Death riding shotgun

For my 40th birthday, many years ago, a good friend gave me a card. On the front was an image of the Grim Reaper holding a birthday cake with candles burning brightly. Inside was the caption, “You can run but you cannot hide.” Here is the card.

I was reminded of that card recently when reading this fable by Somerset Maugham:

The Appointment in Samarra

There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture, now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threating gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.

Although most of us try not to dwell on it, we each have our own final appointment in Samarra. While it would be easy to believe that the appointment has not been scheduled, it has, so we might as well prepare. Rather than think of our demise as an appointment with a menacing gatekeeper, however, maybe we should consider a different metaphor: Death as a traveling companion for the rest of our life, helping us to be aware of our mortality so that we can use that awareness to guide us on how to live.
For example, if we knew we had a terminal illness such as pancreatic cancer and were expected to live only a few months, we would try to make the most of our remaining time. We might connect with friends and loved ones, check items off of our bucket list, or reconcile past differences with others. This approach would be a significant change in attitude for most of us from the way we live now. We would focus on the present rather than on the past or future. Things that were sources of our discontent would no longer matter, nor would the possessions we have accumulated.

Since we all suffer from some sort of terminal illness whether it be cancer, heart disease, or just the wear and tear of life, the issue then is one of time scale. If we would act in a certain way knowing we had only a few months to live, why not do the same if we assume we have years or decades remaining? After all, actuarial tables are based on statistics, so we could be an exception to them and die tomorrow. Whether a person has three months, three years, or thirty years remaining, what is most important is the present, not the unchangeable and unrecoverable past, nor an unknowable future which is largely beyond our control and not worthy of our limited time and attention.

Rather than worry about our appointment in Samarra or ignore or deny it, why not invite Death along for the ride as we wend our way toward that appointment whenever it occurs. With Death riding shotgun, reminding us of what is important, in effect watching out for us, we can more easily cast off irrelevancies, we can ignore the expectations of ourselves and of others that hold us to a narrow path and dampen our sense of possibility, we can shed the strictures of conformity, we can release suppressed passions intellectual and physical. We can turn our remaining life into a fine journey through countryside we had only imagined.

One of my favorite poems is “Ithaka” by Constantine Cavafy, which I have quoted elsewhere in turn-stone. By substituting “Samarra” for “Ithaka,” these lines from the poem seem an apt metaphor for our journey of life with Death riding shotgun.

As you set out for Samarra
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
…
Keep Samarra always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
…
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Samarras mean.

I’ll close with this haiku:

A knock on the door.
Death stands there grinning broadly.
“Let’s go. Time’s wasting.”