The Socrates Express

It’s a truism that men make lousy patients. It is a truism that happens to be true. I am a big baby when I’m sick. Montaigne was, too. Unlike me, he suffered from an actual illness: painful kidney stones that tormented him for much of his adult life. Montaigne cursed “the stone,” which had killed his father and now threatened to take him, too.

Illness is nature’s way of preparing us for death, easing us into it. Just as a tooth falls out, painlessly, so, too, do we slip away from ourselves. To go from healthy to dead is too much for us to bear, but “the leap is not so cruel from a painful life to no life,” he says.

Montaigne is suggesting a radically different version of the “good death.” We consider a good death one that follows a brief illness, or no illness at all. No, says Montaigne. Too big a leap. Better to slip away gradually than fall suddenly.

On the one hand, Montaigne’s slippage theory makes sense. Better a small fall than a large one. But try telling that to someone in mid-fall. For the past few years, I’ve watched my mother-in-law fall, as Parkinson’s disease steals her, piece by piece. First, it took her steady gait, then her ability to walk at all. Not satisfied with this plunder, it went after her mind, robbing her of the ability to read a book or conduct a conversation. When her final fall comes, yes, it will be a small one, but only because she’s been plummeting for a long time now. Illness may be nature’s way of preparing us for death but, as I know from public speaking, it’s possible to overprepare. Sometimes we’re better off blustering into a situation, ignorant of the risks. And sometimes a big fall is better than a small one.

Like Montaigne, I, too, am starting to slip away from myself. My hair slipped away several decades ago, along with my washboard abs and unblemished skin. As far as I’m concerned, that’s enough slippage. Can we stop now? I don’t want to die, nature be damned. I could get used to immortality. Or could I?

Simone de Beauvoir plays with that question in her novel All Men Are Mortal. The protagonist is an Italian nobleman named Raymond Fosca. He is immortal, thanks to a potion he drank back in the fourteenth century. At first he considers immortality an incredible blessing, and strives to put it to good use. He wants to improve the lives of his people. Yet he comes to view his immortality as a curse. Everyone he loves dies. He is bored. (Even his dreams are boring.) He lacks generosity since, as an immortal, he has nothing to sacrifice. His life lacks urgency, and vitality. We may fear death, but the alternative, immortality, is far worse.

An awareness of death enables us to live more fully. The ancient Egyptians knew this. In the midst of feasts, they carted in skeletons to remind guests of their fate. The ancient Greeks and Romans knew this. “Persuade yourself that each new day that dawns will be your last,” says the poet Horace, “then you will receive each unexpected hour with gratitude.”