The Headless Woman, and Other Stories..

I heard that there is a native tribe in Arizona building an elaborate diving board on the edge of the eastern edge of the Grand Canyon.
I’m told they see it as the final solution to the problem of the White Man, and as a convenient, if ironic method for raising funds for the tribe’s own social service programs.
It’s not the horseshoe shape of the viewing platform that their brothers on the far side of the Canyon recently finished – it is, as I said, a diving board: a narrow rectangle that sticks out over the edge of the canyon.
“You get a great last look” one of the tribal elders allegedly said, “from a series of rapidly different perspectives.”
“Go west young man” a member of the tribe supposedly interjected, and the others tittered nervously.
The diving board to eternity won’t be finished for 18 months, but I hear they already have thousands of reservations.
I’m not surprised.
We have been in such a hurry since we came to this continent.
It’s been as if Filene’s Basement held their wedding gown sale every day for 400 years running.
As soon as the doors opened the brides-to-be rushed in, grabbing land, claiming mineral rights, building factories, and taking no prisoners as they marched from sea to shining sea in search of a better quality of life.
What exactly quality of life consists of however, has evolved, over the years.
At first, it was simply surviving.
Then it was owning – the water, the woods, other humans.
Then we got the notion that quality of life had something to do with personal freedom – so, after killing each other by the hundreds of thousands, we decreed that whatever an individual believed quality of life was, that individual had to respect the lives of other humans.
Unless Congress said so.
Eventually in our search for a better quality of life we reached the end of the continent, divvied up the remaining resources, let everyone vote, and realized that the only thing that was left to fight for – was life itself.
And so we demanded more time to figure things out.
…
I went to a side show at a county fair years ago, and saw The Headless Woman.
She’d been decapitated in a freak car accident – a man in a white smock solemnly explained, but an enterprising young man who happened upon her body moments after the accident, was able to preserve her.
So there she sat, a perfect specimen - save for the absence of her head.
Plastic tubes – allegedly providing a gas that supposedly provided nutrients and kept her skin supple and pinkish, came out of her neck.
Volunteers – the smocked pseudo-scientist called for: anyone who wished could ‘step right up’ and pinch the flesh of her calf, thereby assuring themselves of her reality.
I stepped forward then, and in a sense that is what I am doing here now: stepping forward and giving a philosophical pinch to our society’s obsession with extended life for its own sake.
The reality is – as I see it, is that too many of us live beyond our physical abilities.
The sad truth is, more and more of us live well beyond our mental ability to take care of ourselves in old age.
The hard truth is that we are extending life beyond our ability to afford it.
We simply live too long.
There are tubes coming out of the place where our head should be.
…
Then there’s the joke about the Englishman, the Mexican, and the Texan, flying home from a vacation in Hawaii, when the one of their plane’s two engines breaks.
We need two volunteers, the Captain comes over the intercom, saying: unless two passengers are ejected, the whole plane will crash into the sea.
“God Save the Queen,” the Englishman yells, and leaps out of the plane.
“Remember the Alamo”, the Texan yells, and throws out the Mexican.
No, I am not volunteering. I am not interested in seeing the Grand Canyon, up close and personal, not yet at least.
I’m part of the problem, and I know it.
I can see the end coming, but the closer it gets the more reasons I can find for avoiding it.
I am young – relatively speaking, but I am already sure that when I am in my eighties or nineties, I will be the exception to the rule.
One of the fastest growing age groups – at least in this country, are those between 65 and 80, and that age group requires more and more of society’s resources to support them, or should I say – to resuscitate them.
With rare exceptions, if you live beyond your seventies you will need to go back to the factory for repairs, replacements, lube jobs and such.
New knees, new hips, new teeth, new hair – and that is just for starters.
And for the most part they can make you ‘like new’.
But I am not sure I want to be a collector’s item.
Is the car that is kept in a garage all year long, still a car?
There is something to be said for the dignity of the rusted out old Buick, sitting in the weeds on the side of the road, where it finally broke down.
But I don’t have an answer, or a solution.
I just see the problem, see it growing, and see it affecting everyone, of every age.
My father is 85, and obnoxiously healthy. But other family members are near permanent residents of the nearby hospitals and rehabilitation centers.
We have learned to survive, well beyond our natural years.
It may take centuries, for understanding to catch up.