Various Deaths

1.

He died suddenly, old for a man of a former generation, but young for a man of his own. He spent no time in a nursing home, declining. It was over in an instant. He was not old, but he was past his prime. His crispness was gone. He might have come down with Alzheimer’s had he lived. It ran in his family. He was beginning to repeat himself. He might have grown fatuous. He had had a very successful career. He had thrown his whole self into it, and it had milked him dry. After he received a diagnosis of imminent heart failure, he retired. He was accused of being selfish. One was expected to die in the saddle, and he was sorry about that, but he had to finish his magnum opus before his heart exploded in his chest. It took about a year and a half to complete it, and he was satisfied with the outcome.

No one wanted to publish it, however. All his life he had been driven by the need to accomplish, to make his mark on the world, and now that need was gone. Without that need, he began to disappear. Another year and a half passed. He was alone when his heart exploded in his chest.

2.

Her subject matter was how men control women and the subterfuges women had to adapt to deal with this, and what it meant. She made her reputation by revealing secrets, knowing that everyone had them. She got very good at living as these two people, the one who was present in the world and the one who had gotten so comfortable hiding her secret that she was almost able to hide it from herself. She reached the pinnacle of success in this way. Or not quite the pinnacle. The pinnacle was the prize that recognized her great achievement. But a funny thing had happened three years earlier. The part of her personality that was not holding the secret disappeared along with her words. Mum became the word, as is the case as Alzheimer’s disease progresses. She was living on like this in the care home when the prize was bestowed. She was informed of it but did not seem to understand. And then, when her heart forgot how to beat, she died, and the secret came out.

3.

Passion defined her life, passion for one man, and then, after he died, another man, neither one her husband of sixty-seven years. After the last death, she started to deteriorate. Finally, they put her on anti-psychotic drugs. Female caregivers were brought in, but she rejected them all, violently. Finally, a handsome young man was found, and she was glad. He in turn found two more handsome young men to care for her around the clock. They washed her and rubbed lotion on her soft skin. They couldn’t believe that she was ninety-eight years old because her skin was so soft. When she was impacted, they helped her evacuate her bowels. They came from a country where old people were revered, and she came from a country where sex is revered. She was in hospice for the last two years of her life and died peacefully at one in the morning in a hospital bed they had brought in for her while her handsome young caregiver sat on the white damask chaise lounge beside her.

4.

She didn’t have the ordinary things that women had. She never married, never had children, but she was a dynamo, working for various causes and making a difference in the public square all her life until her later years when people lost touch with her. Those last few years instead of making a difference out in the world, she held fast to everything that was inside. Nothing that came in during these last few years ever went out again. She had no family and no position, but she had this stuff in stacks all around her, filling up each room of her rent-controlled apartment, which is where they found her, three days after she died.

5.

All he had ever wanted was her. For her, he had started a business from nothing and made it grow. He bought Cadillacs and diamonds for her. He took her travelling everywhere in the world.

He knew how lucky he was to have her. She had returned his engagement ring three times, but he never gave up on her. When he found out she had been having an affair for ten years he forgave her and blamed the man, whom she promised not to see any more, but she did not keep that promise until that man died. He wanted to urinate on that man’s grave.

She tried to leave him several times, but he would never let her. He had a heart attack when he was forty-nine. Her father, whom she had loved, had had a heart attack when he was forty-nine, and he had died, but her husband lived on until one day, when he was eighty-four, they found his carotid artery almost occluded. The operation fixed that, but when he woke up, he was incontinent and unable to walk. She hired a caregiver to look after him day and night and bought a van that was wheelchair accessible so they could go everywhere—out to breakfast and to Macy’s and to visit their daughter. She continued to make dinner for him which his caregiver fed him, and she kissed him goodnight when his caregiver put him in his bed and turned on a recorded book he could listen to, loaned to him by the society for the blind, although he was not blind.

He was not blind, but rarely did he lift his head up to look at you. Sometimes his wife went on little trips or out to participate in events in the world, but she always kissed him goodnight before she left, and his caregiver took very good care of him. One day after four years of this, he aspirated his food. Pneumonia ensued. He lay dying in a hospital room with his children and grandchildren arrayed around him. His wife sat at the foot of the bed. “What about me?” she said. Her shining face was the last thing he saw.

6.

His health had been terrible for a long time. He had throat cancer and heart disease, and that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it was his beloved wife. She was still beautiful, but her mind was deteriorating. No, it had deteriorated. It was Alzheimer’s. It was becoming harder for him to take care of her. He gave each of them an Ambien every night, and there was also scotch. She was agitated, and one night he awoke suddenly, stumbled out of bed and put out his own eye on the bedpost. Their only daughter lived far away in another state. She had four children. She couldn’t be of any help.

When he met his wife, he had been overwhelmed by her beauty—the white-blond hair, the flawless skin, the pale blue eyes so unlike his own. His mother and his sister had hated her from the beginning and still did. She was a divorcee, and she came with a child from her first marriage.

As it turned out, everyone in the family loved that child, even more than the child that he eventually had with his wife. That child his wife came with grew into a young woman who was both handsome and good. She went off to Russia on a mission, and no one saw her for years, and then they learned she had breast cancer, and everyone was devastated, and then she died, so there was no one to take care of his wife if he should die before her, and now it was clear to him what he was going to do. He had gotten the news from his doctor today. His death was coming soon, and there was nothing he could do against it.

Or was there? He put the glass of whiskey down on the bedside table and opened the bedside drawer. His beautiful wife in her white peignoir lay asleep inside the Ambien before him. He removed the gun from the drawer and shot her through the heart and then he shot himself, in the head.

7.

She was English, and she knew it was because of this and because of her accent that he had married her. Because he was a Jew, a Jew who was making a lot of money, he wanted to come up in social class, and that is what she did for him. He had no idea about the real social class she came from.

She was a bit of a recluse, and the little wealthy hamlet near Santa Barbara where they lived, Montecito, suited her to a tee. They never had children, but a housekeeper lived in and tended to their needs. He spent half the week in Los Angeles at the Ambassador Hotel, leaving her with the housekeeper so he could run his factory. Sometimes when he was in L. A., he took his baby brother and his brother’s family out to a steakhouse, but no one ever saw his wife.

One day, after her husband left in a huff for the Ambassador Hotel, after she had put the housekeeper in her place, when, in her one-piece swimsuit and swim cap, she was exercising in her pool, which she had climbed down into--her pool that had a hard plexiglass cover that made it look a bit like an igloo--someone appeared behind her and bludgeoned her to death.

8.

Because they had died at about the same time, they encountered each other in the waiting room. It turned out that they had met before. The princess had come to the nun’s orphanage to lend a hand not too long before. Her beauty was somewhat marred by the blood running down her face. She had been in a screaming car crash, after all, speeding through a tunnel, being chased, all because of her beauty. Rather like how she had gotten here, through the tunnel to this waiting room. The ugly old nun had gotten here at the same moment, propelled by her goodness.

9.

The Angel of Death had been after him for years, but every time the angel came after him, he managed to wriggle away. Still, he knew his luck would run out some day, and now it was clear that that day had arrived. His family was gathered in the hospital waiting room, only allowed to see him one at a time. His beloved wife was alone in his room with him. He instructed her to look out in the parking lot in front of the hospital. There she was going to see the new car he had bought for her. Her old Audi was on its last legs. This was a brand-new Buick sedan. If anything happened to him, he wanted to make sure she had a safe car to drive around in.

In the early days, when he had commuted to the city, she had been left in the suburbs with three children and no car, and she had figured it out—had her food delivered and relied on her neighbors. She could charm anyone into anything with her beauty, her warmth, and her wit. Now she told him she would send their daughter in to say goodbye next, the middle child, their beautiful blond girl who had had to have several operations as a child because of a leg deformity. She had had a psychotic break when she was in college and started cursing everyone. She was treated for this, and eventually it passed, and she started wearing only white or beige, which looked lovely with her gold blond hair. Soon she married a lawyer, and they furnished a house with beige and white. They had three daughters and lived nearby. When his wife bought a new coffee table, she bought two, one for herself and an identical one for their daughter.

His daughter still called him “Daddy.” “Daddy don’t die!” she cried into his lap. A little while ago, his temperature had been so high, they had packed him with ice. That was when they cleared everyone from his room. After that was when they let family members in, one by one, to say goodbye.

Next was the baby of the family, his second son. “Don’t die,” the kid kept saying. He was weeping. This son was a doctor with a lucrative practice, living on an island. He, himself, had wanted to be a doctor, but when he was coming up, there was a quota of Jews who were allowed into the medical schools. He had to become a dentist, although he knew he would have been a great doctor. He could not be prouder of his second son, however. His son had invited him to observe a surgery, and he had scrubbed in and gowned up. It had been a thrill. Now his son was screaming at him not to die.

But he was dying, he was going to die before his first-born, his spiritual poet-son, could say goodbye. He had always been at war with this son, but now that son was going to win that war. That son was going to prevail, and the very thought of this raised the anger inside him just as all his organs failed.

10.

It was his fourth wife who was going to bury him. The reason he had had four wives was because when he was a young man, he had suddenly come down with juvenile diabetes for no reason whatsoever. He was tall and slim, and yes, he drank more than a few beers, but that was because he was thirsty, which was a symptom of the diabetes. He knew the disease was going to take its toll, that things were going to go wrong before long because of the sugar in his blood, so he wanted to fuck as many women as he could before his charm was obliterated. Besides, it was imperative always that he be married, because he could neither drive nor cook. The disease made him lose his temper, so he could not be held responsible for any of the consequences of his anger when it was unleashed.

Each wife he had married had been successively younger. He had had a child by Number Two and that child was now a young man and living in another country. He made it clear to Number Four that he didn’t want to have any more children. He told her that “children are hostages to fortune,” and she said, if she couldn’t have a baby then she was out of there. In order to stop her from leaving him, he had a psychotic break and was hospitalized for several months.

After he got out, she got pregnant, and the child who came was not right and eventually also had a psychotic break and ended up in a half-way house. Meanwhile, because of the disease, he went blind and walked with a stick in shoes that were not really shoes because several of his toes had been amputated. He gave off a sweet sickly smell.

In his last months and days, or was it years, there had been someone new in the house with him and Number Four as she tended to him. He couldn’t see who it was, of course, because he was blind, but he knew the voice. It was a voice he had known since the owner of it was a little boy, the son of a colleague of his who had played with the son he had had with Number Two when the boys were children. Now he was a strong, handsome young man with prince-like long blond hair, a sort of prince-charming ne’er do well. He knew the type. He had wondered what wife Number Four would do when he was gone. She was still young. Now he knew.

No, that couldn’t be. She was too old for the kid. She was exactly as many years older than the kid as he was of her, his last wife. That was his last thought, and then the Angel of Death took him.

11.

Her last months were spent in a nursing home for the indigent in Santa Monica, California. She never married and never had any children, but she was an aunt. Her nephew lived in Santa Monica and visited her there regularly. One of her nieces visited her with her husband, all the way from San Francisco. At least she thinks that is what happened. She and the other residents were arrayed in their wheelchairs in front of the television. Two days before her death, her fingernails were painted pink by one of the aides. She was in her nineties, and this was the first time ever that her fingernails had been painted. She was a plain woman, one might say, a homely woman, with thick glasses, curly hair, warts and knee-high stockings covering her unshaven legs revealed beneath the hem of her skirt. She may never have married, but she always had a boyfriend who came for her once a week to take her dancing. She did not value material things.

She loved her cat and was cheerful and kind.

Her sister had died the year before, the sister she had protected her whole life, even though they were cosmic opposites, and her sister was older. Her sister was pretty. Her sister cared about material things. Her sister had a husband who everybody loved. She had had a series of miscarriages and was never able to bring a fetus to term, but she dressed elegantly and kept a beautiful house. Then one day the husband dropped dead.

A few days after his death, they made a terrible discovery. He had another family across town, and he had a child.

The two sisters moved in with each other in a modest apartment which the pretty sister furnished with her pretty furniture. Then the pretty sister lost her memory and had to be put in a home. The plain sister moved to a smaller apartment and left the pretty furniture behind. It was her nephew who finally put her in this home. She did not take anything with her. She had shed almost everything by the end, even her personality, the woman she had been who had thought painting her nails was foolish.

12.

She was the youngest of three sisters and the most cheerful. The oldest was embittered because her daughter had died in childbirth. She lived on in her devastated state, with the help of candy. There was always a box of candy next to her chair. She didn’t care that it was bad for her. The middle one was depressed because her husband had died young, abandoning her, and even before that, he had not been true to her. She coped with the help of narcotics. The life of the youngest had been shaped by the fact that her son, her only child, was born with a cleft palate.

It was operated on, but never entirely successfully, and he had trouble finding work and having relationships. It broke her heart, but she was always cheerful, even after her husband died. Her son was divorced, but then he married someone else and got a job in Connecticut, on the other side of the country. She was so happy for him she wondered if she shouldn’t move east also to be near him. She was very old now, and her heart wasn’t that good. He found a retirement home for indigent people for her not far from his home and visited her when he could. His new wife would not allow her in their house. The place where she was living was gaudy and unfriendly, and one concerning thing had happened. She had lost her sense of taste. She couldn’t taste anything, so eating became less and less attractive. An open-heart surgery was scheduled for her. She was prepped and rolled into the operating room. They administered the anesthesia, and in a moment, she was gone.

13.

He was a golden retriever, so he was naturally goofy and sweet. For many years his best friend had been the family cat, and he allowed the cat to do anything he wanted with him. He slept on the floor of the parents’ room, sighing and snoring. As a puppy, his drool had been prodigious. When he moved his snout to one side, it flopped over the top. There was a line of dirt along the wall in the downstairs hall, where he had rubbed himself, and the whole house floated with his fur. As a puppy, he had chewed everything, had famously chewed through a wall. He ate whatever he could find, darting under cars, yanking the parent on the other end of his leash. There was so much pizza under cars in the city. He swam in one of the lakes in the park a few times, but mostly chased the ducklings on the bank and greeted other dogs. He was friendly with everyone, but not everyone wanted you to jump up on them to try to hump them. Mostly, he was beloved. He listened with great sympathy and real interest to anything he was told, and he saw the children grow up.

It started when he was about fifteen. He just couldn’t go the whole distance of the walk he took every day in the park with the mother anymore, so he kept stopping to sniff, and then he just stopped in his tracks.

Getting down the stairs to the sidewalk outside to relieve his bowels became harder and harder. And then everything started running out of him. He had, long before, become deaf and blind, and when his muscles atrophied so much that he could no longer stand up, the family gathered, and after rolling him onto a sheet, carried him downstairs to the car. At the vet’s, the four of them were all stroking him and telling him they loved him as the vet gave him the lethal injection.