Just to be alive is a grand thing

 

I guess Agatha Christie has been on my mind since I’ve just read a cozy mystery, Fatal Fascinators by Jenn McKinley, set in a British castle on the weekend of a lavish wedding—and a double murder. That was one of Christie’s signature plots—a variation on the closed room mystery, where all the possible suspects are gathered in one spot so the detective’s job is made a bit easier by the smaller numbers. With Christie it was often someone's country estate. As a side note, McKinley’s latest in her Hat Shoppe Mysteries combined the best of an American cozy and an Agatha Christie weekend in the country.

Christie has long been a puzzle for me. Of course, I’ve read several of her mysteries, but I never could finish Murder on the Orient Express (a shameful confession from one who aspires to write mysteries), and I’m simply not a Christie scholar. I have read and enjoyed some of the books about Christie’s life and particularly the two weeks when she disappeared from sight. Much of what I’ve read about her convinces me she was not always a happy person, didn’t have that happy a life, let alone a happy childhood.

Yet here she is, proclaiming how much she loves life. There’s an obvious lesson there about enjoying life as it is handed to you, making the best of what you have—and whatever other platitudes you can bring forth. But I think for those of us who are aging, there’s a deeper message. At the age of eighty-five, I am very much aware of Andrew Marvell’s 17^th century poem to “To His Coy Mistress”: “But at my back, I always hear/Time’s Winged Chariot Hurrying Near.”

You don’t have to be a coy mistress to get the meaning: death is always just around the corner, and you never know when its chariot is going to catch you. I think Marvell, centuries ago, and Christie, fifty years go or more, have the same message for us: enjoy life while you can and don’t anticipate death. It will come when it comes. I fully understand Christie’s sentiment about having been miserable—haven’t we all been there one time or another, when we’ve lost a loved one, faced a disappointment in love, lost a job or a career—and yet the trick is to admit that you love life overall. That may be the whole energy behind suicide hot lines.

My life right now is not exciting, but it is comfortable, and I am enjoying it. Until I am forced to, I am not going to dwell on thoughts of illness and death. Jordan suggested tonight that I talk about illness a lot—the illnesses of those around me that I care about. And probably I do—my brother has been ill for a long time though he’s doing better, a friend’s brother is battling cancer, another friend is having memory problems, and yet another had an unexplained blackout which is worrying both her and her doctors. I suppose it’s inevitable that when you reach my age, you are surrounded by illness—and by the death of contemporaries. But I refuse to dwell on it.

What Christie is telling us is to move on, leave that behind, and treasure your life. I had a friend once who said she couldn’t bear that this table, that chair, and that painting would still be here when she was gone. I find just the opposite—it reassures me that life will go on. And I think that’s basically because as Christie suggests, I love life.

And on to the mundane—so far, it’s been a busy week, with happy hour company every night. That, too, is part of what I love about my life. And of course, the cooking—Monday night we had hot dogs. It was, after all, Labor Day. So what if everyone went out last night, and I ate a leftover hot dog at home alone. Tonight we had Greek hamburgers with marinated tomatoes and cucumbers. Pretty good stuff.

And so what if the days are a bit long right now, because I’m not sure what I’m working on. That will resolve itself. Meantime, I can read emails and recipes online and keep up with national politics and this week, the hullabaloo of the Austin impeachment trial of Kenneth Paxton.

Yep, Agatha, just to be alive is certainly a grand thing.