There is a refreshing directness to it. DEATHS.
Gathering magazines to recycle, I ended up with a small stack
of Notre Dame Magazines, six random issues from Summer
2002 to Summer 2004. I paged through them, wondering if I had
missed anything. It turned out that I had: a few of the endpapers
from the book of life. Near the back of each issue, simple and
straightforward, DEATHS, all in columns and arranged by year.
I suspect we all at least glance at them, with different reasons
at different ages. But it suddenly struck me that I had a snapshot
of Notre Dame covering the last 80 years from the vantage of 2003
or so. Each entry is a line segment of eternity. Year graduated,
year died. The snapshot is grainy; there is no guarantee that
all deaths are recorded here. Specific inferences are suspect;
year of graduation is no guarantee of age at graduation. But averages,
bless 'em, have a way of smoothing out the rough spots. By losing
our individuality we learn something about the group. So, into
the computer, all of you. No names please, no ranks. Just your
numbers, serially.
The count is 973 deaths, with class years from 1923 to 2001.
Who is the common person in that list? The average date was just
under 1952, the median date just under '50, the mode at '50. Good
enough for government work. Assuming we graduate at age 22, we
live to about 75. About 25 million mornings and evenings in that
list, hope most of them were good for you all.
An average is the crudest cut. Make a histogram, a mortality
table. What is the bin size, the computer asks? Putting in every
year makes things too noisy, can't see the field for the grass.
Lumping too many years together makes a featureless blob. A natural
start, I suppose, was by decade.
In 10-year increments our doomsday graph looks like a smooth,
somewhat skewed bell curve, steeper on the old side, tapering
out more slowly on the young side. Like a flipped coin, no one
of us is exactly predictable, but a thousand flips later the result
is inexorable. In decade leaps the grand shape of life is apparent,
the compass span of existence. We are all under that curve, sooner
or later.
Shrinking the divisions lets the particular peek through the
general; in three-year increments a pattern emerges. From the
present back to the late 1970s the line is almost flat, never
more than eight per jump. This is the background noise of sadness,
of accidents, of leukemia, of hearts that stop with no warning,
of people dead far too young. For two decades fate bides its time.
From there back to the late 1950s there is a sort of Piedmont,
a plateau sloping gently upward into the past, to about 40 per
three-year span. We are back close to nominal retirement age,
somewhere around 65. Death is less a stranger here, though no
more welcome than the atherosclerosis or the arthritis, the thinning
muscles and hair. To work hard for so long and then be cheated
of at least a short time of rest seems terribly unfair.
Then the curve rises steeply, its pinnacle at 1950 to '53, with
125 individuals joining the silent majority. Half of us are gone
at this point, and it's downhill now.
Or is it? Our curve does not go gently into the night but instead
offers two more peaks. Or two valleys, perhaps. There is a secondary
peak in the mid-1940s, followed by a quick dip, just as there
is a smaller peak in the early '30s, followed by a dip. Can we
see the Great Depression, World War II, the GI Bill written in
our passings?
After that we fade rapidly. In the factory of life, 100 and
out looks like the best contract we can get. The beginning of
the 20th century is memories written on paper now, the people
themselves dust, done in by the cold equations. Those secondary
rises and dips recede slowly, and then there are none.
I look at my own year. The slope of the decades line is increasing
more quickly now as my temporal point slides back, borne ceaselessly
into the past. The fine structure of the curve will be ever altering
as the effects of everything from gender to class size to medical
advances intrude, war and peace, fat years and lean, the ill-placed
banana peel. But the decades, they won't change much. Familial
history and the luck of the genes, my own personal data set, say
my final addition to the statistics will be read by someone in
the class of 2035 or so. But there is always the background noise
of sadness lurking, and the columns seem to be democratic, golden
lads and girls and chimney-sweepers. I would prefer a spot in
the shade of the far slope, but someone may always say, Friend,
go up higher.
And sooner or later, we will all be under the curve.
Mike Alexander lives in the foothills of the Coast Range
in western Oregon with his wife, son and cat.
(April 2005)
