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“Death Takes a Holiday” is a black and white movie made in 1934 starring Frederic March. He plays the part of the Grim Reaper who decides to come down to earth, walk among the mortals and see what it’s all about. He falls in love with a young girl who is due to die and decides she will live. He declares a holiday for all death. Someone jumping from a tall building survives. Passengers in a crashed airliner walk away alive. No one dies. It soon becomes obvious that death is a part of life, the culmination of it. My friend Charlie Hudson visited me on a recent weekend to talk about my writing his biography. He was distracted by a phone call from his brother who said their mother was not feeling well and they were taking her to the hospital for tests. Driving down to their home in Midville, GA, he learned she had serious problems, one of which was her gall bladder. But she was too frail for an operation. His mother was 90 years old. She told her doctor she was “ready to go.” Josephine Howard Hudson had raised four boys and a girl with little help from her husband. Charlie was the oldest. She died a few days later and they were pained at the loss. But they were grateful for the many years they enjoyed with her. She had always been the nucleus of the family. Death is never easy to take. There is a sudden vacuum where a part of your life was filled and is now empty. It is especially difficult when someone young, with a full life ahead of them, dies. My daughter was only 30 years old when she died and left a place in our hearts that can never be filled. Even the death of an older person, one you have shared many precious moments with, is not easy. Guss Howe, a retired veteran who was a sergeant and flew with presidents on Air Force One, had just begun to draw Social Security when he was diagnosed with throat cancer. They gave him radiation and cut on his face until he looked like a botched operation. Doctors said he would live longer if he gave up his Lucky Strike cigarettes and Scotch, which he called a “jobby-do.” He lived alone and when he became unable to get around, I drove out to check on him daily. If he felt like it, I took him to our VFW post. If he didn’t, I did whatever he needed at home. His cancer was terminal and he had the odor of decaying flesh and death about him. None of his family lived nearby and they came to see about him. They talked and told me Guss had decided to die, by starving himself. A caretaker came in daily for a while and then it was determined he should go to a hospice. The family asked me to be there when they picked him up. “What are they doing to me, Pete?” he asked. “They’re taking you kind of like a hospital where they can take better care of you,” I half way lied. One day I got a call that he wanted me to bring him a “jobby-do.” I told the nurse who called that he wanted a drink of Scotch. Was it permitted? She said it was in his shape. I went by his home and picked up a half full bottle to take it to the hospice. When I got there, he was dead. Suicide is against the law and most religions. It was certainly a form of legalized suicide that claimed Guss. Although he was comparatively young by today’s medical standards, only 65, his time came and was accepted. I was not yet in elementary school when my father’s brother crawled under his house one Christmas morning and shot himself. He was plagued by ill health and asthma that never let him sleep. But it didn’t make sense to me, going under the house with a pistol and on a Christmas morning. Such things obviously only make sense to the person who does it. Modern medical miracles being developed almost daily ensure a longer and longer life span—if we can afford it. America just passed the 300-million population mark. That milestone places this country as the third largest in the world with people. The Grim Reaper is put off more and more. Even with all the benefits of medical treatment, there will be incurable illnesses and just plain exhaustion with life. There will always be a place for death to terminate the cycle of life. There will be a time to die. My wife was with her mother at her deathbed. She had suffered for her last years but she seemed to be holding onto her breath and breathing carefully as if hanging on to the last gasp of life. The nurse said, “Let go, Annie. Let go.” She released the final breath and died. Of course, not many of us are eagerly awaiting that final goodbye to life. No matter how religious, how stoic or assured of our philosophy, we are not really certain what lies on the other side. It reminds me of that song from “Showboat” about old man river: “tired of living but scared of dying.” So, as long as we can we will stay with what we know rather than go to what we don’t know, even though we know we will have our time to die.
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