Equipped to Die

I think that maybe we are equipped in weird ways to deal with life, as well as death. In life, when we encounter something too terrible to comprehend, we often don't comprehend it at all. Our brains - and sometimes our bodies - will just shut down or close off in order to avoid the trauma. This is the thinking behind fainting upon seeing something disturbing, or repressed memories in general (which most likely exist in a far different capacity than what we currently consider). Some people explain that the body or brain thinks it is dying, and so it does whatever it can to avoid death - or the pain associated with death - including running away (shutting down).

Similarly, when we die, our body has a compensation mechanism. Actually, to be more specific, when we die "naturally" according to a scheduled break down associated with aging, our bodies have a compensation mechanism. If we die slowly enough, usually our brain will go before our bodies do. This sounds terrible, especially to a person like myself who finds pride in mental facility. However, as I think about it more, maybe it's better. It's certainly harder on the people around us who have to watch us revert to a childlike mental capacity, but it must be easier to die when we don't realize it. The most disturbing horror movie villains usually let their victims know that they are going to die, and that there is nothing they can do about it. The true trauma is in the knowing. Ignorance may actually be bliss. If you don't have the wherewithal to recognize that you're in a hospital bed, maybe you don't have the wherewithal to recognize that something bad is happening to you.

Something new is occurring to me, actually. So my grandfather is in the hospital. He is a doctor. He specialized in geriatric processes, or getting old. He was always secretly afraid of getting old, and of dying. That's a tragic thought, since those things are so very inevitable. He has been in and out of the hospital a number of times in the past year due to blood toxicity as a result of his own self over medication. He grew up in the polio vaccine and penicillin age, which means that he believes a little TOO much in pharmaceuticals (all aged doctors right now probably are the same way). He would take too much, or forget that he took something and retake it, or maybe he was just using too much in general. Whatever. He was running as fast as he could from the pain of dying. But I think it has caught up with him now. He fell last week and cracked 6 ribs. He is lying in the hospital now, and looks like he might just be on his final leg. He flitted in and out of conscious conversation, dropping occasionally into half lidded stupor. Forgetting my name. Thinking I'm my father. Then he's back. Makes a joke. Gone again. Et cetera. Et Set Er Uh. Et - "And," Ceteri - "The others." And The Others. 2001 Nicole Kidman vehicle. A woman who lives in a darkened old house with her two photosensitive children becomes convinced that her family home is haunted. Terrifying secrets are revealed. Haunted. We're haunted by the ghosts of things. Regardless of logic. Things fly into and out of consciousness without our control. Things that terrify us. Things that palliate that fear. Things that are just there to remind us that they will be coming back again to scare us once more. Age doesn't just fly into and out of our haunted brains. It actually never shows up at all. It is the long shadow of the colossus killer standing one hundred miles in front of us. Too far to see her wrinkled face. But the sun is blazing behind her, and if it weren't for that hot shadow crossing your face, you'd be blinded entirely.

"Grace: So you say you know this house well?
Mrs. Mills: Like the back of my hand, that is assuming the walls haven't sprouted legs and moved in the meantime.
Grace: The only thing that moves here is the light, but it changes everything."
-The Others