FOCUS: MEN’S THRIVABILITY
to satisfy one’s desires. Retirement planning was postponement, procrastination, a waste. And wasting time is a fate worse than death, in his eyes. No, that’s not quite right: it is death. If my dad was feeling cooped up during a New England winter, he’d ship his motorcycle to Southern California and ride it down the Baja peninsula with his motorcycle buddies. He was 22 years old when he became
self-employed as a general contractor. “I was on the porch with my father-in- law,” he told me. “He was a talented carpenter and always talked about starting his own business, but he never did. I decided that night I was going to work for myself.” At the time, my dad had $1,500
in his checking account. I was two years old. Daniel was six months old. Dad didn’t have a driver’s license, so he rode a bicycle to his first job. After he got the job, he told my mom: “Well, I got it, now I just need to figure out how to do it.” He’s been in business for 30 years, figuring it out every day, he says. I felt as if I had spent several
years ignoring the wisdom in my dad’s letters. Then I stumbled upon Oliver Sacks’ essay ‘My Own Life’ published in the New York Times. The neurologist and author had learned he had terminal cancer. I was moved by Sacks’ humility and grace in the face of inevitable death. My dad and his mother talked
about death often, but Sacks was actuallydying. “It is up to me now to choose how to live out the months that remain to me,” he wrote in his essay. “I have to live in the richest, deepest, most productive way I can.” After reading his autobiography
On the Move, I decided to quit my job and embark on a walkabout, a time to reflect on my own life and eventual death. My pilgrimage would have three acts: First, I would backpack through China for three weeks. Second: I would spend six weeks in my hometown. Third: I would spend a month driving my 1982 Honda Nighthawk across the country to California.
28 SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER 2017
MAKING SPACE FOR LIFE As I was leaving Kearsarge Cemetery, my phone buzzed in my pocket. My aunt Stephanie had called to help me narrow the search for Anne’s gravestone to a small quadrant of the cemetery. I reentered the graveyard with renewed confidence. It took fifteen minutes before I saw a decorative red hummingbird beside my grandmother’s name on a gravestone. I had arrived. But I still didn’t know
why I had come. Perhaps I had visited the cemetery for the same reason my dad wrote his letters; by acknowledging death, we make space for life. I whispered an apology: for not
//PERHAPS I HAD VISITED THE CEMETERY
visiting more during high school. I followed with a thank you, for the safety and predictability she had provided when I was a boy bouncing between parents. It’s rumored that she had nurtured my fondness for reading. I thanked her for that, too. “A bird flew into a window at my dad’s
FOR THE SAME REASON MY DAD WROTE HIS LETTERS; BY ACKNOWLEDGING DEATH, WE MAKE SPACE FOR LIFE.//
As I was planning my travels, I wrote Sacks a letter in which I thanked him for inspiring me to embark on an immense adventure. I wished him joy in his final days and the satisfaction of knowing that he had lived a rich and honest life. Several months later, I was in a hostel
in Guilin, China when I learned Sacks had passed away. It was at 3am, but I was awake, my stomach in a revolt from food poisoning. I had spent an hour clutching my abdomen, groaning and scrambling to and from the bathroom. I took an antibiotic and tried to distract myself with Facebook. As the pain began to fade, I saw the headline of Sacks’ passing.
house today,” I said. “According to superstition, it means death is near.” Before I had left my dad’s house, I
looked up the old wives’ tale online, and discovered there was another, more comforting interpretation. It also means changeis near. As I stood over the gravestone, I
remembered the letter I had read aloud at Anne’s funeral. My family huddled around me as I spoke; tears smacked the pages in my trembling hands. When I finished reading, my aunt told me that my grandmother had heard every word. If that were true, she could hear me now. “Watch over me as I change, Nanny,”
I said. “Then you can rest your eyes forever.” l
Connect with other readers & comment on this article at
www.livingnow.com.au
Dustin Grinnell is the author of The Genius Dilemma and Without Limits. His creative nonfiction has appeared in The Boston Globe, The
Washington Post, New Scientist, Vice, Outside, Perceptive Travel, Salon, Writer’s Digest, and Narratively, among others.
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