Document text
Over the Back Fence By HANK HENRY People hold off death to fulfill their final wishes There is one subject most people rarely think about, even in their old age: death. When I was younger, I thought that when your time came, that was it. Then I began to read about patients who had postponed deaths for weeks or even months by believing there was an overpowering reason to live past a certain date. This is not just a recent phenomenon. Short-story writer William Sydney, whose pen name was O. Henry, wrote a story called "The Last Leaf" for a magazine in 1910. The plot was that two women artists, Sue and Johnsy, opened a studio west of Washington Square in New York City. Johnsy caught pneumonia that winter, and the doctor told Sue that her friend would die if she did not have an urgent reason to live. Later, in Johnsy's hospital room, Sue found her counting the leaves from an ivy plant which had crawled up a drain pipe on the brick of the house next door. Johnsy casually said that when the last leaf fell from the ivy, she would die. Sue went downstairs to see an old German artist and asked him for a favor. The next day, Johnsy saw that the last leaf had not fallen from the ivy. In fact, it never did fall _ the old German artist had painted a leaf on the brick. Johnsy recovered, but the old artist caught pneumonia and died. Short stories of that era were like operas, with lots of heroics and dying. Recent studies by several universities have shown that the number of deaths of elderly persons diminishes in the weeks before Christmas, only to increase dramatically in the days after the holiday. This year, the added dimension of the millennium celebrations was enough to make even the sickest persons determined to hang on until the New Year passed. My own mother showed me how powerful willpower can be. She was 89 years old in 1977 and living in a convalescent hospital in Long Beach, Calif. One Sunday evening in January, I received a call from the facility saying that she was expected to die within hours. I drove straight through to Long Beach, only to find her sitting up in bed and taking nourishment. We spent hours each day talking about the past and the family's history. It was about the third day before our conversations finally turned to her illness and how she was able to go from death's door to being able to sit up in bed and carry on long conversations. She said her own mother, who died in 1944, had reached the age of 90, and she was determined to do that, too. I returned home and resumed the practice of calling her every Saturday. Her birthday was in late July, and as it approached, she was not able to answer a telephone call. I had to go to Las Vegas that year for a meeting of the hosts for the Muscular Dystrophy Telethon. It ended the day before my mother's 90th birthday. When I arrived at the hospital in Long Beach, I found my mother semi-unconscious, unable to speak. Eight friends and relatives crowded into the little room for her birthday party. Someone had brought a small cake, but I don't remember eating any of it. We stood around and talked softly, as if she might hear us. After a time, we left the hospital and went across the street for lunch. We hardly touched the food. Almost two weeks later, I received a phone call from the hospital telling me that Mom had died. My brother, who lived in Los Angeles, called and said that since I had been there so recently, there was no reason for me to come back for the funeral. I told him that I would because I needed closure. Again I drove straight through the night. The funeral was held at her church, and there was good attendance. Wanting to live until a certain date has a lot of meaning for many people, so much so that they will even postpone death to reach it. (Hank Henry is a retired Jackson County commissioner and a former radio and television announcer. Call him at 772-9055.) Prime Times front page Mail Tribune front page Copyright � The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA