Opportunity, and hopefully not death, knocks

Death and dying have been much on my mind. Don't worry, I'm not depressed - although the dwindling economy, and (the hopefully irrational) fear of losing my job because of it, is getting me a mite down - but only that there's been quite a bit of death around me, both real and imagined.

Last weekend, my uncle's wife (I never referred to her as my aunt – it was his second wife, and she had an abrasiveness that really turned me off) died. It was somewhat expected, yet sad: she's basically been drinking herself to death over the last year. She's always been a heavy drinker, but at some point she decided that her only friend was the bottle. I feel for my uncle - a wonderfully outgoing, unpretentious man - but in some ways I'm sure it's a relief. It must be a painful to watch a loved one basically kill oneself.

This week, my close friend R.'s cousin died. She was young (early 20s), and from the sounds of it her death was totally unexpected. A young person dying always seems more tragic: it's the snuffing out of potential. It's after those deaths that we try to remind ourselves to live every day to its fullest, since we never know when we too are going to be struck down. Although our day-to-day realities and challenges (whether financial, emotional or otherwise) seem to prevent us from taking this advice to heart and actually living every day like it's our last.

Lastly, on Wednesday, my aunt (my mother's sister) died. She was diagnosed with cancer late last year, and though she seemed to be putting up a good fight earlier in the year and through the summer (when my mother went over to England to visit), her health slipped precipitously over the last couple of months, to the point where I think she was willing herself to die. The death has hit my mother quite hard - it was her closest relative outside of my dad and my brothers (she only has a brother left, and I don't think she's particularly close to him) - but she also sounded philosophical about it. She told me she reminded her sister when she visited in the summer that, at age 75, she had had a wonderful life (including a doting and loving husband, two wonderful daughters, super grandchildren) with few regrets. I have some fond memories of my aunt, particularly in how she encouraged me a few years back to go back to school and pursue a graduate degree. She spent much of her life as a teacher, and was forever preaching the merits of a good education. When I think about it, outside of my immediate family, she was probably my closest relative. I will miss her.

Will all these deaths - and let's hope it stops at three for the time being - perhaps Andrew Pyper's The Killing Circle was not the ideal book to be reading... So yes, I did end up persevering and finished it. Frankly, I was just curious to see how the thing would play out - which I guess means it was successful in drawing me in. But the subject matter (serial killings within a writer's group) really did leave me cold. (I feel somewhat misled about this book. I thought it was going to revolve around writing and the Toronto literary scene. I guess I didn't listen as closely as I should have to the Pyper interview on CBC that got me interested in the first place.) And maybe reading some of David Foster Wallace's non-fiction so soon after his suicide is another reminder of living vs. death.

So why am I writing about this? Truthfully, I started this post with the intention of hitting some upbeat and optimistic tones!

Actually, the one thing that death does clarify is the importance of the here and now. This came up with R. when we were e-mailing about her cousin's death. As per our usual exchanges - we keep up a daily conversation pretty much exclusively through e-mail (to the point where I probably know her better than people I actually speak to!) - we used the discussion about the sad death as a launch into other topics. She mentioned her husband, who is not happy in his work and would like to try his hand at something else. Unfortunately, she wrote, "it's just not feasible right now."

So if not now - particularly when a young person's death is so fresh in the mind and serves as a reminder of how fragile and sometimes short life can be - when is the right time? I then told her about the article I just finished reading: David Remnick's excellent piece about Obama in the New Yorker. Naturally he touches upon race, and how many people felt that Obama's candidacy, not to mention him actually winning, was a longshot given his race, that the U.S. wasn't yet ready to elect an African-American as president. Remnick interviews one of the leaders of the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, who compared those who discouraged Obama from running for the highest office to the white ministers who told Martin Luther King a half century ago that the time was not ripe for civil dissent. "Martin said the people who were saying 'later' were really saying 'never.' The time to do right is always right now."

Perhaps that's something we need to remind ourselves more often. The time to do right is always right now.

Listening to: Oscar Peterson's Best of the Verve Songbooks
Watching: rented Lars and the Real Girl and Before Night Falls
Reading: not sure what novel to pick up next... I think a "classic" is in order. Stay tuned.