The wrong people die every

Nothing is promised, which is why your presence here in the Examined Family is so meaningful. Thank you for investing your attention, time, and money here. Your comments keep me going and teach me so much. Share today’s newsletter with a “doctor of durability” in your own life and let them know how much you admire them!

“Life isn’t fair.”

That is one of a handful of things that I can remember my dad saying to me repeatedly as I was growing up. And I didn’t like it. I had a real inborn quest for justice, in the best sense, and predictability and control, in the worst. When he said it, I felt let down—not just by him, but by the grown-up world in general. Why wasn’t the world fair? I wondered, naively. Why can’t we make it fair?

I’ve been feeling some of that little girl anger lately, but with a new twist. I’m not feeling let down by grown-ups; for better and worse, I am the grown-up now. I get how wounded, confused, and overwhelmed most of us are. At 46-years-old, my expectations for grown-ups are far lower. These days I’m feeling let down on a cosmic level, shaking my fist at the incomprehensible energy that I imagine as what some call God. Why is my dad still here, with his profoundly compromised quality of life, while people around me are dying at much younger and more vital ages?

sky by my daughter, Maya

I’ve had two dear friends lately who have lost someone in their 40s—one to a fast-moving pancreatic cancer, another to what was likely a heart attack. These men were artists, chosen family, vibrant, and beloved. They had so much more to do on this earthly plane.

When I heard about both of these deaths, I imagined my dad—who has advanced dementia—breathing a magical breath of life into these younger men, animating their bodies so they could go on—teaching students, parenting their children, going to death metal shows, and painting beautiful paintings. I imagined my dad free of his breaking brain and body—his spirit dissolving into the great unknown. I imagined grieving him wholly, holy. I imagined being released from the often painful weekly visits where I search for a sign that he still sees me, still feels joy, is just plain okay.

Why are these men gone and my dad is still here? It isn’t fair! I want to shout up at the sky.

But my dad was right all along—life isn’t fair. Whatever mysterious force connects us all isn’t picking winners and losers for some logical or ethical reason. I don’t know if it’s completely random, but I also know it’s not explainable. At least to my limited mind. I don’t get it and I hate it. I’m angry and confused.

Would my dad of a decade ago still want to be here now if he could witness his current state? I don’t think so. But that man, all those years ago, had never experienced what this man is experiencing. He hadn’t been enlightened by profound vulnerability, illuminated by a return to awe, enraptured by music and food like never before. He simply didn’t have enough information back then about how his disease would unravel him. And I don’t have enough information now. Even if I could organize a medically-assisted death for my dad, how would I know I was using the right criteria to make that decision when I have no idea what his life feels like to him at this point?

What I do know, without a doubt in my mind, is that if my dad could save these younger men, if he really could breathe life into them in exchange for his own, he would. It makes me frustrated that he can’t give that gift to them.

Some of that fiery feeling was soothed this Sunday at church. It was the annual service where the church leadership awards “doctorates of durability” to the eldest members of our congregation. It’s a little silly, but extremely sweet. First, all the elders who are “80 or better” take the stage and receive cum laude degrees and flowers from the children. Then those who turn 85 this year get magna cum laude degrees, and then everyone who turns 90 this year gets summa cum laude.

After that a few of the elders give testimony about their life’s journeys—some insights into spirit, loss, and a life well lived. This year, one man shared that he was an atheist, but became attracted to unitarianism when he read in the paper that all the ministers being arrested during the Vietnam War protests were unitarians. He’d never heard of it and went to check these radical religious leaders out.

One tiny woman with a perfectly coiffed silver bob spoke about the mentors who had taught her about aging and loss over the years, they way they allowed her to open the aperture of her own story about her divorce and understand how long life could be, and how surprising love really was.

Another man, this one 90 years old, and tall as the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk, caused a piercing static when he approached the microphone. Our minister approached him and gently turned of his hearing aid so he could be heard. He told a humble tale about leaving this very church over a dispute on a committee years ago. “It was ultimately irrelevant,” he said, and everyone laughed, no doubt imagining our own burning and soon-to-be irrelevant quibbles with our co-workers, partners, and neighbors. How petty we people can be. How short-sighted about the, if-you’re-lucky, long arc of a life and what really matters. What really mattered for this 90-year-old man was that after having spent 15 years in the “spiritual wilderness,” he returned to this church when his wife of 56 years died, the same one he had stormed out of, and the congregation welcomed him back with open arms. He went to a “chalice circle” for widows and met the next love of his life.

basket, by my daughter Maya

I thought of my dad during these speeches—all he had seen and done, all the irrelevant shit he had wasted his precious and limited life on while he was here in body, mind, and spirit, all the communities that had welcomed him, and then welcomed him again. I thought of my mom, too, as we sang in between each testimony about the one true calling being to “say yes to life.” She is in a new season when shaping her yes doesn’t appear to be simple or easy.

None of these “doctors of durability” deserved to be on that stage Sunday more than their dead partners or sisters or best friends. It doesn’t “make sense” that they got to give a testimony putting a life into a short tumble of words, trying to hold up the shiniest rocks as reminders to the younger and confused among us. It’s just how the cosmic story unfolded—sometimes tragically, sometimes triumphantly, usually both intertwined in surprising ways.

I can shake my fist at the sky all I want. The frustration is real and true and it’s not bad for me to feel it. But I also know that underneath it is just plain old grief. Grief over my dad. Grief for the kids who lost their dad and their teacher. Grief over my own discomfort at living in such an unpredictable, uncontrollable world with so much love, which means so much vulnerability. The wrong people die everyday. That’s the painful truth, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

There was a moment during the service when the oldest member of the congregation in attendance stood, she was 99 and sitting right behind me in the pews. No one expected her to come to the stage. A little kid ran down the aisle and handed her a bright yellow carnation and the minister hand-delivered her certificate. She stood, waving the certificate in the air with a giant smile on her wrinkled, cherubic face and everyone stood up and gave her a standing ovation. Tears tumbled out of my eyes. What a thing—to radiate that amount of joy and feel hundreds of people beaming it back at you for the simple act of saying yes to a life that is never promised, rarely fair, and still wildly worth it in the most surprising of ways.