Life While Alive or Death Before Dieing

Death can be for us the tragic end and ultimate sadness. In Anatole Broyard’s Intoxicated by My Illness we learn that facing death can be a positive experience giving us a fresh outlook on life. This new outlook can allow us to appreciate the beauty and wonder of the life we still have more fully.

Broyard says that when he realized life is only for a limited time he was “filled with desire—to live, to write, to do everything” (327). This desire focused him. It allowed him to see what goals he had yet to accomplish and begin to bring them to completion. If we, like Broyard, face the fact that we will all someday meet our end, we may all be able to begin to carry out some of the important things that we’ve been too complacent to begin. For Broyard it was finishing a book. For you it could be the great cause of feeding starving children in Africa or perhaps something more innocuous like filming a documentary on sky diving.

Even if we don’t manage to do something fruitful with the last hours of our lives, at the very least—with the right perspective—we can become aware of how even some of the simplest things are truly amazing. Take simple body function for example. After being unable to sleep or excrete any bodily wastes at the beginning of his illness, Broyard tells us that having his body working again was a “voluptuous pleasure” (329). “[He] realized how marvelous it is simply to function” (329). His old boring body “was reborn as a brand-new infatuation” (329). Just as Broyard was reawakened to the marvels of a functioning digestive system, we too ought to awaken to the beauty of the life we have and the beauty of the life around us.

Someone might say that only the delusional can be truly positive about death. Who, after all, looks at pain and suffering as a positive thing? Certainly, no one looks forward to facing such a fate. However, when looking the pain and suffering of a life threatening illness in the eye, Broyard says that “you can turn toward this knowledge or away from it” (327). If we turn away, our last days may well be a morose lamentation. They could be death before dieing.

In contrast, by confronting the truth we can accept the life that is left and enjoy it. If we do this, even the food we eat can be a remarkable thing. After Broyard had acknowledged his eventual demise he says of his wife’s cooking: “I thought it was the most fabulous hamburger in the history of the world” (328). We also can use the knowledge of our impending death to savor the vibrant life that surrounds us every day. Ultimately, the choice to live while alive or die before death is in the hands of each individual. But if Broyard is to be believed, living is worthwhile even when it includes deadly illness. His perspective urges us not to brood over death, but rather to find a way to relish the life that each of us has.

Works Cited
Ferster, Judith. Arguing Through Literature. New York: McGraw Hill, 2005

Guacamole

Once as a child my parents took me to a Mexican restaurant. The adobe-red masks that hung on the walls fascinated me. Their eyes followed me wherever I went with benevolent, smiling cheerfulness or passive, frowning wariness. As I occupied myself with the wall decorations my parents ordered the food. I wanted a taco meal. My attention now focused on the painted patterns on the tiles of the table. Interlocking leaves and diamonds wove their way around the border. The diamonds were divided up into fourths by a pattern of black and yellow triangles. The leaves danced pale green across a bright blue background. The center of the table was covered in larger white shining tiles with yellow daisies painted in their center. It was upon these tiles that the waitress deposited the strangest thing my young eyes had ever seen. There on a small white plate surrounded by yellow corn chips was the oddest scoop of ice cream imaginable. It had a sickly green color as though the ice cream had gone rotten and lacked the smooth sheen of melting sweetness a good scoop would have. As my father scooped up some of the green ball, I asked: "what's that Daddy?" "Guacamole," he replied and handed me a corn chip with its own green mass. It was not the sweet goodness I had hoped for but I chewed diligently the traitorous ice cream that Dad had offered. "Whaddaya think," he asked. "It's not very good ice cream," I stated honestly. My parents laughed and tried to explain that it wasn't ice cream but it was many years before I understood that guacamole is not a sweet dessert.