I’ve been obsessing a bit about my weight lately. As I mentioned in another blog, I’ve gained weight—about 7lbs—for the first time in my life. Driving to work the other day, I realized my dread is not really about the weight, nor about my running injuries and change of exercise. It’s about—and sorry to get heavy—death. Gaining weight symbolically represents my frailty, my inevitable spiral to old age and sickness. I guess I’ve mostly avoided it till now. I was relating this to a colleague and she countered “I’ve never worried about my own death, only the death of others.” I quickly replied, “And how old are you?” The answer: “23.” Well, talk to me in 15. But then again maybe it’s a gendered obsession. Mulling over all this, I was reminded of the great line from Moonstruck when Rose Castorini, played elegantly by Olympia Dukakis, asks a male friend, “Why do men cheat?” (she’s trying to figure out her husband) and he replies, “Because they are afraid of death.” I didn’t really get that line the first three or four viewings, but this last time (I caught the final 30 minutes on TV last Saturday) it cut to the core.
An unrelated note: I'm hoping for a reply or two from my fellow teachers out there on the post below. I figure I have at least 25 years of teaching ahead of me and I need to create some sort of emotional scaffolding in which to give it meaning, i.e., I'm curious how you all negotiate the teacher life.
6 comments:
I think about death all of the time. I was really conscious of my own impending death when I was a kid (I know, it's tragic), and then I got over it. Then it changed about the time, stereotypically, that I turned 30. I don't think it's a gendered obsession, but maybe I'm just weird.
I too obsessed about my own death as a kid and then it went away.
You know it is weird: for about five or six years now I don't think at all about death like I used to prior to that. As a teenager when my dad died something in me broke and I just thought everyone was going to kick the bucket more quickly than they did. Death, however, always catches us by suprise. My mom's death was completely unexpected. I guess having both parents gone changed my perspective. Now don't get me wrong, I still think of my own pending demise, but it is not just a thing that seems like it is eminent to me. I can see it being a long ways off. When I was a teen I thought I'd be dead by the time I was 22.
I didn't realize both your parents had died. That's realy tough. I'm assuming they were not that old.
I've heard people say that once your parents are gone you see the world differently.
Yes both dead. I was the youngest child too, so they died when I was pretty young, in all. I don't know if I see the world that differently than any one else. It is odd, however, to suddenly know that there really is no parent to turn to any more to help you out.
I've always liked the Woody Allen line: "It's not that I'm afraid of death. I just don't want to be there when it happens."
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