Bree Stilwell

It’s been on my mind this week, heavy heavy heavy, in lieu of everything going down with our President here in the US (down as in, like the entire fucking ship). Independent of politics, our POTUS is inarguably a man with astronomical responsibility and power. To watch his deterioration has been one experience for us as American voters, to feel the acute, prime-time irl, bludgeoning over the head version has been something else entirely.

We’ve been having some seriously rough conversations about all this, haven’t we? And surprising to most, I reckon, is the discovery that we’re at odds about when a person’s commitments no longer best suit the interest of those around them, or in essence really… themselves.

Put (maybe too) simply, when is it better to quit than to stick it out?

This supremely terrifying situation in our collective experience is all the more alarming to me because of something so eerily similar in recent personal experience, so impossibly coincidental that it plagues me. I’ve found myself obsessing over the puzzle of it, like that common word hanging outside your recall, moving farther just as you feel you’ve nearly grabbed it.

My father-in-law died two weeks ago tomorrow, slowly from ALS, and then quickly from it’s complications.

He was an old trout of a man, stubborn as he was joyful. He collected brags like loose change, relishing the opportunity to riff about the successes of his children and grandchildren, family and friends, even athletes and public figures. He was deeply intellectual and ambitious, though as it so often goes, was ultimately frustrated in both capacities.

Jim died angry.

He died angry because he absolutely refused to acknowledge his own impending and inevitable death. He rejected all conversations on the topic, from his diagnosis two years ago and through his last minutes of salience. In doing so, he not only spent his final moments in extreme physical and psychological distress, but he also (unintentionally) demanded his family do the same.

He was so overcommitted to living that he ultimately defaulted on the only decision left available to him—how to die.

Jim was no stranger to quitting, though. He was married three times, for crissakes. You don’t have three amazing, overachieving kids with two different women without quitting out of some pretty hefty commitments and moving onto what works better. By all indications, and to those who knew him most intimately, the assumption was that he’d take his terminal diagnosis and purpose the shit out of it. That he’d take what was an exceedingly strong sense of self—what many would see as an ego of admirable, if not discomfiting, scale—and dictate to every last detail his every last experience. This is not at all what he did.

Instead, he doubled-down.

During what was their known final goodbye to their Pop Pop, Jim asked his grandsons, my boys, what games they had coming up. Just as he had in every conversation he’s had with them since they’ve been old enough to play a sport. Through tears, at his deathbed and at ages at which they’re completely clear on what’s happening, they graciously answered. Soccer on Tuesday, track meet on Thursday.

“I’ll try and make it’ responded the voice of his assistive device; stately, BBC English, and just haughty enough to suggest fine breeding, education and a particular level of intellectual achievement.

“I’ll try and make it.” These were not words meant to comfort others. These were words meant to comfort the self. They anger me still.

I do not, in any way, resent my father-in-law any extremity of emotion through what has been for him, and would be for anyone, one of the worst possible ways to end life’s journey on this planet. I do, however, resent the choices he forced his family to make in direct consequence of his refusal to make them for himself.

His anger begat their anger, and my own, and it haunted me in the days and weeks following.1

In the most heartbreaking way, those he held closest and loved best are now those the most damaged by his actions. He couldn’t see it while he was alive, being so completely blinded by his ambition to stay that way for as long as possible, and in whatever compromised state dictated by his disease. Jim saw in his active denial a zero-sum game, in which he would win and his ALS would lose. But it was exactly that denial that was far more costly than what quitting on his own terms would have required. It cost him his autonomy, peace through his own passing, and while perhaps temporary, some amount of respect from his children.

I loved this man. I respected him and remain deeply grateful to him for providing the world with the magical human who is my husband. I also recognize how dangerous it is to critique the choices of a person in the midst of true existential crisis.

We think we know what we’d do if… but we just fucking don’t.

I do, however, have a little of my own experience with which to question, analyze and perhaps understand what I will do if and when faced with a similar set of decisions. Number one, I’m a human who will at some point die. Number two, I’m a human living with an as yet incurable cancer who may die long before I’m ready. Number three, as of the insights borne of recent events, I’ve realized I’m surprisingly adept at what I’ll call quitting with benefits.

You divorce because you know it’s best for everyone involved.

You leave your job because it’s become clear your best work is behind you and it’s costing too damn much to continue.

You desert your grad program halfway through because you realize there’s no way in hell you can hang out with other poets the rest of your life, and there’s likely better ways to string your words together.2

You abandon a particular dream because you can’t suffer the fools and jackals calling all the shots.

* BTW, the ‘you’ in each of these scenarios is actually ‘me,’ and they all actually happened.

I caught some amount of painful flak for each of these things, and they were all deeply difficult decisions to make. But/and, I somehow knew the potential outcome was far more advantageous for everyone involved than what my interminable commitment would provide.

I had the benefit of lower stakes, of course—I’m not the president of the free world, nor am I yet on my death bed. But I can’t help believing that there’s a mechanism here to build, oil and sharpen. We CAN empower ourselves through the process of leaving something behind. We also CAN release others of the responsibility to clean up the messes we leave behind when we can’t bear to part with what we love.

It’s a form of hoarding, really. The hoarding of our own experience.

There is a potential reality in which our American president decides to quit his reelection campaign, and does so in a way that both better serves him and the country, the world, more so than making good on his commitment to run would.

There was a similar potential reality in which my father-in-law decided to quit fighting a terminal disease, doing so in a way that both better served him and his family, more so than making good on his commitment to winning would.

Both involve the interrogation and acceptance of some hard truths. It ultimately comes down to a form of extreme generosity, I think, directed both inward and out. It’s sacrifice, yes, but there’s an element of self-compassion here too. To respect yourself so much by way of dictating exactly why and how you’ll be taking yourself out of the game. I’ve been asking myself, daily, what’s more empowering… forcing my family to decide when and how I die, or making as many of those choices as I can beforehand, and WITH them?

It’s not at all dissimilar to the questions circling every online water cooler this week—why put your commitment first, Joe, when quitting actually affords you so much more control over both your legacy and, it’s looking more and more likely, the preservation and continuation of our democracy?

What if the benefits of quitting far outweigh what the honored commitment could never actually deliver?