Tony Perman

The Privilege of Life

I’m reading the final book of Liu Cixin’s famous science fiction trilogy The Three-Body Problem called Death’s End. I’m not that far so haven’t discovered death’s end just yet, but I’ve been reflecting on its dark, almost dystopian attitude towards life in the past 24 hours as I’ve been surrounded by news of the passage and emergence of life. In it, a powerful alien scolds humanity for its presumption of feeling entitled to live. In a way, this seems a sensible caution. Entitlement is almost always bandied about as a weapon and it’s an effective, seemingly truthful taunt in the context of the book… But I do feel entitled to live. I can’t help it. How could I not? Everyone with life is, to me, entitled to it. But the past 24 hours has reminded me that, however entitled I feel against my will, life is a gift: a mysterious gift.

I was sitting in an incredibly comfortable, seemingly empty (of patients anyway) hospital in Pudong, Shanghai, China watching my wife slowly experience contractions closer and closer together as our daughter knocked on the door to come hang out with us. Like inverted water torture each drip of a contraction from midnight one day through midnight the next on to 7AM brings joyful resolution closer step by cramping step… At least for the dad sitting on the sidelines of biological magic. I was sitting there watching my wife when I received the expected, but shocking nonetheless, news that Bruno Nettl had passed away. As a friend put it, he’s a legend. As another put it, he’s a beloved grandfather. For people who have never really thought about ethnomusicology, he’s likely anonymous. But for people in the field, he’s a founder, a father figure, a force of life. In the 1950s, when a few musically-inclined anthropologists broke off to form their own little society (of Ethnomusicology), Bruno Nettl was there. And he has been there ever since. Writing with wit and ease such that anyone can understand what he says. If only I could say the same. My mentor carried his book with him into the field in the early 80s. I carried it with me to London in the late 90s. Perhaps there is some budding student now carrying it virtually on a kindle as they set foot on a graduate campus somewhere. His name is one of the few that can be invoked across our disciplinary borders and receive recognition. He was on my doctoral committee and was too ill to come to my defense, but made a point of catching me in the hall to share his enthusiasm for my dissertation. He was good at catching people in the halls, a daily quest for conversation, companionship, and coffee. His great-granddaughter is one of my favorite little kids (and of my son) and everyone in the extended Nettl clan in between is worthy of admiration. It’s the end of an era, and of a life worth celebrating.

Its also a weird email to receive as I hear my wife literally grimace with the welcome pain of a labor contraction. A more spiritually-inclined person might highlight the symmetry of life and death almost simultaneously emerging from the shadows like this. There are billions of people in the world, yet each and every birth seems utterly miraculous. How the hell does this 9 lb living thing emerge from the confines of the womb with such precision? How the hell do women survive it? Our daughter emerged relatively painlessly only hours later and the pain of Bruno’s passing receded a bit in the shadow of a new life, our daughter’s finally emerging. And on it goes.

I don’t really think Bruno’s death and my daughter’s life are connected, although a significant enough percentage of the world’s people probably would, such that I should at least acknowledge the possibility. But I do recognize the razor-thin threshold upon which balances the tragedy of death and the miracle of life. Neither could exist without the other. This was brought home to me as I impotently witnessed my wife, who’d had a c-section with our first child. Long story short (and it was a long, 34-hour story), it all went fine… but surgery is surgery and there are enhanced risks the second time around given the reality of the first. As our daughter fought for freedom there were a few troubling indicators that maybe not all was right in the world of the womb. As our Dr. very astutely said, “This isn’t rocket science.” It was a risk. There was no way to know if it would go well. In the end, it did; remarkably well. But there were moments, fleeting as they were, where the prospects of tragedy poked me in the shoulder as I feared the fragility of my wife’s life pushed to the near-breaking point. The horrid phrase “uterine rupture” whispered ominously in my head with every grunt and grimace. The Dr’s own anxiety did little to curtail the leaps to conclusions I was athletically performing. In the room we constructed in our minds for this day there were two doors: life and death. I assumed only one would open today, but after absorbing Bruno’s passing, our daughter’s emerging, and my wife’s tiptoeing along the liminal thread between them it seems pretty clear that both doors are open all the time. It’s the same door, accessible in more than one way. I don’t know if I should feel entitled to live or not, but I certainly feel privileged do so as I do. Saying goodbye to a life well lived and hello to a life yet lived within moments of each other gives weight to joy and hope to sorrow. Perhaps that is death’s end.