Thanatopsis at 34

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Yes, we're all on the same bus ride...

As I sit here and write this, the October sun has given way to an evening soundtrack of bone-chilling raindrops that are filling puddles outside my window. I think this past weekend may well have been the last gasp of blue skies in Paris, so I’m grateful that I took the opportunity to take a walk and capture these moments before they were gone for good.

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The evidence of my wanderings in a working class neighborhood is contained in this blog entry, but I don’t really feel like talking about Ménilmontant, an area whose name originally translated as “bad weather house”.  I’ve got other things on my mind.

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In general, social networking sites serve as an excellent outlet for eating away at our precious waking hours. But that said, I have managed to use them as a periodic lifeline to loved ones while I am abroad or simply looking for a captive audience who will listen to me gripe about getting stuck in my elevator due to another power outage. Indeed, social networking can be rather therapeutic.

Last week I found out via the social network that a childhood acquaintance of mine had fallen ill. On Facebook he and I are “friends”, but we all know how ridiculously abused that word has become in this blue and white status updated age. In reading the rolling feed of wall postings and commentary, I found out that something was terribly wrong and that whatever it was had unfolded quite suddenly. A few clicks later and I’m seeing photos of a hospital room, expressions of support as well as very grave medical updates posted by his courageously sharing family. Wow.

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Again, this is probably a person who I hardly said “hello” to throughout high school, despite the fact that I have recollections of Simon as a person who was nothing but kind and good-natured to everybody- a bit of a rarity given the cutthroat empire of the unforgiving schoolyard. To me he was an alterno-kid with long hair who loved Nine Inch Nails, and once might have broken his arm in a mosh pit if I remember correctly. In short, Simon was just another kid trying to get through life.

The outpouring of support on the community Facebook page set up by his family was humbling. Thousands of paper cranes were being folded from all corners of the world, and for the first time in awhile I was face to face with a situation that was so dire, so immediate, and so capable of happening to anyone at all.

I don’t think that any of our schoolteachers would have had the audacity to inform their schoolchildren that we are all going to die, and that many of us will go much sooner than we envision. I know that they must have been thinking such thoughts, because as I now stand at an age where they once stood, it’s easy to transport myself back to my classroom and visualize how many of those desks might turn empty in ten years, twenty years, or even a matter of days. No one ever knows when their time will be up, but the certainty is that not all of us will make it to see our social security checks cashed (and then again, maybe none of us will see that benefit either).

And so this brings me back to Simon, my fellow Mashpee Middle School alumnus. From my concerned observer’s distance, I know that he quietly passed away in a hospital room surrounded by loved ones and thousands of colorful paper cranes that were strung about in a silent but tremendously powerful expression of honor and devotion. I myself am not seeking sympathy for a loss that I can’t even begin to understand, but I can tell you that  from where I sit, it was impossible to feel untouched by the outpouring of energy and love directed towards him and his family.

Simon’s body is gone now, but he has left his mark on the world. Not only for the people who still love him, but also for the rest of us who continue to go about our lives with thoughts toward other things. Like walking in a park on a sunny day, and being grateful to have had such an opportunity. I always find myself coming back to this famous Thornton Wilder quote, because it always manages to simultaneously unsettle and comfort me, and I think it bears repeating here:

“But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”

Sunday was a beautiful day, just as I gauge today’s inclement weather to be just as beautiful. A life worth living is one that must have equal parts of darkness and light (with tempered degrees of each, of course). I don’t know where I’ll be a week from now, just as I am sure that Simon never imagined that he’d never get to see the end of October. Instead he’s now in a place that the rest of us will see at our appointed hour- but until that time comes I’d say it’s best that we all get on with living the lives that we are hoping for, and saying all the things that we are reluctant to say.

Judging by Simon’s sisters, parents and girlfriend, I’d say that he definitely succeeded in doing just that. We should all hope to be so lucky.