For Everything There Is a Season
And for everyone there is a season, too. Although we’d rather not think about that.
In watching the coverage of Michael Jackson’s death, it’s the universal reaction of the public that intrigues me most. For some reason, we find it hard to believe that a 50-year-old person can suddenly die of cardiac arrest or anything else. A newscaster last night referred to the big five-oh as “such a youthful age.” That’s very flattering to all of us of Michael Jackson’s generation, but who are we kidding here? Fifty is just a stone’s very short throw away from senior citizenhood — and we all know the final destination awaiting us after that.
Or do we?
We have a rather odd attitude toward death. It seems we aren’t reconciled to it being an inevitable event at some point in time, sooner or later, from sickness or accident or disease or the ravages of advanced age, for us all. When we’re young, we think we’re going to live forever. When we’re old, we hope doctors have a way to keep us around longer. We look upon death as a thief, an intruder, a spoilsport and a nasty problem that modern science can somehow defer indefinitely, if not eliminate entirely.
I’ll never forget the reaction of a relative when his frail and elderly mother with a heart condition passed on. “Why? Why? Why?” he kept asking for years after she died, as if the cosmos had broken a contract assuring his mother a certain number of years and he’d gotten cheated.
That our physical bodies have an expiration date and come with no guarantees is a reality we’re reluctant to resign ourselves to. It’s hard to admit that this biological machine we inhabit is unreliable, frail and faulty at best, and can fail us at any given moment in ways we haven’t anticipated.
It’s understandably unsettling to see our heroes and idols and cultural icons, who have perhaps achieved a kind of immortality via their accomplishments, suffer what we think is an untimely death. It seems unfair, cruel, wrong. But the truth is that if you and I — or anybody, for that matter – can make it through today without a malfunction, breakdown of parts, casualty or mishap, it’s nothing short of a miracle.
–phoebe kate