back.
I don’t think I was abnormally death-possessed, but I thought about it a lot. I worried about my own death, of course, and was fascinated by the deaths of others—people my own age especially. I turned to the newspaper obituary column first thing every day, before Ann Landers and the comics, even, to see if someone young had died, and when they had, I read the announcement several times for any scrap that would reveal what death was like. I pieced together everything I could, hoping to find a clue. “In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent to the Cancer Society …” was self-explanatory; “after a long illness …” meant homework missed, a teacher’s visits, maybe, with workbook pages to fill out, or letters sent from everyone at school, composed by the teacher, written on the board and copied by the class, graded for penmanship and sent with a paint-by-number kit they’d all chipped in to buy; “the infant son of” filled my mind, and our recess-time discussions, with visions of failed incubators and quarter-sized coffins. I mulled the details, studied the faces of the mourners, with what must seem cruel fascination. All children do it though. (I had a friend whose parents had forbidden her to say “death” or any word related to it around her younger brother, which didn’t stop his knowing about it, of course, or his thinking about it, but only kept the fear nameless.) It seems a necessary process, the only way to learn about death—getting shocked and shaken until you reach the point where it no longer takes you by surprise, when death seems, finally, natural. It took me years of obituary-reading to arrive at that point, if I am there yet.
Slowly, at least, I reached the realization that I could go at any moment and that, though I was not allowed to stay up past eight-thirty or ride my bike on the highway, though I didn’t own more than half a dozen Kennedy half-dollars and a few dolls and books, I did own something as awesome as my life, and had the power to end it. I had only to stick my wet hand in the light bulb socket, to close the garage door while the car warmed up on winter mornings or, a little later, when I could drive, to swerve the steering wheel just half a turn, into the left hand lane, and I could bring about a change more catastrophic, to my family, at least, than anything the President or the Russians could accomplish. It wasn’t that I ever considered suicide (though most of us have contemplated it in childhood—after a spanking or a banishment, the momentary thought of “Boy, could I show them …!”); what fascinated me about death was that I could bring it about myself.
I talked about it, thought about it, studied all evidences of it that I could find, hoping, I guess, that by constant exposure I’d get accustomed to the idea. Walking home from school, after a little boy who lived nearby us had been run over and killed, Becky and I would ponder God and The Universe. (Death always led to discussions of the solar system. Fourth-grade science merged with theology, so that I pictured heaven—not that I really believed, but just in case—somewhere above the rings of Saturn, orbited by a moon, while hell lay ninety-three million miles away in the corona of the sun.) And then, abruptly, we’d switch to the earthly details of the death—“What do you think the little boy’s teacher will do about his name written up on the reading group chart? Will she cross it out or leave it there? What are his parents doing now? Will they eat supper? Do you think they’ll give away his toys? Would you want them?” The possessions of a dead person, the beds they slept in, the chairs they’d sat on, seemed to carry the contagion of death. We knew there were no germs, no viruses attached to car accidents and cancers, but we avoided certain spots of road and certain cafeteria seats anyway, full of the superstitions we all carry about death, bred from its strangeness.
There couldn’t
I don’t think I was abnormally death-possessed, but I thought about it a lot. I worried about my own death, of course, and was fascinated by the deaths of others—people my own age especially. I turned to the newspaper obituary column first thing every day, before Ann Landers and the comics, even, to see if someone young had died, and when they had, I read the announcement several times for any scrap that would reveal what death was like. I pieced together everything I could, hoping to find a clue. “In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent to the Cancer Society …” was self-explanatory; “after a long illness …” meant homework missed, a teacher’s visits, maybe, with workbook pages to fill out, or letters sent from everyone at school, composed by the teacher, written on the board and copied by the class, graded for penmanship and sent with a paint-by-number kit they’d all chipped in to buy; “the infant son of” filled my mind, and our recess-time discussions, with visions of failed incubators and quarter-sized coffins. I mulled the details, studied the faces of the mourners, with what must seem cruel fascination. All children do it though. (I had a friend whose parents had forbidden her to say “death” or any word related to it around her younger brother, which didn’t stop his knowing about it, of course, or his thinking about it, but only kept the fear nameless.) It seems a necessary process, the only way to learn about death—getting shocked and shaken until you reach the point where it no longer takes you by surprise, when death seems, finally, natural. It took me years of obituary-reading to arrive at that point, if I am there yet.
Slowly, at least, I reached the realization that I could go at any moment and that, though I was not allowed to stay up past eight-thirty or ride my bike on the highway, though I didn’t own more than half a dozen Kennedy half-dollars and a few dolls and books, I did own something as awesome as my life, and had the power to end it. I had only to stick my wet hand in the light bulb socket, to close the garage door while the car warmed up on winter mornings or, a little later, when I could drive, to swerve the steering wheel just half a turn, into the left hand lane, and I could bring about a change more catastrophic, to my family, at least, than anything the President or the Russians could accomplish. It wasn’t that I ever considered suicide (though most of us have contemplated it in childhood—after a spanking or a banishment, the momentary thought of “Boy, could I show them …!”); what fascinated me about death was that I could bring it about myself.
I talked about it, thought about it, studied all evidences of it that I could find, hoping, I guess, that by constant exposure I’d get accustomed to the idea. Walking home from school, after a little boy who lived nearby us had been run over and killed, Becky and I would ponder God and The Universe. (Death always led to discussions of the solar system. Fourth-grade science merged with theology, so that I pictured heaven—not that I really believed, but just in case—somewhere above the rings of Saturn, orbited by a moon, while hell lay ninety-three million miles away in the corona of the sun.) And then, abruptly, we’d switch to the earthly details of the death—“What do you think the little boy’s teacher will do about his name written up on the reading group chart? Will she cross it out or leave it there? What are his parents doing now? Will they eat supper? Do you think they’ll give away his toys? Would you want them?” The possessions of a dead person, the beds they slept in, the chairs they’d sat on, seemed to carry the contagion of death. We knew there were no germs, no viruses attached to car accidents and cancers, but we avoided certain spots of road and certain cafeteria seats anyway, full of the superstitions we all carry about death, bred from its strangeness.
There couldn’t
Similar Books
