Do Not Go Gentle...

E-mail over the weekend reveals that several family members are struggling with how best to support their parents through the last years of their lives. Mothers and fathers in their 70s and 80s are confused and angry, sometimes fighting tooth and nail for what they view to be that last ounce of dignity or choice in their lives.

My husband and I are reminded of one of the most famous poems ever written, by Dylan Thomas: “Do not go gentle into that good night.” He wrote the poem for his dying father as is clear from the last stanza.

The poem begins:

“Do not go gentle into that goodnight,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

From my own experience losing my parents a few years ago it is hard to know which is more difficult: when they are raging against the loss of all they knew of life – or when you can see in their eyes that they are starting to fade away. Dylan Thomas’s wishes come clear at the end of the poem:

“And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

We all hope for a quiet end with dignity and without suffering, in peace and knowing we did the best we could. But most of that is luck, and meanwhile we do the best we can to help those we love at the end of their journey.

Hand-waving Ensues

So, over the holiday break my company, in a green frenzy, installed motion detector light switches in all of our offices. Now when I enter my office I don’t even have to flip on the switch; the motion detector smartly senses my entry and turns on the lights for me. Of course, it turns on all the lights when it was my habit before to have only some of them on. And as I am working away diligently at my computer late into the evening, motionless in my intense concentration, the lights helpfully blink out, since the sensor thinks I have left for the day.

When I am working at our California site in a smaller office with the same setup, I deal with this sudden and sometimes startling darkness easily by raising my hands over my head and frantically waving them in the air (much as you are instructed to do if you suddenly encounter a bear in the woods and need to make yourself seem larger), until the sensor sees that I am indeed still in the office and turns the lights back on. However, in my regular office here, my seat is too far away from the sensor and regardless of my hand-waving energy, I can’t get the lights back on unless I get up, walk toward the light switch, and either turn it on manually or move vigorously enough that it notices me and turns itself back on.

Of course, my chiropractor would be thrilled with this office improvement; it guarantees that in the evening after a long day, I will get up periodically and stretch briefly. Just goes to show there is always a silver lining in every cloud.

I am thinking about going over to Target and buying some of those toy guns that shoot rubber bands to hand out generously to all my co-workers – then we can shoot at the light switches to turn them back on without getting out of our seats.

Attitude

We shot a lot of pool over the holiday break. Since I am about to take on a major new challenge at work, I found the following quote to be particular helpful. Attitude does make a huge difference.

From "Byrne's New Standard Book of Pool and Billiards,” p. 20:

“A surprisingly large part of pool skill is a matter of attitude and concentration. When the pressure is on, the player with the best control of his nerves and emotions has a big advantage.

Try to play with confidence, even if you have little reason for having any. The sooner you act like a good player, the sooner you’ll become one. I don’t mean you should swagger, pose, brag, and sneer like some of the insufferable clowns you see at tournaments, but I do mean you should cultivate an air of command. When it’s your turn to shoot, don’t come to the table with your face a mask of fear and indecision; step right up as if everything is under control. Handle the chalk and cue with the illusion of easy familiarity. Survey the mess on the table as if a computer is whirring in your head producing printouts of favorable odds…

Acting like a good player even though you are miscast in the role is not so much for the purpose of frightening your opponent as it is for building up a feeling of confidence within yourself. In many areas of life and pool, a confident mental attitude is almost as important for success as luck…once you decide to try a certain shot it pays to do so with forthrightness and even ebullience. You’ve got to believe that you can make the shot, that you will make it. At the moment of truth there is no room for pessimism. Once you allow yourself to start worrying about how hard the shot is, how poor your chances are of making it, how bad you are going to look if you miss, how embarrassing it will be to lose the game…well, then that exquisite machine you’ve been fine-tuning is almost sure to belch, backfire, and run off the tracks.

Phrased as an apothegm: Mental control is as important as cueball control.”