Last Things

One more word about The Maybrees...

As she was writing it, Annie Dillard knew it would be her last book. Arthritis in her hands was rendering them useless for the rigors of writing-- the literal, practical rigors. The jacket of her book calls it the "surprising capstone" of her work.

I don't know why "surprising," except that perhaps she knew it would be her "capstone," and we, her readers, would have wanted her to keep at her art, even if she'd lost the ability to craft. [Aside: I wonder what one does with a writer's imagination when one has lost a writer's fingers?]

Knowing this about the author made one short set of sentences in her book all the more poignant. She is writing about how her main character is dying, and she says this: "Comically, when he took his last outdoor shower a week ago, he did not know it would be his last. Nothing marked or would mark his last piece of pie, swim, tune-- as presently he would see his last everything, kid, dawn, spoon, familiar face-- if he had not already."

I wondered: How aware are we when we are experiencing our "last?" And does it help if we more or less know?

I remember what turned out to be my last day with my previous employer. I went about it purposefully enough. My last patient turned to her son, and said to him of me, "He's my pastor. I want him to do my funeral." We were all smiling, and not in the least anticipating that this would be the last time we'd see each other. Just the opposite...

Then, later, when I was sent home portentously, and left my phone on the desk, I knew in some place in myself that it was going to be my last moments at work, but I didn't want to believe it. So I rushed past the meaning in the moments; I did not take them in.

I wonder which it was for Annie Dillard: Did she not realize as she was writing that this would be her last book? And if she did, when? (Writing is a long process...) And did she take in those moments, grasp and hold onto the realization? Or did she fling it from herself, as I did?

How will it be for me when I am coming to my "lasts," including my last breath?

Back in July, while the conspirators were poised for their poisoning, I was facilitating my mother's last discharge from the hospital, and she was taking her last ambulance ride, and arriving at the room and being settled into the bed where she would spend her last days. As soon as the EMTs left, I went over to my mother and asked if she were all right. She looked up at me with open eyes, bright with a kind of excitement, and asked, "Is this going to be my home now?" I was ashamed to say the obvious. I looked at the bare beige walls, the tacky brown furniture, the spare space that it was, and I did not want to believe that this was that to which my mother's life had come. But it was; her last stop.

Save one: For I said to her, "Yes, Mom, this is your home before you go Home."

She smiled at me, and spoke a salve of forgiveness, just as she used to rub Mentholatum on my chest when I was a child; she said, "I like it."

I don't know whether I will be as accepting of my last circumstances as my mother has been of hers. But I know that I've seen a number of "lasts" in my life already, and I suspect that I've a few thousand more to go before I'm experiencing that flood of lasts that comes at the end of living. What I want to do, what I hope to do, is live without taking anything for granted; live, with each of everything as a kind of "last," but not in that sad way that seeps in and ruins things by making them overly damp; more with a kind of wonder.

I wonder whether the wonder at the last of things is kin to the wonder at the first of them? I wonder whether wonder at the last is truly what makes every thing last...

First or last, may we live ever-lasting lives, ever-lastingly blessed!