Death becomes Him

I read this today on the CBC website:

Irving Layton died Wednesday at the age of 93 from Alzheimer’s in a geriatric home, an entirely unsuitable way for Irving Layton to die. He really should have gone off in the middle of a violent and elaborate sexual act, or interrupting a particularly solemn moment in a religious ceremony. Such a long, lingering cruel emptiness of a death flouts the symbolic vitality that filled the rest of his life to the brim, and which spilled over into his written works, some of the most passionate lyrics in English Canadian letters.

I resent how the writer is dissatisfied by the manner of Mr. Layton's death. That somehow, the poet (or at least, the circumstances of his death) has let down all of English Canada by the mundane conclusion of life's final act.

Perhaps because I'm experiencing (vicariously) the drama of a family attempting to cope with the living wage of Alzheimer's -- which is anything but staid, banal or boring. But also because it begs to to question: must we, who spend so much time assessing, steering and shaping the course of our lives also be thinking about doing the same with our deaths. Cannot death be the ultimate relaxation, the point at which we relinquish control and allow the natural what will be to be?

In point of fact, that is what death is. Unless the Ultimate Control Freak plans the Ultimate Death and chooses suicide, none of us are in control of our deaths. This is not how it 'should' be , or how it 'could' be, this is how it is.

And so I beg the writer of the online memorial to Irving Layton: please, allow the man to rest in peace.

Now I'll go read the rest of the article.