HEGHLU'MEH QAQ JAJVAM
No, that’s not a typo or me letting the cat pick the title for this blog entry. In preparation for the filming of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, James Doohan (the guy who played Scotty) and producer, Jon Povill, were asked to cobble together what would be the first utterances of Klingon. Later, linguist Marc Okrand was asked to build a true language for use throughout the media franchise. Like Tolkien’s Elvish languages, and, say, Esperanto, Klingon is actually a fully formed, constructed language with all the same linguistic rules as Mandarin, Flemish, or even English (though I’m fond of the joke that English is actually three languages in a trench coat that beats up other languages in dark alleys and rifles through their pockets for loose grammar and spare vocabulary).
This eventually results in burly, thoroughly makeup-caked actors yelling things like "Heghlu'meH QaQ jajvam” and bashing each other over the head with bat’leth.
Today is a good day to die
But is today a good day to die? Is there such a thing as a good day to die? Sure, you can choose to go into battle and give your life for a just cause. You could also sacrifice yourself to rescue babies from an orphanage, or throw yourself in front of a truck intended to run down an activist nun. But there are also seemingly meaningless deaths, like a six year old who dies from measles because her parents stupidly, stubbornly, and ignorantly refuse to vaccinate her. Is that a good day to die?
Any examination of mortality is bankrupt if it doesn’t consider the middle road of death by something mundane like a heart attack. Up until the fateful day in August, I hadn’t spent much time considering my mortality. I’m not an anxious person in general, and don’t experience much nervousness, either. I had always considered death to be something that was eventually coming, as it does for everyone; but, other than taking reasonable measures to not get myself killed, my quality of life would be severely compromised by regularly thinking about death. My general ethos was “it’ll happen when it happens and I’ll do my best to stay away from death’s door.” I call this my pre-heart attack method.
Hey, at least I didn’t die due to a bank failure-induced heart attack
Near death changes your perspective. Since then, I’ve spent more time thinking about my death. Not just the biggest question of “what happens to my consciousness when I die?” But, similarly important questions like “what do I leave behind?” And “how will this impact my friends and family?” I was also a bit wracked with smaller, detail-oriented questions like “how will I die?” And “will it hurt?” I know those seem like big questions, but, for me, when stacked up against what I call those aforementioned “biggest questions,” they seem relatively unimportant. Considering all of this is what I call this my post-heart attack method.
I’ve heard that it’s very common, so I wasn’t too surprised by one of the more alarming physiological changes. Your body becomes particularly attuned to just about every twinge, cramp, itch, and pain. Is each of these the first sign of something more serious? I’m not experiencing angina, but my shoulder has hurt a couple of times since I’ve had the heart attack. Every so often I can feel my heart skip a beat. Probably not more often than it used to, but I’m definitely more aware of it. I’d be lying if I said that I hadn’t spent a couple of nights in the last seven months laying in bed, late at night, considering the eventuality of shuffling off this mortal coil.
Twelve weeks of cardiac rehab has afforded me with improved heart health, and I can definitely feel it. Simply put, I feel stronger. While that definitely helps me feel confident that I’m not adjacent to death, it doesn’t effectively answer any of my questions.
As I lay in the emergency room in Haliburton, awaiting results of the blood tests and ECG, I looked up into the very concerned face of my wife. I couldn’t help but think that Jenny had to be considering that these might be the last moments we spent together. My immediate thought was how my death would be of great impact to her.
In the past couple of years we’ve been very unfortunate to endure the deaths of several close friends. Those deaths have been particularly difficult for me, especially that of my tabletop RPG game master, Michael. He was a caring, immensely intelligent, morally upstanding person who was taken well before his time. Amongst his family and very large group of friends, he was a hub of a social community. I know his wife and step-daughter have felt this very acutely, and everyone I’ve spoken to has expressed a feeling of “something fundamentally missing.” I don’t pretend to know what happens when we die. I mean that on many levels, but I think what most people are really asking with that question is “what happens to my consciousness when I die?” What happens to the one, inimitable part of me that has followed me throughout the entirety of my existence? I’m not sure I can tackle that query with any meaningful response in a blog post on Al Gore’s series of tubes. If thousands of years of human philosophy can’t adequately answer that question, I certainly can’t do any better.
I don’t know what happens when we die, but, if I was forced to answer, to make an educated guess, my answer would be: nothing. Nothing happens when we die. Not a great, black void in which we float, a constant state of uncertainty, purgatory. That would be something. My personal belief is that after death there is nothing. I recognize that isn’t the rosiest take on the ultimate question. Though I do think it’s better than “what is six times seven.” And if you asked me to provide a nice answer, one that jibes with my initial response, but also takes into account what I’ve experienced after the deaths of people I care for, I think I like this answer best:
I’m told that genetics are the prime culprit for the heart attack, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not also partially to blame. How did my behaviour contribute to the situation? Even if it didn’t contribute to the situation, Jenny still deserved to feel as much comfort in this time as possible, and for someone to recognize her trauma and show empathy for it. Hoping that this wouldn’t be my last moment, but knowing it might, I apologized for being so stupid and told her that I loved her. I recognize that’s cold comfort in such a potentially consequential situation, but it was the best I could do. In fact, it was the only thing I could do. Sometimes, even the most inadequate effort can be the appropriate one.
My job now is to ensure that I do what I can to remove the likelihood of ending up back in that situation anytime soon. Given our difference in age, odds are that we will end up back in a similar place eventually. I’ll probably die before she does, and it will likely be due to heart disease. As I consider my mortality, and everything I need to do to extend my life as much as possible, I have to keep all of that in mind. Is it something I thought about a lot in the past? Honestly, no. Is it something I’m going to have to think about a lot more in the future? Yes. But, whatever war may rage inside, I have to do the work to manage those thoughts in a responsible way. I haven’t worked through all the details, and there are many more battles to fight, but I have a feeling my resolution will be somewhere between my pre-heart attack and post-heart attack methods. I’m going to be more careful, but it’s not going to control my life.
Today is not a good day to die.
