How to Die
It's a waste of time to dwell on it, but every now and then the realization that I'm in the waning years of life filters into my train of thought and I realize I'm not making long-range plans any more. Having outlived my parents and all but one of my grandparents by several years I notice the idea I'm living on borrowed time nibbles at the edge of my thoughts sometimes. I'm too busy to let it linger, but a passage in something I'm reading may bring it to mind.
British author Brian Aldiss, now in his 80s, wrote recently, "I require spasms of sleep during the day. I will be sitting in an armchair, perhaps watching television or perhaps reading - at present it is the TLS and John Heilpern's magnificent biography of John Osborne - and I fall asleep. At least, that is what I call it. But, like those unfortunates caught on the wrong side of the Sittang Bridge when it blew, I find myself on the wrong side of consciousness. I have entirely blanked out.
"Perhaps I come back to myself after half an hour. I am astonished. And I reflect that a time may come when I blank out for good, there in the armchair, Heilpern's book unfinished on my knee. Be warned, darling!"
"Blank out for good." What a great way of putting it! I added it to my notes for a book I will probably never write, entitled "Graceful Exits." What a charming way to go. Reading a good book and then nodding off in a doze which morphs into the everlasting sleep.
"Wait a second!" I remarked to myself. "Didn't a signer of the Declaration of Independence take his leave from life exactly that way? Reading a favorite book?" I looked it up. *
William Ellery of Rhode Island was 92 when he died on February 15th, 1820. A friend described his passing in a letter to the National Gazette and Literary Register.
"The day on which he died he got up as usual and dressed himself, took his old flag cushioned chair, without arms, in which he had sat for more than half a century, and was reading Tulley's Offices in the Latin without glasses, though the print was as fine as that of the smallest pocket Bible. Dr. W. stopped in on the way to the Hospital, as he usually did, and on perceiving the old gentleman could scarcely raise his eye lids to look at him, took his hand and found that his pulse was gone. After drinking a little wine and water, Dr. W. told him his pulse was stronger. 'Oh, yes, Doctor, I have a charming pulse. But,' he continued, ' it is it is idle to talk to me in this way. I am going off the stage of life and it is a great blessing that I go free from sickness, pain and sorrow.'
"Some time later, his daughter, finding him become extremely weak, wished him to be put to bed, which he at first objected to saying he felt no pain and there was no occasion for his going to bed. Presently after, however, fearing he might possibly fall out of his chair, he told them they might get him upright in bed so that he could continue to read. They did so, and he continued reading Cicero very quietly for some time; presently they looked at him and found him dead, sitting in the same posture, with his book under his chin, as a man who becomes drowsy and goes to sleep."
Talk about graceful exits! Old Mr. Ellery did it perfectly and he is a model for those of us who don't want to make the exit from life bound up breathing apparatus and feeding tubes in a noisy hospital.
Since the question has not been absolutely settled about whether or not there is any such thing as persistence of personality after one's anatomy ceases to function, we all tend to want to delay that final exit. But when the time comes I'd like to handle it like Mr. Ellery did, comfortably ensconced in my bed absorbed in a good book. Perhaps George Seldes's remarkable collection, "The Great Thoughts."
John Wrisley, November 3rd, 2006 * American Heritage magazine, August, 1976
Great
Depression, Part 2
Scuttled; The Ship of
State
Américains crédules