Two nights ago, I was working at my desk when a wave of déjà vu hit me and didn’t leave. I felt like all this was familiar: the precise sentence that I wrote was identical to some perceived memory, the song that was playing was the same, I sat at my desk in the same position in the same room under the same circumstances as “before.” But the feeling didn’t go away. I continued to live some already-lived memory, all my movements and sensations just as they were the last time. And I thought to myself, “How nice!” I am only 22 years old, and yet I am already 22 years old. How many things will I never experience again? How many landmarks have I passed forever, never to return? The intensity of the feeling of déjà vu washed those feelings away. For a moment, I was certain that every place and time I visited, I would one day return to. For a moment, living a good life wasn’t just a goal of being happy and proud of good decisions for now, but for the next time around, for the happiness and pride of a future me. The song changed, the moment was lost, the feeling drifted away, leaving only traces, memory, confusion, awe, and a silent resolve.
Yesterday, I visited a dying man. He was in the palliative care unit, dying of a prostate cancer that wouldn’t leave him alone. Its latest injustice, only months ago, was perpetrated on his spinal cord. He is now paraplegic, confined to a wheelchair. He revisited his life for me and some classmates of mine. Sixty-two years he has lived. Thirteen of those years he has had cancer. But he has no regrets, a loving wife and daughters, a passion for life. His youngest daughter is pregnant with his first grandchild, a girl. Her due date is July 23, six months and nine days from today. His modest yet ambitious goal is to be alive to hold his granddaughter. He doesn’t consider himself dying. But he also doesn’t know if he’ll make it. He doesn’t ever expect to return home.
He spends his days reading and entertaining visitors. His family visits whenever they can. The hardest thing to deal with is the difficulty his condition has placed on his family. The second hardest thing to deal with is his sudden immobility. He can’t walk, he can’t take care of himself, he can’t change position in his bed on his own. He hates depending on others. He used to travel often. He stayed at his job as a manager of an international company until three years ago. Now he lives to make it to July 23.
A few months ago, he had an MRI. As he lay with his face inches away from the off-white plastic, with the machine’s gears grinding loudly, he drifted off, and relived his trip to the island of Santorini, in Greece. In his mind, as he relived it all, he could walk. He lived without fear, and walked with his wife, who he could hold, and be free with, and make love to. In that moment, he captured déjà vu, and used it to live forever, for a small while.