“When the time comes, keep everything simple. I’ve prepared these two photographs. You can decide which one to use then.” My ninety-three-year-old uncle said this to me.
That day, as usual, I went to his home to help with a few practical things. Near the end, he started talking about his health, almost as if we were making small talk.
“I’m not seriously ill. But at this age, there are always hidden risks.” That was the first thing he said.
“Everyone has to leave one day.” The second.
“Unless something unexpected happens, I’ll probably die in a hospital. When that happens, help me take care of things.” The third.
Then he said the sentence at the beginning of this essay. “Okay. I understand.” That was my response.
It still fit the role I’ve had around him in recent years: listen to instructions, carry out tasks, and not have much say of my own.
But I added one thing. “I’m already at this age myself. If there’s anything else you want to tell me, you might as well say it directly.” He didn’t add anything.
Then, as usual, I left after finishing what I had come to do. Before leaving, I made the same phone-call gesture I always do. “Call me if anything happens.”
On the way back, one sentence stayed in my head. Keep everything simple. Choose one of the two photographs.
It was the first time I had been given a task related to life and death. And the first time I had found myself in this kind of role. I had already prepared myself, in some way, for the possibility that my uncle could leave at any time.
Financially, he is much better off than most people his age. But for certain reasons, he has lived alone for many years. We have never had a particularly deep emotional bond. But within the structure of our family, I am one of the few younger people who can stay around him and deal with practical matters.
My family also seems to have a tendency to help others without asking for much in return. Sometimes I think of it as an inherited trait. The amount of time and energy I’ve spent helping my uncle may even be more than what I’ve spent on my own parents.
So his request did not really feel like something I could choose. It felt more like a responsibility that had arrived in front of me. And since there are many things in life we don’t get to choose, I find myself wanting to observe this one carefully. To see how it actually happens.
Recently, I’ve been reading What to Make of a Life. I’m borrowing only the title here, not the book’s ideas about life or self-knowledge.
I’ve been watching my uncle’s life for as long as I’ve been old enough to understand anything about people. Now he is ninety-three. If his life ended today, what kind of picture would it make?
I don’t see a complete puzzle, one that is clear from beginning to end. What I see instead is a single piece whose edges have slowly been worn down, cut away, until it has become isolated. It no longer seems to fit anywhere.
That may sound bleak. But I don’t think every life becomes what we might call a complete picture. Sometimes what remains may simply be pieces of a life, scattered here and there.
I don’t want my own life to be scattered. Writing this, I suddenly wanted to say that sentence. Lately, I’ve found myself wanting to say things like this out loud, even when they sound cliché. But for now, I can only write them down.
I look again at my uncle’s life. He is the most senior elder in our family, someone who once held the highest standing among us. And yet in old age, he has had to ask younger relatives for help with ordinary things. Eventually, what he asked for was simply: Keep everything simple.
What he meant was that when the time came, the hospital’s standard arrangements would be enough. There was no need for a memorial service or anything like that.
I wanted to write down this exchange with him partly because, in recent years, I’ve begun to see more clearly how a family’s fate moves from one generation to another. But also because there are still things about life I can’t quite let go of.
Whether someone lives well or badly does not seem to change the final result very much. We can call life impermanent. We can say we are only cosmic dust. We can say we came here simply to have a human experience. There are many ideas we can wrap around life, many ways to make its weight feel smaller.
But when a familiar life actually begins to approach its end, and that ending suddenly comes this close to us, I think we still make a judgment. Did this person have a good life in the end?
When someone has worked hard, endured life’s hardships, and been willing to help others, yet still ends up in circumstances that are genuinely not good, I’m not sure whether what I feel is sadness. Or something else. Something closer to: it shouldn’t have ended up this way.
Maybe sadness was what made me start writing this. Now that I’ve finished it and looked back, I think it is something more than sadness. I think I am still not quite willing to accept it.
On the way back, I saw two little girls who looked about primary-school age. They were eating ice cream and playing together. I remember thinking that the ice cream would eventually melt and disappear. The two girls would grow up. They would have worries of their own.
And I still had to hurry back to the office and finish my work. Otherwise, tomorrow would become a little heavier.
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