Being ill like this combines shock – this time I will die – with a pain and agony that are unfamiliar, that wrench me out of myself. It is like visiting one's funeral, like visiting loss in its purest and most monumental form, this wild darkness, which is not only unknown but which one cannot enter as oneself. Now one belongs entirely to nature, to time: identity was a game. It isn't cruel what happens next, it is merely a form of being caught. Memory, so complete and clear or so evasive, has to be ended, has to be put aside, as if one were leaving a chapel and bringing the prayer to an end in one's head. It is death that goes down to the center of the earth, the great burial church the earth is, and then to the curved ends of the universe, as light is said to do.Having only read some of Harold Brodkey's anthologised short stories, I was nonetheless intrigued enough by the concept of a memoir of his final illness, This Wild Darkness: The Story of My Death, to pick it up. And I'm glad I did: despite its brevity (177 small pages in my edition), it contains everything a memoir should (brief overview of childhood, career, relationships) and everything that a talented literary mind might note about the experience of impending death. After finishing it, I was unsurprised to learn in my Googling around that what might seem like flaws in the tone this work – arrogance, defensiveness, self-absorption – are criticisms that had been flung at Brodkey throughout his entire career; indeed, all of his fiction might be considered reworked memoir, with This Wild Darkness his necessarily focussed capstone. I was never unaware that Brodkey, having been given a terminal diagnosis, had a unique opportunity to shape a reader's final impression of him and his work – it would be impossible to say what is plain truth and what was moulded for posterity – but I choose to take Brodkey at his word; this is an affecting and enlightening account of a life, and a death.
In the spring of 1993, Brodkey was diagnosed with AIDS, and just short of three years later, he would die. Over those years, he continued to live his life – with the support of his devoted wife, the novelist Ellen Schwamm – continued to work on his previous writing projects; continued to travel; began composing what would become This Wild Darkness. I could summarise his biography as Brodkey shared it, but I really only want to let him speak here; to use a few snippets to demonstrate the evolution of his approach to his own death. Immediately post-prognosis:
Having accepted death long ago in order to be physically and morally free to some extent, I am not crushed by this final sentence of death, at least not yet, and I don't think it is denial. Why should it be different now? Ought I to crack up because a bluff has been called? I am sick and exhausted, numbed and darkened, by my approximate dying a few weeks ago from Pneumocystis, and consider death a silence, a silence and a privacy and an untouchabilty, as no more reactions and opinions, as a relief, a privilege, a lucky and grateful symmetrical silence to be grateful for.From the spring of 1994:
Often in the afternoons I wake after a nap with an awful sense of its being over and that it never meant much; I never had a life. The valuable sweetness and the hard work are infected by the fact of death: they no longer seem to have been so wonderful, but they are all I had. And then I want to be comforted. I want my old, unthreatening forms of silence, and comedy-and-cowardice. I want breath and stories and the world.From the summer 1994:
I don't want any human gesture of solidarity. I feel quite human anyway, infinitely human, which is to say merely human, and I don't feel the need for physical reassurance. I find the silence of God to be very beautiful, even when the silence is directed at me.And from the final entry:
I am standing on an unmoored raft, a punt moving on the flexing, flowing face of a river. It is precarious. The unknowing, the taut balance, the jolts and the instability spread in widening ripples through all my thoughts. Peace? There was never any in the world. But in the pliable water, under the sky, unmoored, I am traveling now and hearing myself laugh, at first with nerves and then with genuine amazement. It is all around me.I was constantly marking passages in this book – Brodkey's turns of phrase suit my taste to a tee – and his stated acceptance of his fate seems a lesson in grace and dignity for us all. Sad but true: while in his lifetime Brodkey was expected to be “the American Proust” and elevate memoir to a form that would live forever, none of his books (two short story collections, two novels, this memoir, some posthumous releases) are carried in either my local library or the bookstore where I work; twenty years after his death, Brodkey is all but forgotten. And that's a pity.
All deaths are ironic, cancer, heart attacks, all of them. They hardly suit what the man or woman was except as ironic comment.
What most intrigued me about this book was the relatively long timeline that Brodkey had in order to document his evolving thoughts and attitudes about his own demise; an observant and gifted writer, what he shares here ought to be of interest to us all. We sure don't all get the opportunity to form and communicate our thoughts, in the manner we would wish, at the end of our lives.
My father-in-law's favourite cousin - they grew up together and were more like brothers; best friends - was named Bob Marino, and his recent passing was swift and shocking. Despite being nearly 79 (and a large man who loved his food and drink), Bob had never suffered a serious illness in his life. It was surprising, therefore, when a recent exam revealed that he had colon cancer. With further testing, it was discovered that the cancer had also spread to other organs - stomach, bowel, pancreas - but this was not necessarily an immediate death sentence: When Bob's oncologist asked him what his goal for treatment was, Bob replied, "I would love to reach my 80th birthday". And whether it was realistic, or just some helpful positivity, the doctor agreed that that was certainly attainable.
Bob committed to an aggressive plan of chemo and radiation, and the night before he was to enter the hospital to begin, he had a priest over to his house: they had a meaningful discussion and Bob was given an annointing for the sick. He called my father-in-law, Jim, immediately afterwards to tell him how encouraged and at peace he felt. A few hours later, Jim got another phone call: apparently Bob had suffered a major stroke, and speechless and half paralysed, he had been rushed to the hospital. Even worse: because of the cancer, Bob couldn't be given any of the blood-thinning medications that might have mitigated the stroke's damage, it would spread the disease like wildfire; because of the stroke and some newly discovered blood clots in his legs, he could no longer be given chemo.
When Jim went to visit, Bob was understandably upset and impatient. When he regained some ability to speak, Bob said he didn't want to live like this; he was ready to die. Maybe a week later, when Bob was spending less and less effort trying to communicate with his visitors, Jim brought his barber gear along to the hospital with him on a Friday night and gave Bob a shave and a haircut. Jim said that when he tried to help Bob sit up, his hand was batted away dismissively, if weakly, but when he was done, Bob squeezed his hand in thanks; managed to breathe out a faint, "Jim". Bob was dead by Sunday.
I met Bob many times over the years and found him to be intelligent and curious about the lives of others and ready to engage in any conversation - as Dave says, "Bob Marino was the smartest man I knew, and he wasn't afraid to tell you". Dave has also always said of Bob, "He became a Catholic priest just to get the free education - once he was ordained, he quit". Dave likes to tell that as though Bob pulled a big trick on the Church; as though that was both schemed and admirable. But I think Bob's journey was more subtle and searching than that: he was always a man of faith; of community. Dave and Jim went up to Peterborough last weekend for Bob's funeral and were pleased that he was given the full rites of a priest; they both agreed that Bob would have loved that.
As an intelligent and garrulous man, I can only imagine that his limited powers of speech would have been the greatest hardship for Bob in the end. From initial diagnosis to his last breath took about six weeks, and Dave and I agreed that that could have been a kind of gift - enough time to set his affairs in order and say his goodbyes; no long lingering in pain and helplessness; better than being hit by a bus; certainly preferable to being hooked up to machines for months. But it's never enough, really. Most of us will not be given the three years Harold Brodkey had in which to think and feel and evaluate; to work our sensory and mental impressions into suitable, into lasting, words and phrases. Bob went too fast, too soon; I know he had more to say.
Bob's obituary (I have no idea if this will be online forever, so I'm going to copy/paste the whole thing):
Dr. Robert Vincent Marino
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