Let's Not Go Gently

How fighting against death corrects our vision of life

Photo by frank mckenna on Unsplash

Last weekend, my father died. I’ve written about him here and there. He was a religious zealot, a bored accountant, a depressed businessman, a manic wealth fund manager, and a dealer of illegal substances.¹ I’m not sure what inspired me to write about him on Substack other than when I reflected on my life, my father loomed large over the first two decades of it. As a child, his imprint on the world around me seemed enormous and indelible. This was less about any attention he paid to me and more about his personality.

Last weekend, I was on the beach in Portugal watching my son take a surf lesson with his good friend. After coaxing him out of the water to plop a hat on his head, I walked back to a nearby cafe through the waves and thought about how fortunate I was to be able to spend my summer largely outdoors instead of cooped up in an office somewhere.

I don’t know the circumstances in which my father died. He had a homeless friend who called in his death after the weekend was over, so he died alone despite having five sons and three daughters. He always characterized his living conditions as “not visitor friendly” and whether that was due to drug use or poverty, I do not know. He moved into low-income housing a few months ago, so his surroundings were decent in the end.

I haven’t talked to my father in maybe fifteen years.

He’s hardly the first person in my family to depart this earth under less than ideal circumstances. My maternal grandfather died of cirrhosis of the liver, begging for fluids while his skin split from the pressure of retaining them. Even as a teenager, the irony of him begging for water after a lifetime of drink was not lost on me. Other family members, too, have faded away in a haze of alcohol or drugs. My father outlasted his own father by decades.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.

said the poet Dylan Thomas, wishfully, as he watched his father silently pass on. My father was a ranter and raver. One of us children would irritate him and he’d start getting warmed up, his voice rising in pitch. We’d answer back and he’d pick up steam, sniping that we were “wet behind the ears” and clueless about the world. His speech took on a more rhythmic quality as he grew more agitated; we were “lewd, rude, and crude,” he’d say, drawing out the vowels. He could go on and on for what seemed like forever. Dad’s rants were infamous in our world, population 10, and we could recite them word for word. Yet in the end, he slipped quietly and unnoticed from this life.

It’s a strange thing to share so much of your childhood with a parent and then virtually none of your adulthood.

I have no regrets about not talking to my father for so many years. I asked myself that question when I first stopped, whether I would regret it upon his death. I’m revisiting it now and my answer is still no. In my mid-20s, I took my new husband to meet my father. Sitting on a couch in his undecorated apartment as he paced the living room chain smoking, playing loud music, and gesticulating as he talked animatedly and a little too quickly, I remember thinking in embarrassment, “I’m so tired of this family.” It wasn’t hard, a few years later, to cut off contact altogether. My father had become someone I didn’t know and wouldn’t have wanted to know. I couldn’t find it in me to bear witness to who he now was.

I mourned the loss of the father I once knew long ago. And I suppose that’s the loss I’m thinking about now with no regrets, because there was no way back from that loss. No amount of contact would have brought back the complicated but bright, analytical, engaged, curious, reasonably functioning person he had once been. Religion – divine rules, structure, and eternal consequences – brought out the best in him. His laugh was loud and sharp, cutting through a crowd as he reacted with glee to something someone had said. His prayers at meeting were reserved and humble, throwing his grandiosity at home into stark relief. He could hold an audience in the palm of his hand telling the story of his conversion to Christianity, his voice arcing throughout the meeting hall before falling into a whisper. After so many years spent preaching about eternity, I wonder what he thought as he confronted death at last.

I think my father wanted to exit with a bang, burning bright before quickly flaming out. I think when he lived, he tried so hard to not go gently into that good night. But in death, he did not rage. He sputtered into the oncoming darkness instead.

There were times, when I was younger and my parents were caught up in divorces and family court and partying and DUIs and jail and whatever else, that I wished they would disappear. I wanted their destructive presence gone from my life. Those days were emotionally difficult but eventually passed as my parents aged and their vitality waned. And now that one parent has permanently disappeared, I find this is not what I wish at all.

I wish, instead, that someone had given them emotionally stable homes in their childhood. I wish my grandparents had developed enough awareness to acknowledge their failures and tell each of my parents they deserved better. I wish they’d learned to take their emotions seriously instead of simply reacting to what they felt – to sense and respond and grow. I wish they’d learned to travel better, in a way that would’ve taught them the pleasure of real (not synthetic) exploration and how it can simply reveal possibilities you hadn’t known existed. Maybe it would’ve helped them not seek out escape or at least not get so locked into one way of being.

But what an illustration of the critical importance to find a true reason to live. At the beach last weekend, wading through the clear water with a cool breeze on my back and sunshine on my face, I felt a heady rush of feeling that this was exactly what life is about.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. 

I suppose Dylan Thomas would have concluded that my father was neither wise nor good nor wild nor grave, for those are the men who resist death. I suppose my father was a bit of all four and never just one. His passion was drained in life. We learned of his return to more serious substance abuse following several decades of total sobriety when he butt-dialled a family member who listened as he crowed about “the trials and tribulations of crack,” fumbling with whatever is needed to smoke or melt it. Whether doing uppers or sustaining faith or making money, he threw himself into the task with zeal and by the time of his death, he was emptied.

As for me, I know already that I am the poet’s grave man – the serious man who realizes only at the end of his life that he can be full of light and joy, who demands more time so he can experience it. I sense my father’s influence in me, too. The words of the King James Bible, which my father still kept next to his bed, were knit into my being as a child. I feel his energy in me when I get too animated or intense. I have his analytical mind and overly strong focus. But I don’t want to wait until darkness draws nigh to realize that I can be full of light. I don’t want to expend my zeal with a bang before fizzling out to a silent end, giving into death when it arrives.

Death is inevitable, it’s true. Yet it also shows wise men their inconsequence, good men their futility, wild men their folly, and serious men their error. Death is the great adjuster of flawed vision in life. By fighting against it in life, we learn what truly matters. So I want to value, above all else, those small moments of joy, of satisfaction, of light wherever and whenever they emerge. I want to find contentment in nature, fulfillment in human connection, pleasure in love, and purpose in parenting. I want to live for those moments and at the end of my life, I want to fight to retain this great gift. I want to rage at the loss of such wealth and resist the pull of silence.

I am not going gently.

For more reflections on my father, see:

Can You See Me Now?

PART I: My Doubting Mind

Part II: My Doubting Mind

1. At his peak, he earned among the top 5-10% in this wealthy country; at his lowest, he lived out of his car. I don’t want to characterize him by his capacity to make money, although that is how he preferred to characterize himself. But I do want to capture that he was a man of extremes.