Hanging On

Ta-Nehisi Coates, my favorite blogger went into anaphylactic shock last week while riding a train.  He remembers hearing a doctor and fellow passenger leaning over him and saying, “I can’t get a pulse.”  But he lived to write about the story.  He says, “…I have seen the elephant now. It would not have been the worst way to go--kinda quiet, as Biggie would say--but it would have been going all the same. And I am most happy to still be here, to be with my family, and my friends, to be in the world with you.” 

 

Sy Safransky writes, “And I marvel…that I’m now sixty-seven years old, which is inconceivable to some of my closest confidants…Then I notice the calendar: the first decade of the twenty-first century is already behind us, which means I’m that much closer to the day it all ends, my appeals exhausted, my friends in high places insisting their hands are tied, except to wave goodbye.”

Reading the obituaries today, I see that two of the deceased were born the same year that I was.  What can I say?

(This is the first time I’ve encountered the expression “seen the elephant.”   Here’s one definition:  “Experience more than one wants to, learn a hard lesson; also, see combat, especially for the first time.” )