"X" was seventy-six, having been born with the century, and alone, never having married. Recent interviews with him indicated a relatively healthy man coming to terms with death, which was never very far off in his writings. I mused about that. None of us really knew death, though we all wrote about it. We saw death, even caused it. Who of us hasn't stepped on ants? Or taken a paper towel and crushed a wasp when it was sitting on a windowsill in all its complacent glory, or killed a sparrow with a BB gun? Almost all of us have witnessed death on television—Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald, for example.

So, we have seen it; we have caused it. But I am suspect of those who say they have died on the operating table and come back to tell about it. That's not death. Kubler-Ross is a wacko. Death is death. The end. Fini. Kaput. I submit one can't know death; it's impossible. But one can see it; one can see its approach. That's about all we can know.

"X" saw it coming, and like I say, seemed pretty well adjusted about his approaching demise, saying death was easy, the hard part is the ego having to give up its own special identity and become part of the background again. Just as animals urinate to mark out their territory, as homeowners argue over whose side of the lot line the fence was built on, as nations cling to their borders, we all cherish that which thrives inside our boundary, our cover of epidermis. Even in death we try to keep it separate with a coffin, which was why "X" was going to have his ashes spread over the harbor of Villefranche. He said that sometimes it seemed silly enough to fight for the integrity of a body during its life, but he certainly was not going to fight for it after his death. What utter nonsense. He planned to rejoin the big scheme without delay.