I just saw "Life, Itself" the memorial/life story of film critic Roger Ebert, and while I would love to talk about the merits of the film and it's success in revealing the essential character of its subject, I'm going to focus on how it made me think, once again, about death.

We know going in that Ebert is going to die, because he passed before the film was finished, let alone released.  But even if we didn't know that, death hangs heavily over the film, with its frank depictions of a very ill Ebert in the hospital and all that entails.  Getting fluid suctioned out of his lungs, enduring grueling therapy sessions where it's obvious he's giving his all but is on the verge of tears as he begs to stop, his terribly disfigured face and his transformed frame, wracked by disease and weakness.  This is a man who's not got long to live, and its obvious.

It's a cliche of course, but it struck me how fleeting life is while watching this.  We see Ebert in the early portion of the film, vital and at the top of his professional game and then just a few decades later (at 71, he dies fairly young) he's at death's door.  Yes, you can say this about anyone, and yes, many people live well past 71, but the point is that no matter how successful your life is or isn't, all of us are going to have remarkably similar experiences near it's end.  Weakness, debilitation, reliance on others, degradation of our ability to do even the most mundane tasks, pain, hospitals, a merry-go-round of therapy, home care, waiting for test results, huge and difficult life decisions.

It's coming, for all of us.

And while all of those negative experiences I listed are strong reasons to fear death and try as best we can to forestall even thinking about it, there's another one that might be the most difficult of all, at least for me.  We all go about our daily lives rarely if ever thinking about our own mortality.  We're busy living in the present and planning for a future that we KNOW will include death but that we also only let ourselves think about in terms of retirement income, housing, health care, time with children and grandchildren, etc.  Nobody really looks into that eye of the abyss until a doctor gives them a timetable. THEN we think about what we should do with the time we have left, who we want to talk to, where we want to go.

And we thing of all the things we should have done and can't now.

That's one of the toughest for me to get my head around; the realization that if we accept the inevitability of death, we really need to wake up and account for every moment we're still alive.  If we embrace this, there's really no way to justify all the countless hours we waste; on the Internet, watching TV, talking about things that don't matter, being envious, being resentful, being lazy, comparing ourselves to our neighbors and friends, worrying about what we look like.  None of it matters, and all of it is just a distraction from what we all know we should be doing.  But it's hard to do all these meaningful things; it's hard to resist all the wasted time.  And we wouldn't even KNOW it was wasted if we didn't know (at least somewhere in our minds) that our time was limited.  But we do know it, we just don't want to face it.

Knowledge of our mortality tasks us.  It asks us to consider how we live our lives every day, the choices we make.  But if we ignore that knowledge, it doesn't matter if we surf the net for four hours a day and post crazy stuff on message boards and watch silly political or comedy videos.  We can convince ourselves that we have forever, that we'll get around to the important stuff SOMEDAY, just now right now.

Ebert didn't give himself that out; he set about working ceaselessly, as he had always done, but perhaps with an even more intense focus now, knowing that what he was doing was leaving a record of his life and work for the world.  Sure, he had the type of physical prompting that a lot of us don't have (yet); his jawbone was removed, he could no longer eat, talk or walk, he was weak, in constant pain and endured multiple hospital visits.  But my guess is that even with those dark alarm bells, many of us would still continue to remain in Kubler-Ross's "bargaining" stage, or earlier, trying to squeeze every last ounce of denial would could out of our remaining days.

There were things to dislike about Ebert certainly; his ego, his occasional pettiness, his need to be the smartest person in the room.  But I came away with a renewed overall sense of admiration for this man and the way he faced his impending demise.  Like Morrie Schwartz, who I discussed above, Ebert didn't fall back on excuses to wallow in self-pity; he recognized the gravity of the situation and bravely and tirelessly responded in a productive and personal way.  Unlike Morrie ,who communicated himself mostly through talking near the end, Ebert, denied that privilege, used the medium that was still available to him to speak to the world.  His daily blog became a ritual of purpose and something more; a final testimony of what he loved most and felt deepest about.  Not just the movies, but what they said to  him and how they could inform and enrich us all.
  Unlike Morrie, who seemed to make a turn toward belief in the afterlife and God near the end, Ebert was an avowed atheist, so he didn't even give himself the hope of living on in some other form.  I suppose ultimately that puts his struggle on an even more epic level; that of knowing (as far as he or anyone could know) that this was literally the end for him, and facing the endless void without the buffer of a parachute of any kind.

What he found immortality in, apparently, was his work and the legacy his blog and his website would have for the world.  I hope when my time comes I'm as productive and forward looking as Ebert. Between he and Morrie, I've certainly got two great examples of how to stare down death, unblinkingly.  The trick is to be able to do what Ebert did in his final years, even if our health seems good and our future endless; that is, to know that our time here is short and to let that knowledge guide us every single day.  Of course no one can literally consider their own demise all the time or life would be a very depressing experience. But we can and should carry the inherent meaning of time with us wherever we go; step back from the banality of our daily lives and conflicts for a moment and consider how much of it is really meaningful or not.  Distill the important stuff into a daily philosophy, a spiritual or psychological regimen, if you will, and go from there.

Most of the time it won't be fun and it will never be easy.  But my guess is it feels a lot better than the alternative, and if we all sort of make a cultural agreement to do this, we won't be alone in our efforts and it will become the norm.

Think of it; a whole society living their lives meaningfully, mindful of their mortality but not imprisoned by fear of it.

Roger and Morrie would be proud.