the whole crown off. Other areas looked very iffy. Of course I had not been in for a dental cleaning in over a year. I immediately set up an appointment with my dentist who discovered all kinds of problems. I’ve since had one root canal and am going in for an extraction next week.

But as I sat in the chair at the endodontist’s offie last week, they unfortunately took my blood pressure with a faulty or low battery impaired monitor, and it was literally sky high. They took it again with another monitor, and it was lower. Still, I quietly freaked out and told them I’d feel better checking with my doctor before having the procedure.

Turns out my blood pressure was up about 10 points from my baseline of last December. My BP med was increased, and yesterday I had the root canal.

Next up are a host of other delayed and overdue doctor visits and tests. As I wrote in my last entry, I truly had been living in some kind of solitary fantasy world, avoiding taking my blood pressure, which I’m now doing with my new monitor (very reluctantly), and in general not giving a thought to my health because I had excuses not to. Now, I’ve started to think about how I can change my diet, get more exercise, etc., all of which I don’t want to do because I eat fairly well and walk every day. Yes, I could do a lot more, but then I fall back on fatalism. What’s the point? My biggest fear is getting Alzheimer’s or some other form of dementia. I saw close-up what it did to my mother over years.

The story of the brave young man facing the real probability of death is startling and eye-opening. Reading it immediately prompted this whole essay. I am tying to embrace the reality of death and the unknown. But that includes once again starting to unhealthily obsess about blood pressure, heart attacks and strokes. After a certain age, these frightening possibilities can occur in an instant. I need to calm myself and be better prepared. But just how prepared can we ever be for death? Being morbidly humorous and fatalistic will get you only so far. But denial of death is very dangerous. I remember distinctly, trying to read Ernest Becker’s groundbreaking book “The Denial of Death.” 42 years ago. I wonder what it would be like trying that again at age 70 compared to 28.

In the past few months I have been buying books (print books, not ebooks so that I can mark them up) that deal with dreams, meditation, accounts of near-death and after-death experiences, Eastern religious practices and religions, quantum physics, new discoveries in the fields of consciousness, metaphysics, parapsychology and Christianity, including mysticism and theology. I’ve never had such ambitious learning goals. I think I know exactly why now is the time for this.

What I’m discovering as never before is that knowledge can be extremely fleeting. It’s assimilation is entirely subject to our limited mental capabilities and our capacities for memory retrieval and understanding. But the bedrock of this new focus on learning in the twilight of life is turnng out to my Christian faith. This is the spiritual and wisdom tradition that encompasses the faith, beliefs, and answers that, I’m finally realizing, will never fail to lift me up and out of my fears about death because of its eternally unchanging messages of delivernce, faith, hope and love.

The older I get the less apprehensive I am about exploring way beyond my lifetime multi-generational family Christian roots. I see the wisdom of Christianity as my spiritual path more deepy than ever, mostly from the lens of my past experiences, and devotional practices, as well as, and perhaps most importantly, taking many small steps toward maturity in the most powerful spiritual practice of all — prayer. Without suspicion and fear, it’s liberating to be able to learn about and experience the wisdom of all religious AND spiritual traditions.

As I reflect on the young man in the prime of life facing cancer and chemotherapy, and as I read the brief account linked below of his bravery, youthful wisdom, and hope, I understad how much we can learn from those much younger than ourselves, no matter the state of their health and well-being, or ours.

https://www.theringer.com/2021/5/20/22444532/long-night-of-the-soul