Over the past month or so, I have read three memoirs about long, happy marriages which were visited by the death of one of the partners. Close couples often joke about hoping that they will both expire at the same moment, but the partners know that this will not happen; one of them will watch and one will die. How to cope?
These narratives of death’s visitation are similar in format, while different in tone. All three books alternate the descriptions of the last days of the marriage with memories from earlier times, with tales of falling in love and creating a life. The rituals of each marriage are carefully documented – rituals which mean so much and are so important and, at the same time, are so hard to cling to when illness and tragedy intercedes.
In A Matter of Death and Life, Irvin Yalom (The Schopenhauer Cure, When Nietzsche Wept) and Marilyn Yalom alternate chapters as they tell of the end of her cancer treatment, and her death surrounded by family and friends. It is the relationships that are important to the Yaloms. During her last days, Marilyn stopped treatment and chose death (and it seems like a good choice) – and while she can accept death, she has more trouble about leaving her loved ones:
Still, if I am not afraid of death itself, I feel the continued sadness of departing from my loved ones. For all the philosophical treatises and for all the assurances of the medical profession, there is no cure for the simple fact that we must leave each other.
It is these loved ones and their memories that Irvin thinks will be the “afterlife” of himself and Marilynne, but he knows that this too is ephemeral:
I know that I will exist in ethereal form in the minds of those who have known me or read my work but, in a generation or two, anyone who has ever known the flesh-and-blood me will have vanished.
Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon are also separated by cancer. Donald had just recovered from his own grappling with this disease when his much younger wife is diagnosed with leukemia. For years, the couple assumed Donald would predecease Jane and planned accordingly, but such are the plans of men and women. The couple follow up on every possible chance of recovery, including spending some miserable months in Seatle for a bone marrow transplant. Nothing works. The most moving moment in the book is when Donald and Jane finally are convinced that they must “give up” and accept. There is a strange joyfulness as they throw out all the noxious medicines and look for a brief respite from treatment before the end comes. They have only eleven days left.
But like Marilyn Yalom, it is the loss of relationships, of contact with loved ones, that bothers Jane. “Dying is nothing, but…the separation!” she howls. Jane and Donald prepare poems for her posthumous volume, compose her obituary, pick a Psalm for her funeral. Unlike in the Yaloms’ book, there is some notion of a religious afterlife, at least on Jane’s part.
The Nearings had a different kind of ending. Scott Nearing is 100 years old and frail, but he decides that he has had enough and stops eating. In Loving and Leaving the Good Life Helen Nearing, writes:
He would take no pills, no drugs, and hoped to avoid doctors. He became less and less concerned with continuing to inhabit a weakening body. When he could no longer carry his part of the load and take care of himself, he was ready to go on. I was at one with him in this. The way one dies, it seemed to me, should reflect the way one had lived, and I was glad to help him do it gracefully.
Scott dies peacefully by his wife’s side. If you have read their earlier book (Living the Good Life – a hippie Bible) about how they consciously set out to live a good and meaningful life in Vermont, you will recognize the intention to do things consciously, and, as Helen puts it, gracefully.
These memoirs clearly served a therapeutic service for the writers. The act of tracing the roots of the relationship is preparatory to trying to acknowledge what the last separation means. Reading these books – all highly recommended – should be done long before we are in the position of facing such realities. Planning for the unknown is impossible, but contemplating the possibilities can be a worthwhile exercise.
These were all good marriages, but we are reminded that even good marriages come to an end. Irvin Yalom concludes his memoir thus:
I shall end our book with the unforgettable opening words of Nabokov’s Speak, Memory: “The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.” That image both staggers and calms. I lean back in my chair, close my eyes, and take comfort.
Good marriages intensify that “brief crack of light,” and while we cannot stop mortality, we can appreciate every good day we are granted. There are other lessons in these books, but this is the wisdom that remains.
When I Come To Be Old 