by
Daniel W. Weinrich
“You don't drown by falling in the
water; you drown by staying there.”
The headlines today told of how somebody
went missing in the Snake River. I’m not sure if there was alcohol involved,
but there’s a damn good likelihood someone was stewed to the gills when they
hit the water and sank to the bottom. The message gets repeated. “Don’t drink
and boat, or don’t drink and swim, or don’t drink and drive and so on.” In
spite of the warning, people still decide to take nasty risks.
A few years ago, a guy I knew, a drinker
and a non-swimmer, climbed on a rubber raft to float the frigid water of the
Snake River with four other people. Ready for the party, they also dragged
along two ice chests full of beer. Oh, and no life vests.
I can hear them now: “Life vests are for
pussies.”
A beer fell off the raft and my friend
dived in after it.
Fast forward twelve hours when search
and rescue dragged the river for his body.
Here’s something: Instead of having to
pull old dental records to identify his body, he owned one distinguishing mark.
“Existentialist” was tattooed in big block letters on his back.
“Existentialists” are people who believe
they are solely responsible for creating the meaning of their existence. This
belief system suggests that personal essence is flexible up to the terminal
point of death. No one can define what kind of person you are until all the
votes are in and your potential is exhausted. If you have been a bad person for
most of your life, at the last moment you can redeem yourself, repent or do
something heroic. Up to our very last breath, we have the potential for
determining our role in history.
Anyway, two days after the existentialist
drowned, they found his body wedged in a head gate several miles from where
he’d dived in to save the beer.
“Is that him?” I imagine a searcher
asking.
“Not sure,” another one says.
“Roll him over.”
“What’s does that say on his back?”
“Exist, Exist-ential-ist…something like
that. That’s a big word to have tattooed on your back. I’ll bet that cost a
pretty penny. Maybe he should’ve spent the money on a life vest.”
Rather
than the cost of his tattoo, I wonder about the horror of dying from the lack
of oxygen. That’s got to be such a bad way to go, struggling like mad to find sustenance
where there isn’t any. And really, that’s the heart of the existential concept,
trying to find meaning where there might not be any at all.
When I was younger I went on a search
for meaning in Asia and I discovered how to survive under water. I spent time
in Phuket, Thailand learning to scuba dive. The dive shop was later demolished
by the Tsunami of 04. Some of the
people who taught me how to survive in the depths probably died from all that water.
The thoughts of them drowning keep me up at night.
Looking back, I have a history with
water running amuck and destroying property and killing folks. While I was in
high school, the Teton Dam collapsed and flooded the Snake River Valley,
ruining good stuff and killing lots of animals and a few people. After the
devastation my friend, Boyd, and I volunteered to help clean up in Rexburg and
Sugar City.
Boyd has a dry sense of humor. He makes
hilarious observations and never cracks a smile. Recently I cruised to the old
neighborhood where we grew up. We used to swim and float in the irrigation
canals and were forever getting yelled at by farmers. They didn’t want us
drowning in their ditches. “That’s what swimming pools are for,” they would
shout.
I stopped over at Boyd’s house. While we
were talking he picked up his son’s box turtle and dropped the softball-sized
creature into the full wading pool. The turtle sank like a rock, settled on the
plastic bottom and started walking as if oblivious to the change of
environment. Little bubbles wandered to the surface.
“Do you know what he’s thinking?” Boyd
said.
“Not a clue,” I said.
“He’s thinking, ‘where did all the air
go?’”
I laughed. The turtle motored along
under the water, looking side to side on a leisurely stroll and patiently
searching for whatever was missing. I rescued the pet, put him back on the
grass where he didn’t miss a beat and walked into a world full of air.
Boyd’s life is similar to the turtle’s
experience. His world has changed. My deadpan friend has a serious medical
condition. His career as a policeman and DARE officer is finished. Doctors
suspected a stroke, but tests didn’t indicate that conclusion. The results of
the medical and psychological examinations indicate a problem with his thinking
since he occasionally makes wacky decisions. There appears to be a lack of
oxygen or a lack of something that occasionally chokes out his rational
thoughts.
Boyd’s supposed to stay home and collect
disability checks. Some people might see that situation as a windfall. He
doesn’t. I don’t either. We want more meaning. We’ve always talked about living
a full and complete life where people remember us as being kind and generous. Being
remembered for living off the system’s charity feels like the legacy of a
parasite. He hates that idea.
Here’s a little good news for Boyd’s
life change from police officer to retired citizen lacking oxygen: Instead of
hanging with the criminal element and teaching students about the evils of
drugs and alcohol he now gets to spend quality time with his kids and
grandkids. That’s a nice thing he’s looking forward to.
We need that. Something to brighten our
lives so we aren’t overwhelmed by the array of tests and challenges life can
serve up. Boyd’s situation leaves me thinking about a quotation from Fredrick
Nietzsche, who died from a brain problem, the advanced venereal disease called
“tertiary syphilis.” I doubt he died with anything tattooed on his body,
although “Existentialist” in capital letters would’ve been quite appropriate.
“They played by
the sea, and a wave came and carried off their toy to the depths: now they are
crying. But the same wave shall bring them new toys and shower new colorful
shells before them. Thus they will be comforted; and like them you too, my
friends, shall have your comfortings—and new colorful shells.”
I like the image of that rhythm
Nietzsche describes, the waves moving in and moving out, taking and giving. Human
beings can learn how to appreciate what is in front of them and not be
resentful when predictably our toys are dragged off to the depths, which is
pretty easy to preach and extremely difficult to implement.
How do you explain to the mother who
lost her son to the river, or to the mother losing her son to some brain
disease, not to have resentment or other negative feelings about the workings
of the universe? This is the certainty of the past. The universe predictably
removes things we value and replaces other things that aren’t always as
attractive or functional. And people want to know why we lose good things.
People want to know the punch line before the joke is over. What does this all
mean? And the answer is? You can’t peek. You have to wait for the ending.
A college friend offered a novel answer
to the existential question. We were hunting jackrabbits near Hamer when the
topic of life’s meaning came up. A freak-of-nature explosion of the rabbit
population caused millions of rabbits to eat everything edible in Hamer’s
farming community. The frontage roads were covered in bloody gore from all the
varmints attempting to cross the asphalt. My buddy Eric said, “Why do you think
rabbits go to the road to die?”
We laughed with gallows humor. The
question is pretty ironic if you think about it. All those dead rabbits on the
frontage road either were victims of multiple accidents or, according to Eric,
responding to an unconscious choice created through instinct.
“Like salmon swimming up river to spawn
or birds flying south for the winter, maybe jack rabbits go to the road to
die.”
Eric, the potato farmer, expanded on his
theory of eternal life: “If all roads lead to death, then no roads would lead
to immortality. Without roads to die on, the jackrabbits could live forever. Avoid
those things that kill you and you might live longer. Tell people to avoid
roads, go back to the woods and deserts and sea-sides and see what happens.”
That’s a silly notion with some
profundity. We have the capacity to avoid things that might kill us. There is a
ton of academic and medical research telling humans to stay away everything
from food additives to iPhones. Our parents and our public service announcements
tell us to be careful and not take unnecessary risks. Don’t eat paint chips,
avoid exposure to radiation, wear sunblock, use a helmet, put on a damn life
jacket, don’t use intoxicants and engage in dangerous activities. Even with
that there’s no promise of living forever. From my experience, eventually time
sneaks up on you and defines you.
None of the jackrabbits we hunted in Hamer
appeared to live forever. Statistically rabbits that didn’t get run over or
shot or poisoned were allowed to starve to death over the long winter. Eric
offered this summary. “Death is death, whether injected by lead poison or
delivered via lack of nutrition.”
The end is the end. At least that’s how
as college students we justified taking the lives of rabbits in the desert. “They
were gonna die anyway.” In spite of Eric’s theory of immortality, all the
evidence suggests we are all destined to die.
Shooting at a million jackrabbits spoke
more to the thrill of camaraderie than some morbid fascination with death. Some
of my college chums drank beer while handling firearms. One of them took
shrapnel to the face that left a permanent scar under his eye. There’s another
example of survival skills given to human beings lacking common sense. “Mindless
Youth,” should have been tattooed on our backs. Whether you fall into the Snake
River or get hit by a bullet intended for a jackrabbit, you end up completed. Defined
for eternity in the local paper.
I spend time reading obituaries in the Post Register and often assume between
the lines of those who died after combating a “life-long illness.” The
life-long illness creating all this suffering is life, of course. Life is an
illness for some people. Existentialists would say human beings “decide” to
live in misery. They believe human beings enduring the most horrific conditions
can develop positive meaning in their suffering. “It’s not the kind of disease
the man has; it’s the kind of man that has the disease.”
That’s a quotation I like. I also like
this one: “Life is terminal.” Or better yet: “I have one less thing to worry
about. I know I’m not gonna die young.”
I’m at the point in my existence where
death is happening more frequently and moving ever closer to me. My mom has
failing health. Dad is gone. My buddy’s father is waiting for death. “He’s just
tired of being in pain.” Pain without relief might encourage folks to give up. Morphine
agitates him and makes him crazy. The pain puts him into a life of unbearable
torture and no narcotic can knock out the agony. He just wants it over. He
wants the process of aging arrested. He wants to pull a “Freud.”
Sigmund Freud killed himself in addicted
approximations with cigars and cocaine. In his final moments he requested a
lethal injection of morphine to complete his essence.
Unlike Freud my current goal is to grow old
well and die naturally, if that’s possible. I’ve lived with the delusion that I
wouldn’t get old when that’s not the case. Time ticks by, my hair grows thin
and gray and my offspring are young and vital as I once was. Look at my cohorts
from Ammon. Look at the folks I went to high school with, or attended college
with. They look old. Real old.
Not surprisingly, certainly they are
making the same judgment of me. In spite of my stout belief in personal
agelessness, people from my past must see me rambling around a Home Depot
looking for paint or weed killer and think, “Damn, he’s getting old.”
In the blink of an eye I’m no longer the
boy running through the potato fields, climbing barbed wire fences into pastures,
jumping over ditches, navigating a trail through the foothills to the succulent
apples and plums in the Smith’s orchards. I’m the old man sitting on my back
deck watching the kids trudging through the fields and thinking, “I’ll bet those
kids are up to no good.” I inhibit myself not to yell at them or to warn them
or somehow intrude on their day.
I want to shout: “Watch out climbing the
fence that you don’t bust it down or get cut on the barbed wire. Be careful in
the big ditch, there are some deep and swift spots.” Or maybe I could warn
them: “Look out, you’re gonna get old just like me and that can be scary.” Even
though I can argue either side of youth or age when it comes to scariness, I
often prefer those summer days, those carefree goal-directed moments when a
group of young boys searched for pop bottles to exchange for candy at Kelly’s
market or hiked miles for a green apple or floated the ditch in old hot black
inner tubes. We gulped water from garden hoses and rested in the shade of
ancient trees in afternoons lasting forever.
So I could yell from my deck overlooking
the Ammon fields irrigated with muddy canals, “Love these days! Love these
beautiful meaningful days!”
The kids would probably remember the
grumpy old guy who used to yell crazy things at them while they explored the
wilderness around their homes. I hope they would remember me screaming about
the love of life and the preciousness of each moment.
Mostly I hope they learn to appreciate
the roaring of destiny, the giving and the taking waves that wash over us all.
Daniel W. Weinrich received his Bachelor and Master
degrees in Experimental Psychology from Idaho State University many moons ago.
He spent a few years in Japan studying the marital arts and seeking
enlightenment. Later he did a stint at the University of Utah in Counseling
Psychology while working in Salt Lake County for the Substance Abuse Division.
While living in Idaho Falls, he’s worked in the public and private sectors
dealing with issues related to addiction and mental illness. He received a
Ph.D. from the University of Idaho in Adult and Organization Learning, doing
his research on addiction. He currently works for the Idaho National Labs as an
employee assistance counselor. He has been the Clinical Supervisor at the
Addiction Rehabilitation Association for ten years and is involved in the Drug
Courts. He has several writing awards for his novels, short stories and poetry.
Dan enjoys being with his family, writing, snowboarding, testing prototype
parkboards and collecting Godzilla toys. His family enjoys avoiding him.
