Planning My Exit

By Kenneth Ring, Ph.D.

“I’m not exactly a-fixin’ to die any time soon,” I told my daughter, “but I definitely think we should start making arrangements for me to be cremated.”

Kathryn was spending a week with me, not only “to get all my affairs in order,” but to try to do everything she could to sustain my life, as she always has for many years.  On this visit, she was mostly concerned with my diet.  She doesn’t think I get enough protein, apparently a common problem for old geezers like me.  I have long joked that if it weren’t for Kathryn’s tireless efforts to preserve me, and all those dozens of supplements I take daily, I would certainly not still be here writing these lines.  I toggle between appreciation for her devotion to my welfare and my resentment for making me pay so much attention to it.  I mean, honestly, I continue to feel I’ve outlived my usefulness and am just taking up space.

But this time, we needed to face the prospect that, despite her valiant caretaking of me, it was possible that before long I could actually die.  Of course, I have long contended that I simply lack the knack for dying,  I don’t understand how people manage to do it.  Even at my great age – I am within a few months of 89 now and can no longer pretend that I am still in my advanced middle age – I don’t seem to show any evidence that death is around the corner. For example, I recently had my semi-annual cardiology check-up.  My BP was 116/69, my oxygen saturation was 98%, my blood work was fine, and my ticker was still ticking away, as usual.  “See you next year,” my cardiologist said.

Clearly, I don’t take after my father who died of a heart attack at 41.  On the contrary, I am much more like my mother, and that’s concerning because I am now exactly the age she was when she died.   Moreover, like me, my mother also lost the ability to walk when she was in her eighties; like me, she developed glaucoma; like me again, she became very hard of hearing toward the end of her life (I am effectively nearly deaf without my hearing aids).   And lately, I have a worrisome new issue to deal with – I am beginning to lose my vision.

Well, I’m exaggerating a bit, but recently my vision has begun to go south along with the rest of my descent into terminal decrepitude.  It began a few months ago when I developed bleeding from my vitreous humor.  That caused my inter-ocular pressure to shoot up to a level much higher than it had ever been.  That condition eventually cleared up, but my pressure remained stubbornly high.  With glaucoma, which I’ve had for nearly three decades, persistently high pressure causes vision loss, and once it goes, you can’t get it back – it’s gone for good.

So my eye doctor said I need to have some surgery to try to get my pressure down and to preserve what vision I still have.  I will be having two surgeries for that purpose in October.  But meanwhile, I have to adapt to increasingly poor vision.

When I look at my TV now, everything is somewhat blurry.  When I watch tennis, I sometimes have to infer the existence of the flight of the ball by observing the movement of the players.  Reading books has become more difficult because I have to were a patch over my right eye and read line by line.  It takes me forever to get through a book these days, though in my case, forever might just be next week.

Various people have suggested that I should start listening to audio books and podcasts.  I’ve done that in the past, and do occasionally listen to podcasts, particularly New Yorker articles and stories, but I don’t process information as well auditorily as I do visually.  I’m an old cuss, set in his visual ways, and like the feel of a book in my hands.   Anyway….

Even writing e-mail poses its problems because I now make so many mistakes when I type.  I never was a particularly good typist, but now I have difficulty seeing the keys on my keyboard.  If it weren’t for Mr. Spellcheck, I would be doomed.  As it is, I often have to enlarge things in order to read what’s on my monitor.

Well, it could be worse, of course.  That’s just what I’m afraid of.

So even if I have difficulty seeing the writing on the wall, I have to concede that my days above ground are limited, which caused my daughter and me to start thinking seriously about my end game.

It’s odd:  Although I’ve spent about half my life researching and writing about NDEs, and have thought a great deal about death, I’ve rarely considered my own.  I just don’t think about it; I usually just make a joke instead and quote one of Woody Allen’s quips, such as “I’m not afraid of death; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”

Not long ago, I heard from an NDEr who loved my book, Lessons from the Light, and wrote me a beautiful letter about her NDE and how much my book had helped her process her own experience.  But she had a proposal for me. She wanted to become my death doula. Do you know what that is? It’s like being a midwife to someone who is dying, to help them move through the process toward death with compassion and understanding. 

I appreciated her offer, but rejected it. I just wasn’t ready to think about dying, thank you, much less working with someone I had never met. In short, no sale. We corresponded for a while, but eventually had a falling out.  

But when my daughter was here, we decided I should sign up with a cremation organization called The Neptune Society, which I’ve now done.  Three thousand smackers down the drain.   

But Kathryn persisted, saying, “Dad, what if you get sick before you die? You would certainly want your family around then, and maybe some of your close friends, too, right?”  Of course, I allowed, I would definitely want that when the time comes.

This is when the idea of some kind of memorial came up.

Frankly, I’d never given that any thought to that sort of thing either, but Kathryn said that if I wanted to have my kids and other family members around when I became mortally ill, in addition to former lovers and dear friends, it would make sense to have some kind of memorial for them following my death.  “Fine,” I said. “You’re in charge. You can arrange it. I don’t plan to be around then, anyway, though perhaps I’ll be up in the corner of the room at the time.”

Afterward, however, once I decided not to be so churlish about it, I began to think I should also have some kind of online memorial for my professional friends and colleagues and some of my longtime fans and followers.  Actually, one of those persons had already volunteered to be my eulogist, so I wrote him to see if he’d also be willing to organize the thing and serve as a host and master of ceremonies.  He replied that he’d absolutely love to do that. So lately I’ve been touch with him to plan my memorial.   It’s taking a lot of my time now.  It’s like planning an effing wedding!  

I’ve been compiling various things for him – a list of more than a hundred names (along with all those e-mail addresses!), various photographs, and even an old video interview with me when I was in my prime (at 48) talking about NDEs, so that people could remember me as I was then rather than the decrepit old wreck I am today.  At least it gives me something to do these days since I am no longer able to write any books or even to do much blogging anymore.

I’ve also been musing about turning 89 soon, assuming I can make it until my birthday in December.  But I hate the thought of turning 89.  I have a thing about prime number birthdays.  There are “good” prime numbers, such as 13 (my lucky number, since I was born on a Friday, the 13th) and 17, but after that, they are not appealing and the worst ones end in 9.  Like 19, 29, 59, and 79.  I remember when I was about to turn 79, I refused!  I decided to remain 78 for another year, and then go straight to 80.

But now the prospect of becoming 89 is really distressing to me.  Why have I lived so long, well past my expiration date?

I remember years ago when I was working on a book about classical composers and their muses, one of the composers I wrote about was Edward Elgar of Pomp and Circumstance fame.  After his diminutive wife, Alice, who was a great supporter of her husband’s work, died, Elgar’s life as a composer pretty much ended.  And the last part of his life was, as I entitled one of my final chapters about him, “a long diminuendo.” He could never get it together to finish his last symphony.  Instead, he made a fool of himself, lusting after a young Hungarian violinist with the delicious name of Jelly d’Aranyi, who told him to get lost. 

Well, I am not chasing after any young damsels or chasing rainbows either, but I also seem to be living out my own long diminuendo, and facing the terrifying prospect of becoming a nonagenarian if I can’t figure out how to die before then.

Kathryn’s visit will be followed by that of my other two children, Dave and Elise, later this year, after the election, if I haven’t killed myself by then should Kamala Harris lose.  If so, many people will flee the country, as one of my ex-girlfriends did after Trump was elected in 2016.  I will just flee my life.

I think my kids want to see me before I die. It’s as if they are not just coming to visit me, but to say goodbye while they still can.  

Sigmund Freud was very superstitious about his own death.  As he got older, he would often take leave of company by saying, “Goodbye, you may never see me again.”  I am beginning to think that way about my kids.  I wonder if this might be the last time I see them.

Yesterday, I had visit from Dave’s wife, Linda, my daughter-in-law, of whom I am very fond.  She helped me a lot when she was here and I was grateful for her making the time to see me.

Before she left, she took this selfie of us:

Take a good look.  For all I know, this may be the last photo you’ll ever see of me, still smiling, despite everything, as I stagger toward 89, still glad to be here after all these years.