Terminal Lucidity

Basically, at the very bottom of life, which seduces us all, there is only absurdity, and more absurdity. And maybe that's what gives us our joy for living, because the only thing that can defeat absurdity is lucidity.

-Albert Camus

After all those repetitive shots of life goinng past outside the window here at the Schoolhouse, I figured I'd post a different shot, from my windshield as I drove to the post office a few minutes ago.

Market Street is a block to the left, in the midst of being shut down for the day as the city celebrates the 175th anniversary of the founding of what became Corning, Inc. It gives one a sense of the relationship between city and corporate resident that the public till is being expended on a private company's birthday.

To the right, down along the banks of the Chemung, the fireworks crew have set up their tents and trailers filled with boxes of pyrotechnic ordnance for tonight's show.

And the air out there is as soft as a breath, slightly humid, 68 degrees, with a little breeze out of the west. It doesn't get much better.

This morning I read a long piece in the NYT on the phenomenon known as terminal lucidity.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/14/magazine/terminal-lucidity.html

I saw this myself with my own grandfather, now nearly twenty years gone.

We started to notice Grandpa developing cognition issues in the spring of 2025. The first instance I witnessed was when we were in Montgomery for my cousin's graduation from JAG school at Maxwell, and the Colonel couldn't figure out how to work the shower in the hotel room, eventually appearing buck naked next to my bed to demand I wake up and address the issue. Something one can't un-see.

A couple months later the same cousin got married. At the reception, Grandpa got confused about time and place, and then started weeping out of nowhere over what a great president FDR had been.

The following summer law enforcement picked him up as he walked down the Ramona Expressway on a 105 degree day, sunburned and heat exhausted after his truck stopped (did he run out of gas?) miles from town. He was, again, thoroughly confused.

I saw him one last time maybe two months before he died. I was in San Diego for a bar examiners conference, and rode up to San Jacinto to see him. He couldn't speak, sitting in his recliner in front of a blaring TV. I sat next to him and filled the dead space with stories of my trip and his great-grandkids and whatever else I could find to talk about. He stared straight ahead, and after a few minutes started to weep. I did the same while driving back down to the hotel, but not in front of him and Vicki.

A few weeks later, after literally months without speaking or any apparent recognition of where he was, Vicki says he sat bolt upright in bed at 3 a.m. He was all there, the old Colonel again. He told Vicki he loved her, and how much he appreciated everything she'd done for him. He said everything would be okay. He died later that day.

Apparently this happens a lot, folks with organic brain disorders such as Alzheimer's suddenly recognizing loved ones, overcoming aphasia, and having intense and generally positive conversations revolving around how much they love and loved those around them, and reassuring their loved ones regarding what's about to happen. No one seems to have any idea how or why this happens, and the return of a person lost, sometimes for years, in this way causes one to question the source and means of consciousness. It would be like a person with a long-withered arm suddenly taking the mound and throwing a curveball--the physical apparatus would seem to preclude what we're seeing, and yet lots of people who've spent time around dementia patients or, in other instances, individuals in a comatose state, attest to having witnessed these lucid intervals, usually not long before physical death.

What to make of all that? How would I know? I'm a history major, and although you'd expect them to speak of these things in seminary, given that a chunk of one's life in the clergy involves abiding with the terminally ill, Sewanee had nothing to say on the subject. I guess in the end it's a mystery, and a mystery that leads to hope when one considers that these people who rise up out of their silence and seeming incomprehension almost universally bring a message of joy and gratitude even as the end draws near.

Now back to the mundacity of a day of depositions. Maybe I'll sneak out on break to buy P a bottle of champagne to split as we watch the fireworks from our panoramic vista up here on the hill tonight.