Boswell

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Everybody dies, everybody. Sure. And there’s neither heaven nor hell. Parker says hell is six inches below the ground and four above the head. So we walk between, never quite managing to touch either, but reassured anyway because heaven is by two inches the closer. That Parker! What difference does it make? Everybody dies and that’s that. But no one really believes it. They read the papers. They see the newsreels. They drive past the graveyards on the outskirts of town. Do you think that makes any difference? It does not! No one believes in death.

Except me. Boswell. I believe in it. I believe in everything. My metaphysics is people, the living and the dead. Ladloc, the historian, says that history is the record of all the births and deaths for which there is a record. History is dates. John Burgoyne was born in 1722 and died in 1792. Louis XVI: 1754–1793. (Do you suppose Louis knew of Burgoyne’s death? Do you suppose he said, “Ah, he’s gone now, the old campaigner”? Do you suppose he suspected he’d be dead in a year himself?) Shakespeare: 1564(?)–1616. Caesar: 102 (or 100)–44 B.C. History. But do you notice how as one goes back the birthdays become less certain while the year of death is always absolute, fixed? Do you think that’s an accident? Listen, death is realer than life. I saw a sign on U.S. 40 in Kentucky. It said REMEMBER YOU MUST DIE. I remember. But I never needed the sign. I had my own father. My father was a healthy man. Content, vigorous, powerful, well. But when he died, he died of everything. The cancer, the blindness, the swollen heart, the failed markets. But even that, the death of one’s father in a hospital room, the kiss goodbye inside the oxygen tent, isn’t enough for some people.

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