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A Meditation on Entropy
I got word last night that my aunt had died. It was one of those horrific stories you hear once in a while: she had advanced cancer, but didn’t know it. Last week she was feeling a little run down, so she went to the doctor; they ended up telling her she had a few days left.
She was someone I saw only occasionally, once every few years or so. But she has been at the periphery of my life forever, so her departure means (not for the first time) that my world has been redefined, with something I took for granted as permanent suddenly gone. More to the point, she was my mom’s little sister, and pretty much the only family my mom had left. They talked on the phone almost daily. I don’t know what this is going to do to my mom.
This is one of those events that makes you sit down and think about things you normally don’t want to think about. I realized about a decade ago that middle age is the time when you have finished building the life you’re going to have, and it turns into a holding action. You try to maintain what you have for as long as you can, but you know eventually you will lose it all. Everything falls apart and decays and eventually dies.
My mom once said to me, “Families have a way of renewing themselves.” And she’s right. Last year my nephew and his wife welcomed a baby girl, and they’re planning more. The world will go on; but I feel like I am just an observer, privileged to get a glimpse of the world that will be, but that I will not be a part of. My world will continue to fall away, piece by piece and person by person, until only I am left, or I leave it myself. (I’m not sure which would be better.)
Despite the dark tone of everything I’ve written, I do not feel depressed, or even particularly somber. But it is sobering to be reminded of how fleeting and impermanent everything is. Suddenly my life feels fragile, like it’s held together by the slenderest of decaying threads, and that it cannot last. Nothing can. I think it is good for me to be reminded of that.
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In such moments — and there have been a few — my natural inclination is to circle the wagons, gather the chicks under my wing. Reach out and reconnect with the living.
Life is a beautiful tragedy. I’m sorry for your (and your mother’s) loss.
Yes, and woe to those millions who will reach middle age having never built a life for themselves. What will become of the 50 percent of my generation trapped in extended adolescence — the Peter Pans who live only to consume, and never to create? Their worlds will fall away, too. But they’ll have no posterity, no legacy, nothing. No family. Nobody to love, and nobody to be loved by. It’ll be as if they’d never existed at all.
I’ve especially noticed more than normal my own decay, as my body erodes and ages. I try to remind myself of all the blessings I do have, about the fact that overall I do have good health, and that I still have much I want to accomplish. Beautiful piece, BXO.
Spot on. And while there is real tragedy in what you point out — I am afraid there are members of my own family who are in the category you describe — there is comfort in it, too. Because it reminds me that I have had a good and meaningful life, and I hope to continue doing so for some while. I don’t think I will ever run out of things I want to do, but when my time finally comes, I think I will be able to face it with a minimum of regret. It might be small and faint, but I think I did make a mark on the world while I was in it.
Life is the only natural process that reduces entropy. But only locally, and only for a while.
That’s quite unusual. Life.
I’ve seen a wife, a brother, and several friends leave this earth far too soon. With old age, losing people becomes a relentless companion. To be sure, thinking of my grandchildren and their children inspires the joy that renewal brings and leaves me with satisfaction that life is just as it should be. And I frequently refresh my spirit by reciting the words of William Cullen Bryant in Thanatopsis, which ends:
So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
BXO, if you want to take your meditation to the ultimate level, I recommend a story by Isaac Asimov titled “The Last Question”. Your thoughts on entropy are quite sobering, but Asimov’s story ends( in my opinion anyway) on a hopeful note. I will say Asimov’s story might not be to everyone’s taste, but may be worth a read.
In any case , thank you for a serious and interesting post.🙂
I rarely recommend Asimov to adult readers, but that short story is one of my favorites. I was talking to someone just the other day about it; I’ve thought of it often since I read it half a century ago.
Bartholomew Xerxes,
Thank you for the calming and thought provoking post. I’m sorry for your and your mother’s loss. I’m suddenly thinking, though, that it would be a wonderful thing to go the way your Aunt did, as long as you could say to God “This is what I did with the time you gave me” and sense that He’s there and He’s pleased.
Re: comments 8 and 9
I just read the story and love it.
Sorry for your loss. Family is such a permanent thing until it isn’t. The older I get, the more I face the transient nature of life on earth and am comforted by the belief that death isn’t the end but just the transition. To the living, the shock of losing someone can seem so permanent, a vacuum that defies physics and can’t be filled. Of those I have lost, the hardest to endure were those whose illness caused them to linger and suffer while I was helpless to alleviate the suffering.
Sorry to hear about your loss.
God bless your aunt. I remember as a kid hearing our relatives talking about so and so’s illness or new diagnosis, etc. and wonder why they talk about that? Now it’s like here we are – same thing. A friend has a new diagnosis, what’s that strange looking new mole, one thing after another. It is scary, but then it’s good to realize each day is a gift and do our best.
I know exactly what you mean. My mother had eight sisters. So I heard eight times that she had lost a sister (they lived far away and I had only met a few of them a few times)
I think now about how casually I reacted, then think about losing one of my sisters …
@bartholomewxerxesogilviejr; sorry for your loss. And for your mom’s.