Saying Goodbye at Life’s End

by Jeffrey Rubin, PhD

Dr. Jeffrey Rubin

Welcome to From Insults to Respect. Today I’ve decided to discuss a sad topic. It came about as I listened to music while gazing out my window at the pleasant green garden of my neighbor’s backyard, reflecting upon what I might discuss in my next blog post. At one point it occurred to me that when my next birthday comes around I’ll be turning 75. I inhaled a deep breath, slowly released it as melancholy feelings drifted through me with thoughts that my remaining days are getting shorter and shorter.

As I sat there in the melancholy of this, it just so happened that Bob Dylan’s song, “When the Deal Goes Down,” began to be played. For me, Bob’s voice is not typically associated with sorrowful expressions, although his harmonica playing often beautifully drifts into these realms. However, in this song his singing acutely captures sadness that had swelled up within me.

In the first verse, he poetically sings:

In the still of the night, in the world’s ancient light
Where wisdom grows up in strife
My bewildering brain, toils in vain
Through the darkness on the pathways of life
Each invisible prayer is like a cloud in the air
Tomorrow keeps turning around
We live and we die, we know not why
But I’ll be with you when the deal goes down

With my internal feelings about my upcoming birthday, the sadness in Bob’s voice, and the gentle strains of the accompanying music, I discovered tears coming to my eyes. Images of the times I said my last goodbyes to loved ones who passed away well before they turned 75 drifted by–images of scenes with my father, mother, and several of my dearest friends. I found myself wondering if I respected how I handled such sensitive experiences.

As Bob’s song continues, he plaintively sings,

We eat and we drink, we feel and we think
Far down the street we stray
I laugh and I cry and I’m haunted by
Things I never meant nor wished to say
The midnight rain follows the train
We all wear the same thorny crown
Soul to soul, our shadows roll
And I’ll be with you when the deal goes down

For me, this verse expresses regret the singer experiences as he contemplates such sad goodbyes. Regretful feelings of some of my own actions came to me–things I wished I had said; perhaps I might have done something more helpful; how will I be when I say my own last goodbyes at my own life’s end? To be with the accompanying feelings of these thoughts is not easy.

Thich Nhat Hanh

To come to grips with them I found myself turning to the wisdom of the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Hhat Hanh. In his book, No Death, No Fear, he writes,

“Our greatest fear is that when we die we will become nothing. We believe that we are born from nothing and that when we die we become nothing. And so we are filled with the fear of annihilation. The Buddha has a very different understanding, that birth and death are notions. They are not real.” 

Hanh goes on to say that nothing has a separate self, and nothing exists by itself.

“If we examine things carefully we will see that all phenomena, including ourselves, are composites. We are made of our mothers and fathers, our grandmothers and grandfathers, our body, our feelings, our perceptions, our mental formations, the earth, the sun and innumerable non-self elements….All phenomena are neither produced nor destroyed, because they are in a constant process of manifesting.”

As I reflected upon these words, it occurred to me that in a real sense my mother, long gone in a specific biological sense, is still with me. My memories of her, all that she taught me, the love that we shared, is a part of me. When I go, all of those who had been close to me will, in some sense, find me manifesting within their lives. Throughout his book, Hanh enriches this notion that rather than becoming nothing, our lives continue to manifest in numerous ways.

Dylan’s poetic phrasing continues in the next verse with its nostalgic instrumentation, that beautifully embraces my heartstrings, with a simple but comforting melody:

The moon gives light and shines by night
I scarcely feel the glow
We learn to live and then we forgive
O’er the road we’re bound to go
More frailer than the flowers, these precious hours
That keep us so tightly bound
You come to my eyes like a vision from the skies
And I’ll be with you when the deal goes down 

Although regrets are expressed in the previous verse, here forgiveness is viewed as achievable as we learn to live “o’re the road we’re bound to go.” Where is the road bound to take us? To our last days, the precious hours of our sad goodbyes.

The final verse tells us:

I picked up a rose and it poked through my clothes
I followed the winding stream
I heard a deafening noise, I felt transient joys
I know they’re not what they seem
In this earthly domain, full of disappointment and pain
You’ll never see me frown
I owe my heart to you, and that’s saying it true
And I’ll be with you when the deal goes down 

In this verse, when Dylan sings the lines, “In this earthly domain, full of disappointment and pain, you’ll never see me frown,” no clearer frown has ever been expressed by his vocal phrasing. Yes, the Buddhist perspective provides some soothing regarding the notion of death. Nevertheless, to Dylan’s and my own experience, in this earthly domain there does come disappointment and pain, as well as hard to bear noise and transient joys.

Bob Dylan’s song “When the Deal Goes Down” is a reflective and heartfelt ballad that soothes the soul even as it connects us to the ever present reality that death awaits us all.   

Bob Dylanconflict resolutionDeath and dyingThich Hhat HanhWhen the Deal Goes Down