Reflections after reading Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

I have never seen anybody die.  Even my two dogs happened to die when I was far away in different countries.  I have been to only one funeral of a meaningful person in my entire life, and very few others. 

It's difficult to tell how realistic my view of death is.  Yet, I don't seem to be afraid of it (how can you tell with certainty if you're not facing it, though), don't have qualms to be talking about it  and have expressed my verbal wishes to my husband and my children.  My older son really thinks it's important to know, and he has not been shy to ask and listened carefully.  My husband has expressly told me he was going to ignore anything I want if he outlives me- he thinks the last rites(?) should be meaningful to the survivors.   Frankly, I don't mind that much.   Again, as in so many cases in the book, there is no guarantee that despite all our preparations and wishes the survivors will not do what feels right to them at that moment anyway. And, really, I don't feel very strongly about it and think that we or they alone will be crossing that bridge when we get there.  The best laid out plans are subject to unexpected upsets, especially when huge decisions are to be made.  Lesser things have pushed people over the edge in those critical moments.  My great grandmother reproached herself after her beloved husband died, because he muttered something in his final moments to which she soothingly said, 'Good, good...'.  "What if he had said he was dying!?", my great grandmother was asking herself in dismay for years afterwards. 

I have not been so relaxed with my own parents (both of them still alive plus a step father).  I am the only child to all of them.  We have not discussed anything regarding their wishes yet.  They are all still in excellent health, but also because my mother is very scared by a possibility of her life ending one day.  She gets visibly and instantly depressed when the topic of ill health or death comes up.  She is 79.   At 80, my father has just moved in with a new girlfriend and still bikes 30 kilometers a day at speeds that I find hard to keep up with (and I am fit).  It seems insulting to talk to him about death and his dying wishes somehow:)  I know that all of them have wills, but I don't think they contain any special instructions.  I hope that if something is important to them in that matter, they are going to let me know.  Yes, I know I am a wimp here, but it seems the right way to go. 

Books

Book # 11
Title: By Night in Chile (Nocturno de Chile)
Author: Roberto Bolano
Translated from Spanish by Chris Andrews
Genre: fiction/novella
Copyright/Published: 2000/2003
ISBN: 1-84343-035-5
Pages: 144

Rating: 4/5
Date Started- Completed: January 22, 2005- February 3, 2006

I learned about Bolano on a Polish book site. He has just been translated into Polish and was hailed there as one of the best contemporary South-American writers. I was wondering why I had never heard of him, and it turns out that he started publishing not so long before his death in 2003. He always thought of himself as a poet, and started writing novels late in his life. He died relatively young of a liver disorder at the age of 50. More of his books are being translated into English, and some are already available.
The book:
It's Chile sometime in 1990s. These are the last hours of a dying priest, Father Ibacache. He is lying on his deathbed which he steers through the river of his memory using his hands as oars. All the fused stream of consciousness scenes he goes through while changing landscapes are the flashbacks from his memory. On our journey through his visions, we are taken on a personal journey through his life and through the recent history of Chile. The title then may have a double meaning given the recent Chilean history of political violence.

There is an odd beauty in the imagery, an interesting story of priests, falcons, and pigeons, and we meet characters like Pinochet, Neruda and Allende.
Recommended if you like Jose Saramago, as Bolano’s style is very reminiscent of his.

Quotes:

"I can hear what sounds like a gang of primates chattering away, all at once, in a state of high excitement, and then I take one hand out of the under the blankets and put in the water and laboriously steer the bed around, using my hand as an oar, moving my four fingers together like a punkah, and when the bed has turned around, all I can see is the jungle and the river and its tributaries and the sky, no longer grey but luminous blue, and two very small, very distant clouds scudding like children swept along by the wind. The chattering of the monkeys has died away. What a relief. What peace. A Peace that summons the memory of other blue skies, other diminutive clouds scudding eastward before the wind, and how they filled my spirit with boredom."

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Bolano