Thoughts for Daddyman, Dusty, Beanie and more
STEVE STOECKEL
Special to The Observer
One of my favorite Far Side cartoons is a desert scene: In the foreground is a cow skull, the mainstay of every generic Western painting. In the background, a covered wagon is being drawn by two oxen, whose heads are turned, staring bug-eyed at the skull.
What makes this so brilliantly funny to me is that, first of all, Gary Larson dreamed up the question: What would oxen think about seeing an object that we humans usually ignore? Second, there’s no caption. There’s no need, because we all know the answer. They’re thinking, “Hey, we’re gonna die!”
I have become those oxen. Instead of staring at cow skulls, I have begun reading obituaries, a strange and ghastly habit of my parents and grandparents, whose habits seem less strange and ghastly with each passing year.
It’s not a morbid fascination or voyeurism — I’m not going to start attending funerals of strangers — nor is it a fear of death, though the mathematical part of my brain keeps a tally of ages and constantly notes the percentage younger than me.
I’ve simply realized how important obituaries are, past the point of being official public notices of death. They’re all as different as the people whose lives they chronicle. Some are written by the funeral home, others by a family member. The photographs vary from youthful to aged, and there are the various euphemisms for death.
Sometimes, tucked inside the necessary information about survivors and funeral arrangements, there are brief glimpses of a person’s life, and these are what draws me. I like nicknames, which are like tiny merit badges of affection given by people around you; no one dreams up his own nickname. I like the small things, such as “she loved pinochle” or “he played the tuba.”
I see so many rectangles filled with the lives of complete strangers, and then I read about my best friend’s mother and realize that someone I know is no longer on my sandbar.
Of all the analogies for life and death that I’ve read, my favorite is this from John D. MacDonald: You’re standing on a sandbar in the middle of a surging river — I picture the Colorado River — and family, friends and people you know are near you. The sandbar moves downriver, and as new sand rises behind you, the sand in front of you eventually disappears into the seething water — you die.
As the sandbar moves, people around you meet their deaths before you do. Some jump deliberately into the river, some merely run out of sand before they know it and some, knowing their fate, stare calmly (or panic-stricken) as the water envelops them.
As the years pass, you find fewer people on the sandbar, and you find yourself hearing the river differently: There’s this faint roaring sound that wasn’t there in your youth.
This analogy appeals to me in so many ways. For one thing, you’re facing forward, looking upriver toward the sandbar’s end: Death is not barreling toward you, but rather you are moving slowly and inevitably toward death. You’re staring at the future but also, oddly, the past — the people already under the water. Behind you are future generations you’ll never see.
Then there’s the mystery of what’s under the water ahead. Many believe with absolutely no doubt they’ll emerge dry and surrounded by loved ones who have passed on. Others believe the water is merely the end of existence. Some think they’ll flow around the sandbar and re-emerge on the newer end, or that they’ll become part of a living river.
Reading obituaries makes me aware of the people who aren’t near me on my sandbar, that the sandbar is enormous. If I try to expand the scale and visualize the number of people on the planet dying and being born each day, it makes my head spin.
A poem by John Donne came to mind as I was writing this. It’s one of those hoary bits of verse that grade-school teachers nail into our young, wooden heads in hopes that we’ll live long enough to understand:
“No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
As well as if a promontory were,
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were:
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know
For whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.”
Thank you Mrs. Woods (sixth grade, Crookston, Minnesota) for making that nail stick: This column, this bell, is for you. It’s for Don P., who courageously accepted the call from our heavenly father; for Alice K., who passed away; for Lillie P., who laid her eyes to rest; for Daddyman, Chocolate, Dusty, Beanie, Bobcat and Scootsie — all people I never knew.
And, mostly, it’s for Betty, whom I did know, and who died between the start and finish of this column.