Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Urgent Care & Farah Fawcett “I’m Ready for My Close-up, Mr. Demille”

Today I took my daughter, who was not feeling well, to the Urgent Care facility in Rye. There is something about a doctor’s waiting room that gives you pause. Most of the time when I am in there sick I don’t notice much. I am like everyone else; a little impatient, I want to get well.

However, today I was quite alert and noticed all kinds of people looking a bit miserable and out of sorts, wanting to be healed. In contrast to this motley group there were a lot of magazines in the office about the rich and the beautiful celebrities who seem so much healthier than these folks. So, I open up a copy of “People” magazine to discover Paul McCartney waving to a crowd with his fly open. And then I see Bill Clinton stepping in gum, discover that Lindsay Lohan feels so alone amid fears that she might hurt herself, read about Madonna experiencing heartbreak and devastation because she can’t adopt another child from Malawi, and Jennifer Aniston who cannot seem to find a husband after Brad Pitt.


Most interesting to me, though, is the picture of Farrah Fawcett of whom I used to have a poster over my bed in college. She was my favorite angel in “Charlie’s Angels”, and, I know, was the inspiration of fantasies for millions of men (and women) around the world. Now I see her in a wheelchair, down to 89 pounds, wrapped up with a wool cap over her head in Germany, trying to be treated for cancer that has spread to her liver. Could this be a bad dream, or does sickness, old age, and tragedy come to all of us, even the beautiful and famous?

What makes it all insane is that Farrah Fawcett is now being filmed on her deathbed, turning her struggle with cancer into a documentary. Maybe it’s just me, and it may sound unkind in this situation, but is this a little narcissistic or what? It reminds me of the great old movie “Sunset Boulevard”, where an over-the-hill actress refuses to let go of stardom and the camera as she says, “I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. Demille.” ( Watch it on YouTube ).

I may be old-fashioned, but shouldn’t dying be a little bit more private? It doesn’t need to be made into reality TV, it is already real enough.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Mother’s Day Post Mortem

For years I have prayed on Mother’s Day a prayer of thanksgiving for all mothers who have diligently carried out their important vocation. I also mentioned in almost the same breath our sympathy for those who have lost their moms. This year joined that “club”. I can’t say that it’s been an easy transition because I have had some very sad and difficult moments. I found a bit of comfort, if you want to call it that, in Christopher Buckley’s article in the April 26, 2009 Sunday Times Magazine called “Mum and Pup and Me”. He writes:
I think about them every day. Orphanhood proceeds (…). It comes in waves. One moment you’re doing fine, living your life, even perhaps feeling some sort of primal sense of liberation – I can stay out as late as I want, and I don’t have to make my bed! Then in the next instant, boom, there it is. It has various ways of presenting, as doctors say of disease. Sometimes it comes in the form of a black hole inside you, sucking the rest of you into it; at other times it is a sense of disconnection, as if you had been holding your mother’s hand in a crowd and suddenly she let go.
So, this year it happened to me; she let go.

Thursday, May 7, 2009

“Gremlins”

We love to point the finger at people who have fallen. For example, I was walking by a bookstore in Larchmont, and in the window was a book on Roger Clements entitled “The Rocket That Fell to Earth”. The hero and five-time Cy Young winner continues to lie about his steroid use. Another bright star, this one on the political scene, was Eliot Spitzer, “Mr. Clean” who cleaned up Wall Street as Attorney General, destroying in his wake many people’s lives. Then, of course, he was caught consorting with a call girl, humiliating himself, not to mention his wife and children. Today, when asked about the whole situation, he simply says that he is trying to deal with the “gremlins”.

The gremlins? An interesting term. What is a gremlin? A mischievous little person running around being destructive. I guess we are developing new categories today, or at least terminology, for explaining away sin. Sin seems too old-fashioned a word and demon may seem too strong. At any rate, it’s comforting to know that modern people, too, are searching for ways to explain evil in the world. I just don’t think that gremlin is good enough an explanation.

St. Paul talks about the good that he would do he does not, and the evil that he would not that he does. In other places he talks about the fact that we fight not only flesh and blood, but against the powers and darkness of this world. This doesn’t sound like little gremlins running around.

Talk to people whose lives have been destroyed by alcohol. Go to an AA meeting and discover a room full of people who can express enough pain to break the world in two. Talk to people whose lives have been destroyed by cocaine and various other drugs. These people don’t talk about gremlins; they talk about a universe of pain, sadness, and struggle. Someone once wrote that the way to hell is paved with good intentions. Jesus once said that the path to wholeness is narrow, but the road to hell is wide. So, when we are looking at places like Darfur, beheadings in Pakistan and Afghanistan, suicide bombers in Baghdad, I don’t think gremlins is a good enough term.