No Shame in Dying

Let me set the stage…it’s a darkened movie theatre on the May long weekend and I’m preparing to see Angels & Demons. The trailers are running and I’m all geared up because this is one of the things I love best about movies: the trailers. But not on this evening, because the trailer I’m watching is for My Sister’s Keeper, and it’s just hitting way too close to home. Kate’s bald head under a toque, her nosebleeds, her hospital room, the inevitable outcome of this thing called cancer. I sob into my pink pashmina and smear mascara all over it and my cheeks.

And I know that I have to see this movie.

Fast forward six weeks or so, and Jen and I go to see My Sister’s Keeper. I sob and sob, because I know first-hand the pain of losing a family member to cancer. I understand mom Sara’s (Cameron Diaz) helplessness and denial in the face of the certain knowledge that there is nothing — nothing — she can do to save her daughter’s life. I understand dad Brian’s (Jason Patric) desperation to make Kate happy, even if it means hurting Sara. I understand big brother Jesse’s (Evan Ellingson) intense loneliness, and even little sister Anna’s (Abigail Breslin) need to take control of the one thing she can control: herself.

But the one character who struck me the most, perhaps because she’s the only one whose shoes I haven’t walked in was Kate herself (Sofia Vassilieva). Every second that she occupied the screen I was mesmerized. I was deeply moved by her dignity, her insight, and especially her patience and courtesy to the grieving loved ones surrounding her. In one memorable scene, extended family are visiting her in hospital, and it’s so very obvious that they’re unable to accept the undeniable fact that this girl’s disease is not improving, she will not be able to withstand further treatment, and she will soon die. They offer up insipid advice along these lines:

… never underestimate the power of the human mind … you’ve got to believe yourself well again … visualize your body beating the cancer, like the woman I saw on Oprah … or what about those women who find the strength to lift cars off their children … you can do it … promise me, okay?

And Kate? She just smiles, sweetly and sincerely, and says, “I promise”. And it made me cry, because I’ve been there in my Mom’s hospital room while well-meaning friends and relatives have shared the same obviously untrue platitudes. I’ve lived through the awkward moments where we all look at each other and think, “what???”, then stare at our feet for a moment until someone manages a convincing change of subject.

I know I’ve talked about it before, this phenomenon of the inadvertently hurtful remark about illness, cancer, death and dying. Just a few days ago, I was thrust into the giving end of the equation when a dear friend informed me that her husband has incurable brain cancer. Oh God, I thought. What do I say? In the end I followed my own advice and simply told her how terribly sorry I was. But my first instinct was weirdly familiar; I felt like I had to offer up some kind of encouragement, no matter how hollow, because somehow, in our antibacterial, botox-infused culture, we’re not only afraid of growing old, we’re somehow ashamed of dying.

It’s like the nasty little secret nobody talks about, and it’s particularly difficult when it intrudes awkwardly on our otherwise carefree lives of denial, as when, say someone you know dies, or someone dies too young (as in Kate’s case). It shatters our sense of security and control. We don’t like it. We — as a society — have our fingers firmly planted in our ears shouting “LALALALALA” at the top of our lungs and running full-tilt towards the future while the grim reaper stalks along behind us like an oily shadow, smirking his inevitable truth.

And I tell you what: I’m sick of it. Everyone, every last one of us will die. It’s the one truth (well, that and taxes) that we can all rely on. Of course it’s frightening, because despite all our attempts to figure it out (read: world religion), nobody knows for sure what will happen to us when we die. What we do know, we largely dread. We will be lost to those who love us, who rely on us. We will no longer feel the pleasures and pains of our bodies. We will lose the companionship and presence of our loved ones. It’s scary stuff.

But it’s not shameful stuff. If anything, death should be something that we accept with grim assurance; and the time preceding death, if we have the opportunity to see it coming, should be filled to the brim with as much celebration of life as it is with the fighting of disease and death. I’m reminded of Joan Cusack’s line in My Sister’s Keeper, when she says, “there’s no shame in dying”. And she’s right. For many (too many) cancer patients, there comes a time when they will have to concede that the fight for life must end, and preparation for death must begin. It’s a terribly difficult concession and some never make it. To those who do though, is given the opportunity to die with grace, dignity and many moments of intense joy and — yes — life.

In the end, what this movie did so well is to expose death’s duality: that it is both profound and commonplace. That it is not shameful, but it is inevitable. This movie isn’t going to be an Oscar-winner, and Jodi Picoult (who wrote the novel on which the movie is based) is a popular novelist, not a literary one. But this ordinary movie based on an ordinary book has an extraordinary message, if you’re willing to hear it.