Column 4

It’s About How You Live

Lynn Bonde

Art Buchwald, Randy Pausch, Charles Krauthammer, Anna Quindlen, Nancy Gibbs, Eleanor Clift.  Two Weeks, Boston Legal, Tuesdays With Morrie, Stepmom, The Bucket List.  It seems like you can’t turn around these days without running into a column, book, movie or TV show dealing with dying.  I’m not talking about action/adventure shows where half the characters are gunned down in the first five minutes.  I’m talking about stories and memoirs that speak about an experience we all have had or will one day – our own death and the death of someone we love.

As a bona fide member of the baby boom generation, which includes more than a quarter of the U.S. population, I’ve watched as popular culture has changed to reflect what’s been important to us as we have moved through the decades.  These days, now that we are turning 60, models for hair products have gray hair and the same crow’s feet and smile lines I do.  Ads for ED and BPH are almost as common on TV as ads for cars.  And popular culture is beginning to reflect my generation’s growing concern, if not preoccupation, with end of life.  Our parents, if they are still alive, are moving into their 80s, needing more of our care and attention, especially as they become frailer, more confused, and move closer to death.  We are sensing more acutely the unavoidable truth that our own time on earth is limited, regardless of what Dennis Hopper says about our dreams of opening a winery after retirement.

The best thing about all of these reflections and thoughts on the process of dying is that they give the rest of us a roadmap about how to make this experience more familiar, less alien.  Columnist Nancy Gibbs in a recent Time magazine column writes, “[M]ost of us treat [death] as a notorious celebrity we watch from afar, fascinated but removed, until we have no choice, preferring myth to truth. . . . How is it,” she asks, “that the one event we know with absolute certainty will occur is still one we improvise?”

Randy Pausch, the Carnegie Mellon computer science professor living his final days with metastatic pancreatic cancer, titled his last lecture “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.”  Published as a best seller even before it hit Amazon.com, the lecture is also viewable on YouTube, where it’s had more than 10 million hits.  And what is the message from a dying man that is so compelling that millions of people worldwide are drawn to it?  Live your life.  Laugh and enjoy your blessings.  Death will come and bring sad times.  But we needn’t be afraid.  Dr. Pausch says, “It is not about achieving your dreams but living your life. If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. The dreams will come to you.”

We will all face death at the end.  All of these pioneers tell us the same thing.  Don’t worry about that; it will certainly come.  Concentrate on what you do with the time between now and then.  Work hard at making it the best – whatever that may mean for you – that you can.  It’s all we can hope for.