COLUMN: Faces of Death

From Jodi Bromberg's "Red Fish, Blue Fish," Fall '94 Oops, I'm Jewish. I don't believe in hell. Sorry, guys. Perhaps I will do neither and my soul will simply wither up and blow away. All that remains will be six feet under, dressed in something complementary no doubt, my lips sewn together and my face caked with make-up. They will cover me with a blanket, a veil over my face, laid out nicely in a plain wooden casket. They will bury me and put pebbles on my tombstone. Who will come to my funeral? Will anyone? Will the eulogy be kind? Will people cry? Will I soon be forgotten or will the memory of me live on? Death. We never really know when it's going to strike. Is there some time bomb ticking away inside me? In you? In a split second, our lives are shattered. A phone call bearing bad news. "I am sorry to tell you?" they usually begin. Will I die tomorrow only to realize my life is nothing? Will someone I love die, only for me to realize all that was not said? That all was not done? A drowning, a heart attack, a terminal illness. Three people in four months I have known have left this earth in search of another. Where have they gone? What happens to those people left behind, to suffer here? Which is worse? To leave or be left? How many of us have simultaneously plotted our death and feared it? No, it's not about suicidal tendencies, but perhaps a morbid sense of egoism and selfishness, the idea that if only we could see our death, see how much those around us cared, see how much we are loved, then and only then, would we know better how to live. We wonder if any of it matters, if we will wake up one day and realize our monstrous mistake. Should we have married that boy from high school, come out of the closet earlier on, had those three kids? Should we have traveled the world, laughed more, worried less? Not cared about money, cared more about people? Gone to graduate school, followed our dreams, taken more chances? Will we be upset that we maintained the status quo, not challenged what we knew to be wrong? That we sat idly by as someone was harassed, beaten, mugged, chastised for what we believed inadequate reasons? Will we, in our older years, be able to get up in the morning and look in the mirror without shame and indignity? I cried the eve of my 21st birthday. Sitting there, in a dimly lit Italian restaurant, a close friend chatting aimlessly, tears fell into my calamari. Well, not really. But it sounds dramatic, doesn't it? I was really slurping spaghetti. But, I digress?. My friend finally noticed and asked what was wrong. It took me a couple of hours to respond. Later, walking along the water – or was it past Wawa? – I remarked on the smallness of our nature. I never felt so little. Like Lily Tomlin in that early-80s movie. Nothing. I am. Where is this all leading to, I wondered? What is the grand scheme of this thing we call life? Is someone moving us around like pieces on a chess board? King, queen, rook, pawn?who will be the Fischer and who the Kasparov? Bigger, better, faster?. Where do you end and I begin? Obsession? Maybe just Old Spice. We spend four years here, all of us, maybe five. We are spit out, churned out, like parts on an assembly line. For what? A grade, a summa cum laude, an extra recommendation in our CPPS file? But have we lived? Have we loved? So many of us die, not leaving anything behind but a lingering story told by friends or pictures hung on the wall. But I offer you this. To paraphrase Thoreau, when you die, and discover that you have not lived, there are amends to make, things to do. You can make a difference. There are body parts, donations to be made. Oh yes, it sounds funny in such brutal terms, like a Purdue chicken packaged in Thriftway, but so few of us take advantage of the "gift of life." Is it perhaps absurd to think of it in these terms? Your death may save someone's life. A heart, a lung, a liver, a kidney to someone on some list, waiting, their life on hold, the value cannot be measured in monetary terms. Can you really be so sure that you will make a difference in your own lifetime? Are you so positive that you'll need your body in the next life, that the Messiah is indeed coming? Don't you owe it to humanity, at your death, to give life? It doesn't take much, usually just a check on the back of a driver's license. But is a mark on the back of a license all that you want to be remembered for on this Earth? This move may be generous and life-giving, but it can not absolve us of the lying, cheating, conniving that we all do. So, I asked my friend as I cried into my marinara sauce, "What can I leave as my legacy on this planet?" "The tip," she said. Jodi Bromberg is a senior History and Communications major from Springfield, New Jersey. Red Fish, Blue Fish appears alternate Thursdays.