My Final Days on the Maine Coast: Diagnosed with advanced lung cancer, a writer meditates on life, death, and beauty from his small seaside cottage down east. (Joseph Monninger, February 2025, Down East)
I count on his visits and keep two sets of binoculars nearby, wanting to have a pair within reach wherever I happen to be on my two acres of land in Pembroke, a small community that once took its living from the sea. I am aware that the eagle has become something of a project for me. My son, when he calls from his home in New Hampshire, asks if I have seen the eagle that day, and I know that he is asking out of kindness, out of an acknowledgement of my age and the emptiness of my daily calendar, and yet I can’t help playing my part and relating to him the itinerary of the eagle’s visit. Yes, I tell him, the eagle came early this morning, stayed for nearly 15 minutes, and yes, it was on that perch on The Eagle Tree, the name I have for the bird’s favorite pine. Last year, a storm took down the tallest pine overlooking the water, and I worried that the eagle would find another place to rest while the crows and gulls hectored him. But the eagle has taken to the new tree, and so it is a safe, light topic that my son and I can explore without any of the weightier subjects that circle around us. We both know that this beautiful land overlooking this vibrant estuary is the place I am making my last stand. I live here with stage-four lung cancer, each motion, however minimal, underlined by a dry cough, my fist to my lips, my heart and head and breath paused for a moment while I wonder if and how I will continue.
So the eagle is useful and welcome. It is understood now that I am becoming mist, the ghost of my youthful life, an old man who swims in the sea and rivers to bathe, a rough birch cane in my left hand to steady myself and sometimes to help me stand. I have chosen to live this way, to live near the sea without running water, to surround myself with simple beauty. My days have been emptied of all fanfare and complication. I play chess on the computer, read great gulps of books, nap, and study the weather both in the sky and in my chest. I watch the Red Sox replay in the early morning, at first light, and find I have not given up rooting for our beloved nine.