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In October of ’99 my sister Judi took her life. She was 56 and suffering from terminal lung cancer. Her suicide wasn’t an impulsive act during a moment of despair. It took place ten months after her diagnosis, near the very end of her life when the disease was producing a systemic enervation and the problems of her breathing were becoming intolerable. Except for her son, whom she swore to secrecy, the rest of her family, scattered in other cities around the country, knew nothing of her problems. During those last ten months, while she and I bantered about in our email or traded trivialities on the phone, Judi was finding herself increasingly in and out of hospitals. But in between, she was crafting her most wonderful gifts, a series of poignant goodbyes to each member of her family. In a forceful hand on pink paper and placed in pink envelopes Judi writes a letter to each of her siblings, her children, grandchild, and friend. Imagine my trepidation. I slipped into a room to be alone and held my letter for several moments before opening it wondering whether the last words from Judi would accentuate my grief or console me? “Dear Mark,” it begins. “Well, if mother didn’t tell you that you were a ‘good son,’ I will tell you that you have been a good brother.” How extraordinary! Here was a rift between my mother and me that lurked in my subconscious and which I never mentioned to Judi. Yet, like a knowing observer outside the battle zone, she comments: I have been a good brother. The simplicity of expression makes it all the more powerful. She frames it as a truth that I must accept, and I do, and it will comfort me for the rest of my life, because it says that I succeeded with my sister, and because underlying it is a second truth…that I was also a good son. And her final words in the letter are the ultimate gift. “I love you and have never questioned your love for me—I have always known it.” Judi’s suicide meant that she slipped away before we could say our goodbyes. Unspoken goodbyes can tear at one’s soul. Here in a single stroke, by raising an issue and then knocking it down, she lifts from my shoulders any lingering guilt I may have about our relationship. Did I get across my love to her? I did! And so I need never torment myself about lost opportunities. I can feel at peace. And I do. Judi didn’t want to die. She said she was “greedy” for more time, but it wasn’t meant to be, and she saw no sense in fighting cosmic absolutes. There was much she could control, however, such as her relationships and whether they were left resolved or incomplete, such as the size of the burden she would inflict on her family, such as a summing up, a last impression, a final report on the experience of life. Out of these weighty issues resulted a trove of letters. But why should we in the family keep these letters only to ourselves? They are too honoring of Judi to be read and then put away forever. So through a website I offer them up for all to read. I tell people…go see with what artistry Judi lived out her last ten months. Enjoy the performance she gave us. Read the goodbyes she left. Judi would feel no shame in having them made public. “General,” Kazantzakis writes in his novel Report To Greco, “General, the battle draws to a close and I make my report. This is where and how I fought. I fell wounded, lost heart, but did not desert. Though my teeth clattered from fear, I bound my forehead tightly with a red handkerchief to hide the blood, and ran to the assault.” In this sweeping vision Kazantzakis offers up his Report: “I collect my tools: sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing, intellect. Night has fallen, the day’s work is done. I return like a mole to my home, the ground. Not because I am tired and cannot work. I am not tired. But the sun has set.” These images and the cadence of the words chill me with their poetic depth. Even at the end he sparkles with ideas and is filled to overflowing with things to say. I am not tired, he laments. But the sun has set. And to reach for these subtleties, a hair’s breadth shy of the end, he collects his tools, those of a true writer—sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing, intellect. “The sun has set, the hills are dim. The mountain ranges of my mind still retain a little light at their summits, but the sacred night is bearing down; it is rising from the earth, descending from the heavens. The light has vowed not to surrender, but it knows there is no salvation. It will not surrender, but it will expire.” Judi’s Report seems trivial in contrast: It was a good run through life. She would have changed some of the details, but in the end, no regrets. “I do not want a funeral,” begin her lengthy instructions to us. And then in an abrupt turn toward the mundane—“You don’t have to hire a realtor to sell this house…(it will) go FHA and the roof is around eight years old….There is a spot on the ceiling….You will have to negotiate the furnace….The tile for the bathroom is in two places….Call Keith about the insurance policy….The burglar alarm is not connected to the police….Mother’s dishes are downstairs…put them on Ebay….Pay attention as to what is worth money….” But it would be wrong to see her Report as superficial. One cannot focus on bathroom tile at the very end of life without having a deep sense about the unity of all things. Standing right at the precipice and confronting her own mortality she says: “The car has a new alternator.” It is the spiritual person at peace with universal ebb and flow who can arrive at something so Zen-like. What power infuses these Reports! Not just these but by virtue of their existence all such Reports. Consider the man, struck down by disease yet puckish to the end, who writes “Doggies are fed…and I am dead,” then ever considerate leaves the note in the garage for his partner to find on return from work. Who is this person that he can taunt the somberness of death with such a playful poke, can confront death by doing shtick, can swirl into the cosmic wormhole with a smile? I want to see his picture and read the rest of his Report. We are told not to go gentle into that good night. But if go we must, then kicking and screaming can be unseemly to a proud person. And perhaps it all is a big joke. Consider the case of Évariste Galois. The year is 1832, and this 20 year old boy has been challenged to a duel over a girl. Out of honor he cannot bring himself to flee, but by staying he knows his fate is sealed, because his adversary is a marksman. He rushes home and spends the night writing his Report. In a letter to a friend he says, “I have made some new discoveries in analysis. The first concern the theory of quintic equations, and others integral functions. In the theory of equations I have researched the conditions for the solvability of equations by radicals; this has given me the occasion to deepen this theory and describe all the transformations possible on an equation even though it is not solvable by radicals. All this will be found here in three memoirs….” At the end of the letter he asks something remarkable for someone so young. “Make a public request of Jacobi or Gauss to give their opinions, not as to the truth, but as to the importance of these theorems.” Hours later he would take a musket ball in the gut and die the following day. With mathematical genius found rarely each century this 20 year old develops a body of work so far a field from the times that he worries it could be lost through misunderstanding. Thus, he requests that it be taken to Gauss for his opinion, Gauss the titular Prince and Jacobi a High Priest of mathematics. And even then Galois worries. Make a public request of them so that they must in turn make a public response thereby putting it in the hands of history. Don’t ask them if it’s right, he says. Ask them if it’s important! And it was. How many others have taken the time to make their Report to Greco? But I know the answer. The rational search for closure when the imminent is at hand must be far commoner than we think. Judi’s letters could easily have been consigned to the fusty boxes of memorabilia that get handed down for a generation or two eventually to be dumped or lose their context, but I’ve chosen not to let this happen. Nor should it happen to others. And so a project is born. I am collecting for publication the Reports by those who had something unique to say, or something wonderful, humorous, outrageous or profound, something so human that it becomes immediately recognizable to each of us as speaking a universal Truth. The project would produce a book, not about suicide or suicide notes but about Reports and goodbyes. A book that can be held in the hand—large-formatted, glossy-papered, artistic and honoring of one hundred people with photography and biography who made their own Reports to Greco. It would cover the present but also cut back in time to Galois and beyond, because a Report written well is timeless. It would include those who had their place in history and those who made barely a ripple but at their own end gave us a signpost on the Way. I invite you to join me in this project .
Learn more about Nikos Kazantzakis, author of Zorba The Greek. Learn more about Évariste Galois, young French Republican and originator of the mathematical area called Group Theory. Reports |
Mark Brown, 323-663-1331
Night has fallen, the day’s work is done. I return like a mole to my home, the ground. Not because I am tired and cannot work. I am not tired. But the sun has set.
The car has a new alternator.
Doggies are fed…and I am dead.
I have made some new discoveries in analysis.
...something so human that it becomes immediately recognizable to each of us as speaking a universal Truth |
