Nothing is certain but death and taxes, as they say. Or as Walter Breuning, the recent late Oldest Person in the World advised sometime before he died in Montana at 114 years of age: "We're going to die. Some people are scared of dying. Never be afraid to die. Because you're born to die.”(6). Point taken. Or as a paraplegic friend, who died 4 years ago, said: “I know I will never get better. I’ll just get worse until I die.” Or as the Indian chief famously commented in the movie Little Big Man: “It’s a good day to die.”
So the subject today is: We’re All Going to Die. Not cheerful, but there you have it. I like to go to literature for some words of wisdom on this one, since it makes use of that nice degree I hold in English Literature. And one of my favorite books on facing death is Young Men and Fire, by Norman MacLean. It is a non-fiction account of the deaths of young men in a famous forest fire in Montana, in 1949. Some people call it a really boring tale. I don’t think it’s boring, but I think it’s dense. I’ve never read the entirety of Young Men and Fire. I keep trying, but it overwhelms me. MacLean’s storytelling style is unique. The message of his minute research into this incident lies, I believe, beneath the metaphor of the factual event he researches. I think the book is his search for the answer to facing death, as he reviews decisions and faults and factors in the death of the firefighters, in a meandering kind of way. A synopsis of the Mann Gulch fire can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Men_and_Fire
MacLean notes in his book that it is an unnatural act to jump from the sky into flames, because both of those things can kill you. Jumping into this fire killed 13 of the 15 firefighters who jumped from a plane into the scene to fight it, back when the idea of firefighting was still new. MacLean was an observer of the Mann Gulch incident at the time it happened, and for the rest of his life researched the circumstances of the tragedy. It obsessed him. His book/ philosophizing introduced to me the idea of the Failed Hero as young men who face certain death, even when they know it is a lost cause. Like the defenders of the Alamo, or like WW2 kamikaze pilots (1). We romanticize Failed Heroes, because dying is a hard enough thing to do without having to know about it ahead of time. And then, alongside the idea of Failed Heroes who knowingly face death while trying to fight it, he mentions his wife. She was dying of cancer when he wrote the book. She knew her death was coming, a long way off but certain. Because he writes around and about all of these ideas, I see the story as his attempt to answer a question: how do we live when we know we are going to die? MacLean’s answer to the question is, in a way, more questions: How did the firefighters fight their way through their last minutes, with flames and fear and heat driving them? What kinds of decisions did they make? What were they thinking? How were they like his wife, dying at home in old age of cancer? What kinds of decisions and thoughts did she have? How were they like soldiers facing battle? How are they like us all, whatever the time or circumstance of our dying?
MacLean’s book is, to me, a story about fighting to live, until the last breath is taken from your body, when we know it’s a futile effort. Whether he writes about men who die in battle, men who die fighting the elements—and therefore in a sense God himself—or his wife struggling with terminal disease, he is I think researching how an individual faces death. Whether it’s sudden or slow, death is always certain. This is not a comforting book. It says to me that living is a horrible and doomed effort. But it also says, I think, that living is courageous. We all try to keep on living ‘til we die. I see his message as one of endurance to the end. I think his purpose in what some call a plodding story is, in his own words:
Excerpt from Young Men and Fire: "after the bodies had fallen, most of them had risen again, taken a few steps, and fallen again, this time like pilgrims in prayer, facing the top of the hill...The evidence, then, is that at the very end beyond thought and beyond fear and beyond even self-compassion and divine bewilderment there remains some firm intention to continue doing forever and ever what we last hoped to do on earth. By this final act they had come about as close as body and spirit can to establishing a unity of themselves with earth, fire, and perhaps the sky." http://forestry.about.com/od/forestfire/gr/manng_fire_rev.htm
Dad faced certain death in WW2 as a Marine in the Central Pacific theater. He faced the possibility of it many times in his long life, and probably felt he had cheated Death a few times. He ultimately died in his home, after 89 years, 5 grown kids, 11 grandchildren, several great grandchildren, in the company of his life partner and his son, in full possession of his faculties, and attempting to take steps towards the door. He knew he was dying as he took them, but he took them anyway because someone asked him too, and really what else do you do with the last minutes of your life? He did what I guess he did with all the other minutes of his life: just kept putting one foot in front of another until his heart gave out and he fell down dead. That is a fighting spirit. We all know them. And they are us.
I’ll keep trying to finish the book.
1. For those of you younger than me, Japanese kamikaze pilots infamously flew suicide missions to sink enemy ships in WW2. Additionally, Requiem for Battleship Yamato is a Japanese seaman’s non-fictional first-hand account of a Japanese battleship’s suicide mission. It’s a detailed account of the battleship’s mission, but its also a story about the conflict between following orders for certain death, and questioning the orders. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_battleship_Yamato
3. Young Men and Fire: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Men_and_Fire
5. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110415/ap_on_re_us/us_obit_world_s_oldest_man
So the subject today is: We’re All Going to Die. Not cheerful, but there you have it. I like to go to literature for some words of wisdom on this one, since it makes use of that nice degree I hold in English Literature. And one of my favorite books on facing death is Young Men and Fire, by Norman MacLean. It is a non-fiction account of the deaths of young men in a famous forest fire in Montana, in 1949. Some people call it a really boring tale. I don’t think it’s boring, but I think it’s dense. I’ve never read the entirety of Young Men and Fire. I keep trying, but it overwhelms me. MacLean’s storytelling style is unique. The message of his minute research into this incident lies, I believe, beneath the metaphor of the factual event he researches. I think the book is his search for the answer to facing death, as he reviews decisions and faults and factors in the death of the firefighters, in a meandering kind of way. A synopsis of the Mann Gulch fire can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Men_and_Fire
MacLean notes in his book that it is an unnatural act to jump from the sky into flames, because both of those things can kill you. Jumping into this fire killed 13 of the 15 firefighters who jumped from a plane into the scene to fight it, back when the idea of firefighting was still new. MacLean was an observer of the Mann Gulch incident at the time it happened, and for the rest of his life researched the circumstances of the tragedy. It obsessed him. His book/ philosophizing introduced to me the idea of the Failed Hero as young men who face certain death, even when they know it is a lost cause. Like the defenders of the Alamo, or like WW2 kamikaze pilots (1). We romanticize Failed Heroes, because dying is a hard enough thing to do without having to know about it ahead of time. And then, alongside the idea of Failed Heroes who knowingly face death while trying to fight it, he mentions his wife. She was dying of cancer when he wrote the book. She knew her death was coming, a long way off but certain. Because he writes around and about all of these ideas, I see the story as his attempt to answer a question: how do we live when we know we are going to die? MacLean’s answer to the question is, in a way, more questions: How did the firefighters fight their way through their last minutes, with flames and fear and heat driving them? What kinds of decisions did they make? What were they thinking? How were they like his wife, dying at home in old age of cancer? What kinds of decisions and thoughts did she have? How were they like soldiers facing battle? How are they like us all, whatever the time or circumstance of our dying?
MacLean’s book is, to me, a story about fighting to live, until the last breath is taken from your body, when we know it’s a futile effort. Whether he writes about men who die in battle, men who die fighting the elements—and therefore in a sense God himself—or his wife struggling with terminal disease, he is I think researching how an individual faces death. Whether it’s sudden or slow, death is always certain. This is not a comforting book. It says to me that living is a horrible and doomed effort. But it also says, I think, that living is courageous. We all try to keep on living ‘til we die. I see his message as one of endurance to the end. I think his purpose in what some call a plodding story is, in his own words:
Excerpt from Young Men and Fire: "after the bodies had fallen, most of them had risen again, taken a few steps, and fallen again, this time like pilgrims in prayer, facing the top of the hill...The evidence, then, is that at the very end beyond thought and beyond fear and beyond even self-compassion and divine bewilderment there remains some firm intention to continue doing forever and ever what we last hoped to do on earth. By this final act they had come about as close as body and spirit can to establishing a unity of themselves with earth, fire, and perhaps the sky." http://forestry.about.com/od/forestfire/gr/manng_fire_rev.htm
Dad faced certain death in WW2 as a Marine in the Central Pacific theater. He faced the possibility of it many times in his long life, and probably felt he had cheated Death a few times. He ultimately died in his home, after 89 years, 5 grown kids, 11 grandchildren, several great grandchildren, in the company of his life partner and his son, in full possession of his faculties, and attempting to take steps towards the door. He knew he was dying as he took them, but he took them anyway because someone asked him too, and really what else do you do with the last minutes of your life? He did what I guess he did with all the other minutes of his life: just kept putting one foot in front of another until his heart gave out and he fell down dead. That is a fighting spirit. We all know them. And they are us.
I’ll keep trying to finish the book.
1. For those of you younger than me, Japanese kamikaze pilots infamously flew suicide missions to sink enemy ships in WW2. Additionally, Requiem for Battleship Yamato is a Japanese seaman’s non-fictional first-hand account of a Japanese battleship’s suicide mission. It’s a detailed account of the battleship’s mission, but its also a story about the conflict between following orders for certain death, and questioning the orders. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_battleship_Yamato
3. Young Men and Fire: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Men_and_Fire
5. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110415/ap_on_re_us/us_obit_world_s_oldest_man
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