" . . . And just as, when he called, in these later days, to inquire for her (and she was still the only person in our household whom he would ask to see), she would send down to say that she was tired at the moment and resting, but that she would be happy to see him another time, so, this evening, she said to my grandfather, 'Yes, some day when the weather is fine I shall go for a drive as far as the gate of the park.' And in saying this she was quite sincere. She would have liked to see Swann and Tansonville again; but the mere wish to do so sufficed for all that remained of her strength, which its fulfillment would have more than exhausted. Sometimes a spell of fine weather made her a little more energetic, she would rise and put on her clothes; but before she had reached the outer room she would be 'tired' again, and would insist on returning to her bed. The process which had begun in her - and in her a little earlier only than it must come to all of us - was the great and general renunciation which old age makes in preparation for death, the chrysalis stage of life, which may be observed wherever life has been unduly prolonged; even in old lovers who had lived for one another with the utmost intensity of passion, and in old friends bound by the closest ties of mental sympathy, who, after a certain year, cease to make the necessary journey, or even to cross the street to see one another, cease to correspond, and know well that they will communicate no more in this world. My aunt must have been perfectly well aware that she would not see Swann again, that she would never leave her own house any more, but this ultimate seclusion seemed to be accepted by her with all the more readiness for the very reason which, to our minds, ought to have made it more unbearable; namely, that such a seclusion was forced upon her by the gradual and steady diminution in her strength which she was able to measure daily, which, by making every action, every movement 'tiring' to her if not actually painful, gave to inaction, isolation, and silence the blessed, strengthening, and refreshing charm of repose."
Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, pp. 151-152
So far there have been a couple passages in Swann's Way that made me cry, and not surprisingly this is one of them. Proust is talking about his aunt's diminishing strength and slide toward death. Naturally, I suppose, my strong response to this section relates to my mother's declining health, and her almost bird-like fragility. Three times in the last year or so I've made the dreaded mad dash from Vermont to Indiana because the perception was that the end was close, but each time Mimi, through her strength and general contrariness, fought it off. She seemed stronger on the trip last month to Savannah, but I think her desire to get out of bed and spend time with the visiting family members utterly exhausted her. So, to use Proust's words, she's entered that "chrysalis stage of life". She has accepted this "ultimate seclusion" much more gracefully than I will.
More generally, I've been thinking a loot about death lately, although not necessarily in a morbid way. And in this case I mean really thinking about it, and not just off-handedly talking about it. Like my father, I've always been guilty of talking about my impending death as if it impacted today's schedule. In both our cases I'm sure it reflects our own utter self-absorption, bordering on a solipsistic view of the universe. Any of my students, and especially my friends and colleagues, can quote my oft-stated desire for "death's sweet release." It's idiosyncratic, and often fairly amusing, but in the end also pretty truly onanistic. However, I've also been trying to go further and really think about death. Maybe this is part of my continuing flirtation with religious conversation. Of course, if you only come to a religion because you are concerned about the afterlife then that's pretty selfish. Truthfully, that's almost tangential to my interest in faith as a focused mechanism for being a better person in this world. That said, death and what comes next is still part of the equation. A couple times recently I've written about the penumbral world between life and death or the sacred and the secular or the ordinary and the beautiful. I wonder if that "diminution" of strength that Proust is discussing is not so much a case of the individual losing their grip on life, as much as giving oneself over to something more meaningful or eternal or beautiful? It sounds like a clumsy retelling of the Bhagavad Gita or the Upanishads, but maybe we need to free ourselves of the baggage of this world before we can pass on - and that baggage is not simply a car or a house, but also this anchor of a body?
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