Impotent defiance

If Christopher Hitchens died suddenly from a heart attack, no one would give it a second thought. We all know that we’re going to die someday, but with a terminal cancer patient, both the patient and his acquaintances can see it coming more clearly. Marking the days off the calendar. The dying process is accelerated. 

The moment of death is still unpredictable, but we’re living in the presence of death in a way that’s not the case for someone who gradually dies of old age. It has a sense of imminence. Not hypothetical, but palpable.

Normally we don’t know how close someone is to death until it happens. Like a painted wooden fence that may look new and sturdy on the outside, but is riddled with dry rot. Lean into the rotten fence and it snaps beyond repair.

We’re probably the only creatures who can anticipate our own demise. And being a writer, Hitchens chronicled the inevitable in graphic, arresting, excruciating detail. He was almost an observer at his own funeral. It’s a strange sensation to witness your own disintegration. Like a moviegoer who watches a film in which he sees himself murdered.

Both praying and dying have this in common: they testify to how helpless we are to control what most matters to us. To be wholly at the mercy of someone or something else.

I will never forget seeing my father dead. You know it’s bound to happen, but it’s still shocking to see. Like most sons I still remember him when he was young and strong and I was weak and small. Painful to see the man who’d been my protector and provider when I was little become vulnerable, unsure of himself.

You can see fear in the face of the elderly. The loss of control–of mind, body, or both.

Apparently, Hitchens died a defiant atheist. Yet nothing is more pathetic or transparent than impotent defiance.