Scott Cawelti

11-21-99

"The hardest part about growing older," a friend once lamented, "is watching your friends die."

I certainly don't feel ready for the rest home, and still have all my hair, but last week Larry Mikesell, one of my oldest friends, died. He was only a year older than me, and I've known him since 1962.  A fraternity brother, he stayed in touch with everyone.       

A lively, funny, smart man with a deep interest in staying connected,  Larry sent me dozens of notes over the years. Congratulations, Christmas cards, thanks, invitations, comments--whatever he thought was important at the time.

Unlike most of us, he kept up with the news of peoples' moves, their divorces, their struggles and triumphs. In effect, he became the social chair, historian, and verbal chronicler of  a large group of connected people, and beloved for that.

Yet he was also beloved because of his interest in practically everything. He could talk at length about any American President, and held a particular interest in Calvin Coolidge, of all people. Our lunches, and we had many over the years, would consist of extended conversations on Presidents, university politics, and all the people we both knew. I couldn't help but feel awe and admiration for his continuing interest and appreciation of people I had nearly forgotten.

He reminded us all that connections with one's past enriches one's present.

For years he was a heavy smoker, but had quit. He loved to eat, and weighed probably forty pounds over what a doctor would have recommended. Still, he seemed in fine health to all who had seen him recently. No sicknesses, no symptoms.

So everyone went into shock when they heard the news:  Wednesday, November 10, Larry was driving home on the MacVicar Freeway in Des Moines, where he had moved recently, and died of a heart attack at the wheel of his car.

Though his car was totaled, no other drivers were seriously injured, and he certainly felt no pain. Because it was so sudden, there were no goodbyes, no time to prepare, nothing but emptiness in that space that only he could fill.

At his memorial service last Saturday, several speakers lamented not having him there, and noted with sadness how much he would have enjoyed seeing all his old friends.  I saw people I hadn't seen in literally thirty-five years, all come to honor the man who kept us connected.

And as bad as Larry's sudden death was for his wife and relatives, they realized that he had lived well, and long enough to leave a mark on everyone who knew him.

And I'm coming to a surprising conclusion about death: Sudden is better.

I've lived long enough to watch relatives and friends' relatives waste away in nursing homes,  their memories, dignity, and even awareness of their immediate surroundings long lost.  Human vegetables.

One of the more poignant expressions of this dilemma has been unfolding on "ER," the NBC doctor drama. Alan Alda plays "Gabriel Lawrence,"  an aging, formerly brilliant physician who's losing his mind to Alzheimer's.

As Lawrence, Alda tells his former student that now he struggles with when to commit suicide. "If I do it too soon, I'll miss out on life and work I still want to complete, but if I wait too long, I won't know how to do it." 

Suicide certainly isn't the answer, but the fact that intelligent people seriously consider it when they learn they have Alzheimer's ought to be a warning: We need to find a better way to die than nursing home warehousing.

Now when I think of Larry Mikesell's shockingly sudden death, and my brother's similarly sudden death last year, I don't envy them.

But if I live long enough, I will.

10-02-11 

1.  Almost nothing I obsessed over in high school mattered. My big nose.  My skinny body, which gradually disappeared.   My inability to talk to beautiful female classmates.  My debilitating all-purpose anxiety

It all changed so radically in the decade after high school that those years seem to have never existed.  Yet they still mattered, oddly enough.

2.  Memories don’t seem to be shared at all, except in very general terms.  Yes, we put on a very difficult five-act tragedy in blank verse, call WINTERSET, during my junior year.  I remember it as being a bit scary, and was amazed that we actually did it.  Also that it was pretty good, though probably not really, looking back on it.  It was like the dancing dog—the wonder is not that it dances well, but that it dances at all.  Do any of you remember that monumental enterprise?  Was it all a dream?   

 3.  Meeting old high school friends and acquaintances is a huge pleasure, even after fifty years.   Those bonds go deep, even though we only know each other from those few formative years, when we were all potential and no reality.  Somehow, if we still accept each other now in spite of high school behavior, it means something.

4.   I’d love to go back to the start of 9^th grade in 1957 and re-do those four years.  Now I would actually pay attention in Chinese history class.   And Mr. Kemp did know some stuff about English, though I can’t remember what right now. Our little rock n’ roll band The Ramrods was terrible, but might have been better had we known how to actually rehearse for improvement rather than just learning songs.

5. Some of our teachers were actually seriously intelligent and knowledgeable, and could have taught us more had we been more curious, more attentive, more motivated to actually learn.  Too many raging hormones and social insecurities.  I’d love to sit in now on one of Mrs. Lamb’s history classes, or Mr. Lindsay’s discussion of the Civil War.

6.  And how we’ve aged.  Here we are, looking not like out parents, but like our grandparents, which many of us are.   When graduated from high school, my dad was 20 years young then I am now.   And I thought he was ancient, of course.  And my grumpy and mean grandpa, who was about my age, was simply too old to even notice.

7.   Yet, we remain about the same.   I’ve been surprised at how familiar everyone seems once the first sentence is exchanged.