Integration 3 78 Years Seventy-eight years is the average life expectancy in the United States. We’ve grown up and read about how much higher the expectancy has gotten in our history textbooks, and we’re witness to the Scientific Revolution; we seem invincible. Cars can drive themselves, hearts can be replaced, cancers can be treated. Seventy-eight years always seems so far away. When you’re a kid, you’re too busy playing outside and worrying about what your crush thinks about you to have to understand why Grandpa can’t come over for dinner anymore. And then you become a teenager, and you’d think at that point as you’ve witnessed more deaths and people growing old around you, you’d come to understand it more. But that’s not at all the case, instead, it just gets pushed deeper and deeper into the recesses of the mind. Thinking about it for more than five minutes at a time will cause your head to fall off and you have midterms and internships to stress about anyway. Now you’re an adult, and maybe now you can slow life down a little bit and smell the promised roses. But we know that’s not the case either. Maybe you get your two weeks of vacation, but other than that, you’re chasing the promotion, chasing the paycheck—what does death have to do with you, you’re a businessman, a father that has to provide for his children, not a philosopher! And now maybe you’re there, on your deathbed, at the promised seventy-eight and you know your time is up. At this point, it seems like all you can think about is the death you pushed so far back into your brain, the dam of repression and avoidance crumbles, and death comes spilling out of your ears, eyes, and mouth. Your grandkids want to hear your stories, but you have nothing to tell. The “I wishes” and regrets are presented in front of you for the first time. Those seventy-eight years might as well have been condensed to this moment. That was the morbid and hyperbolic spiel Dylan gave me when I asked what he wanted to do for a career. I’d let him go on for about ten minutes before I’d cut him off and make him actually answer the question. He relented and told me he wanted to be an oncologist since he was a kid because he felt he had the gifts to pursue it and the gifts to help others with it (“Exploring a Life Well-Lived - Career Development Reflection” by Meruelo Family Center for Career Development, Moreau FYE Week Four). Then he’d start talking about death again, so I’d change the subject to sports or how his classes were going, but I swear he could’ve gone on forever telling me about how nothing in life is guaranteed and the best thing he could do for his career and future self is to stop worrying so much about it and live in the present. He read books like Tuesdays with Morrie, The Last Lecture, and The Death of Ivan Ilyich just to ensure that he knew what it meant to die, which you know freaked me out a little bit, but he never seemed depressed about it all. His favorite quote from all of his reading was from philosopher Henry David Thoreau, which reads, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms...” He loved that quote and tried to sneak it into every conversation he could even though the cinematics he added to it were straight out of Dead Poets Society. He looked at death as something as normal as a tree sprouting, a baby being born, or a hurricane forming over the Gulf; it’s inevitable, so you do your best to prepare for it and let the rest fall into place ("Meet the nun who wants you to remember that you will die" by Ruth Graham, Moreau FYE Week Two). Even https://nd.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0AGRyH4SWX0bz38 https://nd.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0AGRyH4SWX0bz38 https://nd.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0AGRyH4SWX0bz38 https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/14/us/memento-mori-nun.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/14/us/memento-mori-nun.html though he was only there for a short time, Notre Dame seemed to have the biggest impact on him. Not in the football games on Saturday, and studying during the weeks kind of way that’s usually associated with Notre; no, he was always walking around the lakes and journaling. He talked about how even just one minute of peace and quiet where you detach yourself from the world around you gives you a better picture of what you’re working with ("Why we need to slow down our lives" by Pico Iyer, Moreau FYE Week One). I’m sure he’d be pretty pissed with this eulogy so far because I am painting him as this reclusive philosopher, so it’s time I talk about the relationships he had with others, and how all of his talks about death had more to do with living than dying. Obviously, I am one of the fortunate ones to have shared a relationship with Dylan. We were really close in high school, but oddly enough, we became even closer when we went to different schools. Maybe it’s because we had a screen between us to be more vulnerable, but in those months of freshman year, we were texting almost every night about things we never even brought up in high school. We shot each other straight: he’d tell me when I was being a little too scared, and I’d tell him when he was being a little too arrogant. But more often than not, we were telling each other how much we loved each other (Discernment Conversation Activity, Moreau FYE Week Five). I don’t think I’ve ever heard a guy say I love you as much as he did. I remember in high school he’d see me in the hall and light up and yell my name and hug me and tell me he loved me. I swear that smile made you feel like the most important person in the world. This dude’s 6’3”, 230 pounds running down the hall to tell you he loves you. Juxtaposing this excitement, we had something called West Hour in high school where you could go to tutoring, eat, ya know whatever you decided to do with your hour off. He’d go to his mom’s room while she was getting lunch and sit there for those 10 minutes or so of silence and just breathe (“Ways to Practice Mindfulness” by McDonald Student https://canvas.nd.edu/courses/40380/modules/items/143420 https://canvas.nd.edu/courses/40380/modules/items/143420 https://canvas.nd.edu/courses/40380/modules/items/143581 https://canvas.nd.edu/courses/40380/modules/items/143581 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SEXhurkurERNVdy8sgNwZaAKTAr-385q/view?usp=sharing Center for Wellbeing). Maybe he was meditating, praying, shoot he could’ve been thinking about his calculus homework for all I know, but after those ten minutes or so it was just like he drank ten red bulls; he was right back to that crazy big teddy bear self. He spent so much of his time refining himself so that he could be energized and best serve others (“Why the only future worth building includes everyone” by His Holiness Pope Francis, Moreau FYE Week 7). I wish more than anything that Dylan could be here to hear all of this now. I wish he could’ve had those seventy-eight years that most of us take for granted. I could go on and on about what he did for me, and I’m sure y’all could too, but it would never do justice to who he was and how he lived. Father Hesburgh, who he looked up to, says that “It is easier to exemplify values than teach them” ("Hesburgh" by Jerry Barca and Christine O'Malley, Moreau FYE Week Two). lived a life dedicated to exemplifying what he believed and learning what others believed. He made the most of his 19 years that we can aspire to make in our many seventy-eights. https://canvas.nd.edu/courses/40380/modules/items/143581 https://canvas.nd.edu/courses/40380/modules/items/143581 https://canvas.nd.edu/courses/40380/modules/items/143444 https://canvas.nd.edu/courses/40380/modules/items/143444