The other day, out of the blue, I received an email from the sister of a friend of mine who lived in Alberta, Canada. It hit me like a ton of bricks. It was one of those emails you never want to receive. It read, "If you are reading this, I have won the battle and am no longer in pain..." It seems he had been suffering from cancer for over a year and had finally succumbed. He was 35.
I was his mentor many years ago. He was a senior in college with dreams as big as the universe and he wanted writing advice from a professional as he stumbled into the newsroom in Massachusetts where I was working as a night copy editor. A few months later, I moved to New Hampshire to another copy desk at another newspaper. After graduation, he worked for Boston Globe, then Toronto Star and finally Calgary Herald. Except for a columnist for Washington Post, Keith was one of the few friends in journalism I had remained in touch with through the years, as we both had the same vision for journalism: always strive for truth, fairness and balance and the world will be our oyster.
Death has been a constant in my life, as I suppose it is for everyone, and cancer seems to be a very prevalent theme throughout. And each death by cancer makes me more angry at the world and my place in it. The world under Covid-19 seemed like a death march in so many ways. Early in 2020, the death of a friend's 15-year-old son to a rare form of leukemia and his 11-year-old brother who committed suicide because he could not bear the loss had a profound effect on me, but it was Keith's death that really hit me hard. It was like losing a brother, something that almost happened recently when my own brother had a heart attack.
Keith's death took me to a very odd place. I actually found comfort and solace in the pages of an old literary classic from my childhood and, perhaps, to the childhood of so many of us, Charlotte's Web by E.B. White.
Toward the end of the novel is the immortal line, "Why did you do all this for me?’ he (Wilbur) asked. ‘I don’t deserve it. I’ve never done anything for you.’ ‘You have been my friend,’ replied Charlotte. ‘That in itself is a tremendous thing.’”
Charlotte’s Web finds me in the impenetrable darkness of these harrowing times. It is a book I would like a friend to read to me on my deathbed – a story that redeems humanity while condemning the finality of death.
Here is why you must indulge yourself in it: I refute the idea that E.B. White’s book was made for children. Sure, farm animals typically make appearances in media geared toward adolescents – but White’s creatures are mere catalysts for a very mature message. Quite frankly, I doubt a child could pick out the hidden motifs and commentaries on premature loss and the grieving process. It is a work that speaks to the unfair nature of death, the cruelty of its timing, and the difficulty of accepting it. Naturally, these are concepts with which even mature adults wrestle. Thus, I think it is improper to boil White’s novel down to a mere bedtime story.
I would wager a few things about most readers. Most likely, your parents or teachers forced you to endure Charlotte’s Web as a child – the plot was simple, the story easy to devour. I would also make the assumption that death confuses you.
You know it must happen eventually, but you fail to understand its sporadic sense of justice. It is a cruel pill to swallow to acknowledge the inevitability of life’s ending while also knowing that most of the time, it is unfair.
Charlotte’s Web captures this dynamic and portrays it through the friendship of Wilbur and Charlotte. Wilbur, like most of us, does not understand why Charlotte must die. Despite the fact that her lifespan was designed by nature to be significantly shorter than Wilbur’s, he cannot help but apply his own moral expectation to her impending loss (I.E she was a good friend, therefore she does not deserve to die).
This is a representation of how humanity often projects its own ethical standards onto ambiguous natural events: a coping mechanism to create some sort of sense-filled meaning in the midst of loss. Oftentimes, we will find that this comparison leads us nowhere good.
When I first found out my mother had cancer, I was overwhelmed with a sense of questioning the fairness and justness of life. My grandmother had died of leukemia and had left me with the same questions early in life. In the case of my friend, it is the thought, if only I had known. What difference would it have made? Would it have impacted me any less?
So much of life is composed of choices we did not make, circumstances we did not choose. The epiphany I am not so subtly hacking at is that whatever prerogative we think we are owed by God, or any higher power really, is a reflection of our flawed sense of justice.
The universe (and by this I mean the natural chain of events) does not operate on a causation/effect basis. In fact, it is fair to say that at best, we can describe the world as organized chaos. All of this to say that loss is a natural part of life, but it is not a measuring tool for how “good,” we have been – only we can decide that.
Good things are not generational, they are eternal. John Steinbeck once said, “evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal.”
What makes Charlotte’s Web such an extraordinary book is that it gives meaning to Wilbur’s loss. Charlotte dies after laying her eggs, leaving behind a part of herself in her children. In a sense, Charlotte never truly passes away because she is present through the new life she has created.
This is true for all things – when you love someone, they stay alive in your heart. You see them in all of the beautiful things: pink skies, daisies on the side of the road, children playing games on the street. White seems to have an understanding that I find most people lack: bereavement loses its permanence when love intercedes.
Love is the common denominator in loss - the exception to the long-standing rule of “death do us part,” a notion that suggests love is not a spiritual act, but one of the flesh, fallible to age and decay.
Let it be said that love and affection are not elements that death can touch – they are immortal, transcendent and generational.
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