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Causes of DeathMarch 08, 2006 Maybe it's because of Octavia Butler's sudden death on February 24, or the 10th anniversary of my mother's passing on February 28, or falling off that trickster ladder two days ago -- except that I didn't fall off the ladder: the ladder went kaboom and then I fell on the ladder -- but I've been thinking more than usual about mortality, aka death, especially human attempts to evade, avoid, and generally deny it. It's still unclear whether Butler died as the result of a fall or whether she fell as the result of a stroke, or maybe both. We do tend to like clear, distinct causes of death: if you can identify the cause, then you can avoid it, right? So you won't die? I'm reminded that my mother died of ovarian cancer. I knew this; I hadn't forgotten. But if I'd had to fill out a death certificate, I wouldn't have printed "ovarian cancer" under "cause of death." I'd have tapped my pen against the desktop a couple of times and then written "Depression? Lack of courage, lack of self-belief? Lack of purpose?" Smoking and alcoholism had something to do with it, of course, but I believe these were symptoms, not causes. Of course I think about cancer from time to time, about friends who are fighting it and people who've died from it, especially musicians whose creativity was cut way too short, like Steve Goodman. I'm grateful that they hit their stride young enough to leave a wonderful body of work behind. With Octavia Butler, who was 58 when she died, grief for the writing she will never do is hugely mitigated by celebration of what she did. It's sobering to realize, said Tom Lehrer on one of his recordings, many years ago, that when Mozart was my age he'd been dead for three years. When Mozart was my age he'd been dead for nearly twenty. I think about that too. But when I think about my mother, it's often about avoiding her life, not her death. As a teenager I thought not drinking alcohol was the key, so I didn't, until I was 21 and a junior in college. By then I'd been eating compulsively for about six years. It took a few more years before I realized that I was using food pretty much the way my mother used alcohol, and for quite a few of the same reasons. Avoiding my mother's life was a lot more complicated than I thought. I was a kid when I first saw one of those "Seven Warning Signs of Cancer" posters, probably in one of the Reader's Digests that the downstairs lavatory was always well stocked with. Surreptitiously I checked myself for signs, paying particular attention to warts and moles. I've long since forgotten the seven warning signs, except the one about warts and moles. What I check myself for instead are signs that I'm becoming like my mother: using food or alcohol to tranquilize myself, to slow myself down; raging and then stuffing my rage, without tracing it to its causes. Unlike my mother, I've learned to avoid getting stuck, to "walk on" even when the footing seems a little dicey; sometimes her example was my best catalyst, the thing that called me back from a slow slide into the swamp. If the ladders stay upright, I'll keep walking on. P.S. FreeCell streak stands at 108, three beyond my previous personal best. Yeah, I know it's probably a warning sign of something, but I'll play anyway.
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