Death

Zadie Smith wrote a review in The New York Review of Books of Tár, the new movie starring Cate Blanchett as a world famous, narcissistic conductor. While Smith mentions that some movie reviewers asked, “Why do female ambition and desire have to be monstrous?,” the part of the review that interested me was Smith’s discussion of death. In this ambitious woman’s life, it’s her reputation that dies—“ego death”—not her corporeal being, but in Smith’s telling the two are inseparable. For someone like Lydia Tár, Blanchett’s character, the loss of prestige is death.

This makes me think about the many deaths I’ve already experienced and the ones that impend. I’m 73 (happy birthday to me), so there are going to be quite a few of the latter. Of the ones who are gone, there are those who leave behind something that makes it into the cultural zeitgeist: a book, a movie, a painting, a philosophy, or the fictitious Lydia Tár. Those who don’t make it in leave a memory of themselves to only a few others, and even then, that memory fades rapidly as the others’ lives proceed. When I think about those few whose memory I hold, it’s hard to reconcile who they were then, when they were with me daily or close by, with the fact that they aren’t anywhere any more.

This, of course, makes me think about my own death. Where do I fall into the scheme of things? A little fish in a little pond is probably about where I lie. In my 27-year old “Journal of Environmental Politics,” La Jicarita, I’ll be leaving behind a written record of an eventful time in in northern New Mexico but La Jicarita will die with me. It’s archive will live on in the Center for Southwest Research at UNM’s Zimmerman Library, but except for those who knew me personally there won’t be much memory of its editor. I always remember what Owen Lopez, former executive director of the McCune Foundation, which funded La Jicarita for many years, said to me at a party celebrating its fundees: “Well, you may not have accomplished much or won too many battles but at least you have a record of it.”

But I have some very important people with me in that little pond who I would classify as middle-to large sized fish and they’re not doing too well. One of them just called me on the phone to tell me he had a heart attack last week and spent three days in the hospital. “Why didn’t you call me from the hospital?” I asked, upset. “Verizon cut off my cell phone service for some unknown reason. I paid the fuckers.” He survived this time but the possibility of a next time is now much more likely. My other friend is in his 80s and barely hanging on. A beloved writer of novels and nonfiction, he’s hoping to make it through another winter, alone in his house crammed full of life’s detritus.

When they die there will be many people and family members who’ll attend their funerals and reminisce about their places in the world. When my partner of 34 years and co-editor of La Jicarita, Mark Schiller, died prematurely at age 62, we had a wake in El Valle that was crammed full of family, neighbors, co-conspirators, and friends from all walks of life. But the only ones who ever talk about him are the kids and me. That’s where I’m headed as well, and probably without a wake, as everyone who was at Mark’s will either be dead or been gone too long.

But that’s OK. My life is more circumscribed now and less fun, so thinking about death doesn’t bother me. What does bother me is how I’m going to die. Mark died of pancreatic cancer. He lived for 18 months with chemotherapy, some hospital visits, and in the end, he decided to quit eating. My mother died of an intentional overdose of drugs after she was diagnosed with a form of leukemia that made her susceptible to infection. That’s the route I plan to take when I decide I’ve had enough. A serious illness or an inkling of dementia will probably be the tipping point, but you never know. I’ll just have to wait and see and make sure I have the right stuff at the right time. Until then, I’m afraid I’ll have quite a bit of mourning to do and that may be worse than death.