Essays After Eighty by Donald Hall Page B

although the pond is only a hundred yards west, twenty-four acres of water. My land includes half the pond’s shore. I titled books of essays
Seasons at Eagle Pond
and
Here at Eagle Pond
. Then I collected them as
Eagle Pond
. Then I wrote
Christmas at Eagle Pond
. Back in the day, Jane and I used a tiny, hidden beach, among oak and birch, to lie in the sun on summer afternoons and grill supper on a hibachi. We watched for mink and beaver, we saw the first acorns fall. In the years after she died I visited the pond rarely, and by this time it’s long since I’ve even passed it by. When my friend drove me on its dirt road—an afternoon of bright autumn sunlight, the pond intensely blue with its waters choppy—I glimpsed the birches of our old beach and wept a tear of self-pity.
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    Of course we start dying when the sperm fucks the egg. (Pro-lifers dwell on this insight.) At my age I feel complacent about death, if sometimes somber, but we all agree that
dying
sucks. I’ve never been around when somebody, in the middle of a sentence or a sandwich, has the luck to pitch over dead. I’ve only sat beside two deaths, my grandmother Kate’s and my wife Jane’s. In both cases the corpse-in-waiting was out of it. Hours earlier each had slipped into Cheyne-Stokes breathing, when the brain stem is stubborn about retaining oxygen though the big brain has departed. Cheyne-Stokes is one long breath followed by three quick ones, then a pause. The brain stem holds on, in my experience, for as long as twelve hours. Because my grandmother’s mouth drooped open and looked sore, a nurse spooned water on her red tongue. She choked as if she had swallowed the wrong way. I held her hand. I rubbed Jane’s head until the long breath ceased. Least enviable are folks who die while alive, panicked as they rush, still conscious, from pink to blue. My father and my mother both died alive.
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    Beginning as a schoolboy, death turned me on, and for decades I practiced an enthusiastic morbidity. At home a whole bunch of great-aunts and -uncles took their turns at dying. At ten I enjoyed banquets of precocious lamentation, telling myself that Death had become a reality. In seventh grade I wrote my first poem, which explained that Death hunted you down, screeching through the night, until Death called your name. When I was fifteen, more and more practicing the poet, I decided that if I announced that I would die young, it would appeal to cheerleaders. I let it be known that I would die between pages seventeen and eighteen, not noticing that seventeen and eighteen are two sides of the same page. When I started writing real poems I kept to the subject, though death dropped its capital letter. I wrote cheerful poems—about farm horses or a family dog—and pointed out that eventually they all died. Who would have guessed? I wrote a poem, “In Praise of Death,” that tried to get rid of death by flattery.
    Except in print, I no longer dwell on it. It’s almost relaxing to know I’ll die fairly soon, as it’s a comfort not to obsess about my next orgasm. I’ve been ambitious, and ambition no longer has plans for the future—except these essays. My goal in life is making it to the bathroom. In the past I was often advised to live in the moment. Now what else can I do? Days are the same, generic and speedy—I seem to remove my teeth shortly after I glue them in—and weeks are no more tedious than lunch. They elapse and I scarcely notice. The only boring measure is the seasons. Year after year they follow the same order. Why don’t they shake things up a bit? Start with summer, followed by spring, winter, then maybe Thanksgiving?
    I’ve wanted to kill myself only three times, each on account of a woman. Two of them dumped me and the other died. Each time, daydreams of suicide gave me comfort. My father presented me with a .22 Mossberg when I was twelve, but