The best preparation for a good death is a good life. Nothing
original there. I encountered this phrase recently in the writing of
Father Richard John Neuhaus. But how does one live a good life in
preparation for a good death in a culture that denies the creational
meaning of both? The Culture of Death does not provide a good prologue
to a good death. Of course, one can refuse to be part of the Culture of
Death, and in doing so become radically counter-cultural. Indeed, a
very good case can be made that we are all called to live radically
counter-cultural lives. But how does one live a radically counter
cultural life that is a good life leading to a good death? And is the
good life necessarily radically counter-cultural?
I always cringe when exhorted to be "radical." The word originates from the Latin radix
meaning "root." Thus, we might suggest that to be radical is to return
to one's roots. In practice, living radically seems to mean living a
life of unpleasantness, disagreement, heartache, unwillingness to get
along with others -- illustrated and demonstrated, perhaps, by home
school parents who are the object of neighbors' ridicule and scorn as
they fight with the local school district, and observe All Saints' Day
instead of Halloween. Our culture has romanticized the Amish and Old
Order Mennonites; Catholic Christians who embrace "evangelical
poverty"and opt out of the meaning-making of secular culture have yet
to be hugged by the Chamber of Commerce.
Well, so what? As I often heard English expatriates say when I was
growing up in Argentina, "Yer pays your money and makes yer choice."
Don't like the heat? Get out of the kitchen! I suggest, however,
there is a gentler approach to living radically, one which affirms the
goodness of created norms and which can be rather attractive to
"anti-creationists." Best of all, this way requires no beard, no prayer
bonnet, no mule, and no buggy. The world tries very hard to deny God
and to deny creation. But a person has no choice in this life but to
live in God's world and, if he wants to live a good life, to live by
the ways God has created. The greater his non-conformity to creation,
the less happy a person will be in this life, forgetting for the moment
issues of his eternal well-being.
Not long ago I turned sixty and I did so while nurturing a
two-year-old daughter and sons not much older, all of whom I wanted to
see through college, at the very least. Shortly after my birthday, I
was also diagnosed with the typical maladies of comfortable
civilization: diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol with
unseemly numbers. Too much of the good life and not enough of the Good
Life, I figured, and my physician concurred. So also did my
sister-in-law, another physician who warned me I would be treated by
doctors as having had a heart attack. All of this had me wondering
about nursing homes.
Shortly after turning sixty, I read an abstract of an article in the November 2004 issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
In it, the authors argue that cruise ships could provide an
alternative to nursing homes and other assisted-living facilities for
people unable to care for themselves. They observed that the cost of
such care on cruise ships would not be much more than what it would be
in land-based facilities. They also told the reader the cruise ship
lines would welcome the business.
My first thought, after I stopped laughing, was "Isn't this already
happening?"and then "Where are the Marx Brothers when you really need
them?" This sort of thing could give new life to Groucho and Chico,
aboard ship, arguing over "Sanity Claus." What a setting for Bugs and
Elmer, or Tom and Jerry, or Tweety and Sylvester -- especially the
latter, because they already have a Granny in their employ. To be
sure, Granny is a most active, umbrella-whacking geezer. In "Tweety's
S.O.S"(surely the reader remembers this classic cartoon?), Sylvester
gets very sea sick and Tweety tricks him into drinking nitroglycerine
instead of the medicine on the shelf of the ship's infirmary. Granny,
who periodically has her glasses hidden by Sylvester, recovers them in
time to whack nitro-loaded Sylvester, with the expected explosive
results. But what if she suddenly required assisted living and could
no longer defend Tweety from Sylvester? Oh, the possibilities!
I should explain. I live in Sitka, Alaska, a popular stop for the
cruise ships that visit the Inside Passage every summer. Cruise ships
and their passengers are not universally loved in Alaska. If you make
your living from them, they are OK. If not, you'd just as soon see
them visit the Caribbean all the time, especially during hurricane
season. Thoughtful Alaskans decry the "Disneyfication"of Alaska, the
Great Land, and the trivialization of native culture that cruise lines
seem to encourage. The ersatz native village in Hoonah, owned by the
cruise lines, may provide some income for some natives, but at what
price? Sitka, when four large cruise ships are in port, is not a nice
place for its citizens or tourists, and presents a false image to
visitors who imagine they are seeing the real Alaska.
During the summer I sometimes drive a repainted old school bus for
a local historical tour company. I take cruise
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ship passengers around
to Sitka's historical spots, lecture them on matters Imperial Russian
and native Tlingit, and, after the middle of July, also convey them to
the banks of the Indian River where they gawk at the spawning salmon as
I carefully explain the differences among salmon species, why they die
after spawning, and why no right-thinking Alaskan would ever eat a
spawned-out salmon.
Many of these tourists are bluntly, old people whose knees, either
the old original ones or their brand new ones, do not work well.
Getting them on and off the bus, dealing with their wheel chairs, and
helping them hobble down a forest path while keeping them from grabbing
the devil's club is daunting. Jesus loves them and for His sake I try
to be kind and gentle and funny. However, the wining and dining and
coddling aboard ship is not good preparation for life ashore in a
strange port, regardless of age. But it seems to leech the resolve of
the elderly more quickly and more thoroughly.
It is unlikely, of course, that anyone requiring full-time
assistance and also permanently domiciled aboard a luxury ship would
spend a day ashore every time the ship drops anchor or arrives at a
deep-water dock. But I quickly recognized my objection to ships
sailing around the world with a passenger manifest of many
significantly disabled people when I recalled some events from the
not-so-distant past. Ships catch fire and founder in storms. Many
Alaskans remember the fire and sinking of the S.S. Prinsendam in 1980.
The passengers on this Holland America luxury cruise liner were almost
all quite elderly, and needed much help in the rescue effort. Would
cruise lines require from able-bodied voyagers the equivalent of the
promise to help during emergencies now made by those sitting in the
exit rows of airplanes?
Stabilizers can control a ship's motion at sea, to a point. How
many sea-sick disabled people can one ship handle? How many
vacationing passengers want to cruise in a floating nursing home?
Cruise ships have perennial problems with diseases, such as
Legionnaires Disease, which can quickly kill people already weakened by
previous illness and physical conditions. If your family lives in
Hoboken, do you really want to die in Bora-Bora, even if you have
insurance that will pay to get your body back to New Jersey? Better to
have insurance, perhaps, to pay for your family to come to Bora-Bora to
bury you and have a bit of a holiday while they're at it.
None of these objections, in the end, gets to the heart of the
matter. Spending your last years aboard a ship, floating from here to
there, is the antithesis of living and dying with the sense of place
with which we were created. When we fell from grace, we lost our
Created Place, our Eden; and in the Reconciliation and Resurrection we
have been promised a New Place, a New City, a New Jerusalem, which will
be better than the Old Place. In "Paradise Lost,"John Milton records a
snookered Satan, decrying the fact that because of sin, these vile
humans can end up in a better place and in a better way than if they
had remained innocent.
But we are not there yet. Our journey from the Old Place to the
New Place is marked by signs and figures of the New Place, and whatever
doesn't point or lead us to the New Place must be abandoned or refused.
Aimless wandering, whether it involves chasing a better, or cruising
aboard a cruise ship, unglued from land and purpose, speaks of the
devils cast out of heaven, who remain in a constant state of wandering
and waiting to be sent to a place that is really No Place: the
Bottomless Pit.
In the end, the restlessness that drives us
from our created "place-full"settledness echoes St. Augustine's prayer
in his Confessions:
"You made us for yourself and our hearts find no peace until they rest
in you." When we do find rest in Him, our lives, lived in a radically
counter-cultural manner, will show a rooted contentment that bears
witness to the eternal home we will posses when the final curtain is
lifted. For the Christian believer, the final curtain is always
lifted, never lowered
So, I diet and exercise, take my pills, and stay home. I go to
work, of course, but I will stick with my vocation as husband and
father. I'll pay the mortgage and when I see the cruise ships in the
harbor making sail for the South Pacific, or those RV's wandering the
highways, I'll give thanks to God who has planted a sign in our family:
This Way Home.
Joseph
McDonald was born and reared in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and attended
British schools there through the equivalent of eighth grade. His
parents were evangelical Protestant missionaries. His career so
far has been spent in colleges and universities mucking around the
intersection of libraries, computers, epistemology, and teaching and
learning. He and his wife Kathryn have seven children. Both
Kathryn and Joseph came into the Church along a path well-lit by the
likes of GK Chesterton, Dorothy Sayers, CS Lewis, Ronald Knox, and
Father Richard John Neuhaus. The latter, as a former Missouri Synod
Lutheran, was especially influential in the McDonald Family's return
home.
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