Every Saturday night at around 9:30 I hear a crash outside my front door. It is my Sunday edition of the New York Times. Perhaps because of the holidays it was not there last night. This meant I had to read something else last night. But on the positive side it meant I could read my paper this morning with my breakfast in bed.
I did not get to far into the newspaper as I always start with the Book Review. There was an essay You’re Going to Die / By Alexander Nazaryan. Below the heading was this: Fifty years on ‘Denial of Death,’ by Earnest Becker, remains a surprisingly upbeat guide to our final act.
I read it and I was amazed how much in the essay reflects my thoughts these days that I am now 81. There was a bonus as the Springfield, Massachusetts Pulitzer Prize winning author died March 6, 1974 in Burnaby, BC. He had been teaching at Simon Fraser University.
As a paid subscriber to the NY Times I have the privilege of giving away 10 no-pay-wall articles per month. I have discovered that I can put that link and all the people who read my blog will have access.
As I reflect on my statistically soon death I worry and reflect that my 10-year old male cat Niño (he has a sister Niña) has cancer of the intestines. In three months he has returned to his old self as I give him a human cancer pill every other day. I worry about dying before he does and I don’t know who would take care of him and sister.
I don’t like to assert my religious views here but I will still point out that when my Rosemary was dying we both believed we would never sea each other again.
I found some comfort in reading the NYTimes essay and I will see if Don Stewart at Macleod Books has a copy of Denial of Death.
I am writing this on the last 10 minutes of 2023. I combined my scanner portrait with that of my now departed Vancouver Sun columnist Paul St. Pierre who had a happy approach to death. He said that death was the cure to all diseases.
Paul St.Pierre - A Cure for All Diseases
The significance of my portrait is the book by the Argentine novelist Ernesto Sábato (he was a nuclear physicist before he started writing. Antes del Fin (Before the End) was a series of autobiographical essays that he thought he needed to write as he was 83. He did not know that he would die on his 99th.
The Inevitable Transmutation of Things - Ernesto Sábato
