"So whatta ya' think we oughta do...?", my mom beckoned from the living room of our sparse little studio pad, her sprawled on the couch that evening characteristically, me characteristically puttering in the kitchen, all of twelve years old.
"I don't know...", I shot back. Just one of our sophisticated zig-zag existential loser-take-zero repartees...
"How about suicide..?" she zinged back
"Let's do it..." - Me, completely deadpan.
Certainly at age twelve, I knew what death was. We lived within the five boroughs of New York City in the 1970s, where death was reported every moment on any broadcast media. Additionally, I never have recalled in my formidable life the need for any stark education or "talk" on what death was. After a year and a half of no longer journeying up to my grandmother's palatial home in Connecticut, come the day my mom approached me all dolled up in some dark themed outfit, to tell me she and my uncle would be out for some hours attending my Grandmother's service because she'd died, at age six I just kind of seemed to get it. A few hours later came my first shiva. That was something that begged a little explaining. Boxes, drop cloths, lots of laughs and various cookie assortments. It took me a good while to sort that one out and to establish why we didn't have elaborate get-togethers like this a little more often...
I can only guess that my early youth and life was blessed enough not to have been affected by the untimely or sudden death of an immediately close loved one. Not the case with all humans. But what I would comprehend very simply was that death was, much like taxes, a matter non-negotiable. It happens when it happens. For reasons quite simple, like 'the bullet entered him', or 'her heart attacked her'.
My mother never was a clean bill of health. But I was always in the confines of family and somehow knew that were her time to suddenly come, we'd all be together to deal with it. Meanwhile, thanks God, despite a few good scares, despite herself, she made out okay. Throughout my youth progression, death was, by our joint policy, something not in itself to be feared, but existentially as the Golden Road to Salvation, adopting perhaps the humorously macabre.
If it wasn't necessarily a Jewish thing, it was clearly a "Woody Allen" thing. Much of his famed repertoire for years revolved around the concept and deep philosophy of death, comically spoofed, Python-istically at every turn. It was the wallpaper of my life, and my mother all but sealed herself in it. As I adopted it myself, it was the recurring "one-way-out" joke. What's the alternative to getting beaten up in the junior high school hallway every single day and being surrounded by an absolutely indifferent faculty..? Vigilantism..? Got anything simpler..?? I'll take it..! I was little more than a junior Al Bundy.
The concept of death, in my eyes such as it was, seemed less to be scared of and more cherished as the ultimate escape plan.....if things really ever got quite that bad, the general, intellectual understanding of course being that in reality, things would not. But who doesn't need insurance of some sort at some point in their lives..?
If nothing else, it made for a cathartic dream. And some of my best kid dreams were themed by it. When I lived my most horrifying grammar school year, presided by some Leona Helmsley-esque beast of a matron who thought nothing of implying to a fifth-grader that a failed long-division test deemed him learning disabled, aloud to the entire class, your dreams at night were your only recourse..! Actually my tragic death also themed my daydreams on the walk home back then, too. These were great little dramas, now that I recall. Real Movie-Of-The-Week stuff about the ten-year-old who, to everyone's unanticipated shock, jumped off the roof of his building, as the film unfolds to learn what pushed him off the edge, amidst the fear and crippling remorse of everyone in his path. It's likely that what kept me grounded the most at the worst times was the common knowledge that I'd never actually drudge up enough desperate courage to actually do it. Somehow, the fear of my mother's reprimand against such was the principal blockade, and I could not violate that bond, no matter what. That must have been the Jewish part.
But I never would misplace my seating of death's meaning or purpose. Even author Barbara Ehrenreich's acclaimed chronicle on American poverty, Nickel And Dimed, was unflinchingly straightforward on the statistics regarding desperation suicides.
When my mother did in fact pass, days after turning sixty-five, her departure was blessedly sudden and final. With little bank account or savings in my life yet accrued, I was put to footing costs entirely for services and burial, as the life insurance policy was cashed in years earlier to cover our rent. It may have set me back at the time, yet at the same time, despite a surrounding and comforting family, none of whom exactly stepped forth insisting upon any wallet-cracking, I found this outcome preferential. Somehow, nothing seemed more maturing than racing down to the bank, procuring that money order and delivering it to the chapel director on the morning of the service, done up in my tailored formals. I'm not so sure it didn't see her out with some satisfaction, either. It was kind of like a final gift.
Not really threatened by the prospect of that renown Grim Reaper, who will collect beyond anyone's appeal, my fears of life are simply way less ephemeral, and always have been. Namely, fears of sudden illness and unanticipated destitution. As generally unreal as that sort of thing may be at the very moment for myself, you, or anyone, praise the Lord, it's also not, in too many ways, less than a sudden possibility at the hands of a much more powerful and feared force far more threatening: Fate. It's the fear of fate we spend our lives learning to mitigate and rationalize our way out of. It's the basis of prayer, and the graduate course in maturity at absolutely any age. Somewhere between being held hostage by it, ignoring it, educating and preparing against it when I can, and accepting it as one of life's immovable structures, it turned me somehow into the man no male-plant-based supplement can or Bar Mitzvah at age thirteen could have. And it's permitted me to recognize this "death" thing for what it is. Strictly a thing. But, that's just my own very candid adopted policy..
Which returns me to that apartment conversation in my twelfth year, one of too many quite like it. If it wasn't immensely sardonic, it wasn't us. But every now and then, my responsible parent would issue a disclaimer...
"You do know you shouldn't say these things out loud to other people, right..? They might not understand...."
"Oh yeah, I know..", I assured, topping my slice of Entenmann's pound cake with some Cool Whip on the kitchen counter. "They're not like us..."
Noah F.
