Godless (56 page)
Annie Laurie’s parents, Anne and Paul, and her twin brother, Ian, drove to the hospital. Family members were permitted to talk to Annie Laurie calmly for a few minutes. Ian asked me the same question: “Is she going to die?” This time I said, “I don’t know. I don’t think so.” Annie Laurie’s pediatrician when she was young, Dr. Hania Ris, also arrived. That was a comfort. She was a close family friend and a highly respected physician.
They wheeled Annie Laurie into the operation room around 9 a.m. for an emergency C-section. When our daughter was born, three women greeted her: two female physicians (the surgeon and Annie Laurie’s doctor) and Dr. Ris, who had been allowed to monitor. Our baby weighed two pounds, 15 ounces. Tiny! (I used to joke that we could mail her by book rate at that weight.)
Post-surgery, it was not a good sign that Annie Laurie immediately swelled up like the Michelin tire man, due to edema. No one—not even our landlady, a nurse who happened to be on a hospital elevator with us on the way to ICU—recognized her marshmallow face. She didn’t have any elbows! She was in danger of organ failure and many other horrible things and stayed in intensive care for two full days.
Our baby was taken immediately to the intensive care section of the Special Care Nursery (the preemie ward), where she was placed in an incubator, hooked up to tubes and put under a sun lamp to combat jaundice. Hospital policy was to keep all premature babies at least 24 hours in intensive care before moving them to the medium care and then regular care sections. I went in to see what our new daughter looked like and when I touched her little palm, she grabbed onto my finger and held real tight—poor little thing. She looked like a half-baked chicken with a large Martian head, but was so impossibly beautiful.
Later that morning I called my parents in Arizona to tell them what had happened, and it was at that point that I fell apart. After the immediate crisis was over, my brain must have exited the survival mode and allowed the emotions to tumble in. I could barely speak a word to my mother on the phone.
Our baby, through it all, was just fine. The doctors and nurses were not worried about her, although it turns out there had been a problem that only came to light the morning she was born. During the C-section they noticed that the placenta was half separated and would have progressed to placenta abruptio, which can starve the fetus and result in a still birth. Our daughter was tinier than expected—she would have been small anyway—but her lungs were much more developed than they should have been, due to the fact that she had been struggling for oxygen. Although the eclampsia almost killed them both, it actually may have saved our daughter’s life.
Annie Laurie did not see the baby for more than a day, and she confesses that although we kept reassuring her that everything was fine she was nonetheless irrationally convinced that something was horribly wrong with our daughter. On the second day, we wheeled the incubator to her ICU room to try to reassure her. Annie Laurie was still too sick, however, to make much of the historic occasion of bonding with her new daughter. Annie Laurie’s face, neck, chest and arms were covered with lurid bruises. Our baby was only 16 inches long, all head and skinny arms and legs. Her skin was baked red from the sun lamp; a needle was taped on her scalp. Annie Laurie was not impressed, but she humored us and allowed the nurse to snap a Polaroid moment of a swollen, dopey mother looking even more like an alien than her scrawny infant! That photograph is hidden carefully in one of the baby albums.
Annie Laurie was out of it for many days, so when the birth certificate was ready to be signed I decided to pick a name. We liked Elizabeth (from
Pride and Prejudice
, not from the bible) and some variant of Anne (like her mother’s and grandmother’s names), but the most recent name we had discussed and agreed on was Sabrina. So, I figured that our daughter wanted to be named Sabrina and was born at just the right moment, before we changed our minds. I picked her middle name from the language of my Lenape (Delaware Indian) tribe. “Delatah” means “thought,” so instead of naming our godless daughter Faith or Grace, we have a thinking child named Sabrina Delata Gaylor. (There was no question she would take Annie Laurie’s last name. We did think about forming a combined name, but Sabrina Gaybar just doesn’t work. I’m not sure why.)
Pride and Prejudice
, not from the bible) and some variant of Anne (like her mother’s and grandmother’s names), but the most recent name we had discussed and agreed on was Sabrina. So, I figured that our daughter wanted to be named Sabrina and was born at just the right moment, before we changed our minds. I picked her middle name from the language of my Lenape (Delaware Indian) tribe. “Delatah” means “thought,” so instead of naming our godless daughter Faith or Grace, we have a thinking child named Sabrina Delata Gaylor. (There was no question she would take Annie Laurie’s last name. We did think about forming a combined name, but Sabrina Gaybar just doesn’t work. I’m not sure why.)
Annie Laurie likes to brag that she lost 30 pounds in two days, but that just shows the extent of her post-birth edema. Her blood pressure was fluctuating so much that the attendants brought back the “eclampsia kit.” During the fifth and sixth nights in the hospital, when she was graduated to the “birthing suite,” she asked me to stay with her on the couch provided for new dads. She was now aware of her narrow escape and was briefly terrified of the dark, afraid of dying alone.
During this entire traumatic experience we never once thought of invoking a god for help. We never prayed, never even considered it. What we did invoke was some of the best medical care in the Midwest. Religion was not only the furthest thing from our minds, it was totally nonexistent. In fact, if a chaplain had come into the room while Annie Laurie was recuperating her blood pressure would have shot up! (Annie Laurie was the first person to write a nonfiction book,
Betrayal of Trust
, about the scandal of pedophilia and sex abuse in the clergy.) We invoked not a supernatural deity, but the love and support of our community, mostly caring, nonbelieving friends and relatives.
Betrayal of Trust
, about the scandal of pedophilia and sex abuse in the clergy.) We invoked not a supernatural deity, but the love and support of our community, mostly caring, nonbelieving friends and relatives.
Annie Laurie came home after 10 days, without Sabrina. Before Sabrina came home, we were both able to attend the baby shower that turned into a post-baby shower. Sabrina was released about two weeks after that, weighing just under four pounds. That week I took a photograph of her tiny hand on the piano next to my hand, her hand covering just one key. It was scary having such a tiny creature in the house. We had to take infant CPR classes at the hospital, and we remember walking past the nursery with the “monster babies” (those with normal birth weights).
The Special Care Nursery continued to monitor Sabrina’s development. After a grueling cognitive examination at a year and a half, one staffer pronounced Sabrina a “genius baby.” Her incredible focus and attention span put her clear off the bell curve they were using. Unsurprisingly, her gross motor skills were a little behind, but that presented no problem. “Sabrina will jump when she wants to,” they reassured us. Although always in the fifth percentile for weight and height over the years, Sabrina gradually caught up. Today, a still tiny 91 pounds, she stands five feet tall, the same height as my mother and only two inches shorter than Annie Laurie. A fourth-generation freethinker (on her mother’s side), Sabrina “the thinker” has graduated from high school with honors and is looking forward to studying creative writing in college.
Annie Laurie escaped the ordeal with no lasting damage. She can’t recall much about the first few days in the hospital, including many things she told us. The last thing she remembers that Labor Day morning is feeling sick in the bathroom, trying to call out to me, realizing she could not speak or move, and then blacking out. If I hadn’t heard that thump, she would have died and that would have been her last memory. When I asked her what it feels like to die, she said, “It’s not fun.”
Woody Allen said, “I’m not afraid of death. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” Annie Laurie was there when it happened, and you would think that if she had had even the slightest inclination to religious feelings, that’s when it would have come out. There
are
atheists in foxholes. Annie Laurie never thought to pray at any point when she knew she was in trouble. She did not cry out to a god at the last moment, and why would she? She was not raised religious. Millions of good people get through life without superstition.
are
atheists in foxholes. Annie Laurie never thought to pray at any point when she knew she was in trouble. She did not cry out to a god at the last moment, and why would she? She was not raised religious. Millions of good people get through life without superstition.
Woody Allen also said, “I do not believe in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear.” We nonbelievers have to face mortality just like everyone else. Although we would all like to stay healthy and postpone the end as long as possible, we know that none of us are getting out of this alive. Rationalists don’t like it, but as realists we accept death as a natural part of life. None of us would be alive if other things did not die.
We atheists believe in life
before
death. Before we were born, there was a very long time, perhaps an eternity, when we did not exist, and it did not bother us one bit. The same will be true after we are dead. What matters is that we are alive now. These living, breathing, hurting, singing, laughing bodies are
worth
something, for their own sake. Since there is no life after death—how could there be when the body and the brain decay?—we have to make the most of it now, before it is too late. Suppose you knew you were going to die a week from Tuesday. How would you spend your final days? Would you ignore your friends and family? Would you walk past a bed of tulips without stopping? Would you take things for granted? If you knew you were going to die for good—as we atheists know—then you would be hypersensitive to every joy, every tragic beauty. “This is the last time I will hug my nephew,” you might say. “This is the final autumn I will see the leaves changing.” You would stop and take notice, just as we do with a garden of flowers, knowing that in a few days those blossoms will be gone.
before
death. Before we were born, there was a very long time, perhaps an eternity, when we did not exist, and it did not bother us one bit. The same will be true after we are dead. What matters is that we are alive now. These living, breathing, hurting, singing, laughing bodies are
worth
something, for their own sake. Since there is no life after death—how could there be when the body and the brain decay?—we have to make the most of it now, before it is too late. Suppose you knew you were going to die a week from Tuesday. How would you spend your final days? Would you ignore your friends and family? Would you walk past a bed of tulips without stopping? Would you take things for granted? If you knew you were going to die for good—as we atheists know—then you would be hypersensitive to every joy, every tragic beauty. “This is the last time I will hug my nephew,” you might say. “This is the final autumn I will see the leaves changing.” You would stop and take notice, just as we do with a garden of flowers, knowing that in a few days those blossoms will be gone.
Atheism actually enhances the value of life. We tend to give greater value to things that are rare: gold, diamonds, honesty. The air we breathe is important, but it is plentiful and we get it for free. (We only pay for it underwater or on Mount Everest.) The scarcity and brevity of life is what enlarges its value. We mourn the deaths of older people, but we consider it a greater loss when a young child dies. The fact that we are going to die is what makes life precious.
If life is eternal, then life is cheap.
If we waste any moment of our precious lives on the hope of an afterlife, we rob ourselves of real joy and value in the here and now. Our lives are all we have, and we should enjoy them to the fullest, minute by fragile minute. Bertrand Russell wrote: “I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting.”
Even if there were an “afterlife,” why would it be eternal? (Headline: “Scientists Find the Afterlife and It Is Six Minutes Long.”) As an atheist, I actually think there is an afterlife, and it lasts exactly as long as my own life, and I am living it right now. During my “previous life,” beginning on that deserted beach near Santa Monica just before my mother’s egg was fertilized, I was merely one of many sperm, all striving to reach the goal. Millions of my potential brothers and sisters were swimming and fighting, directed by an inner drive to survive that was no less eager than mine, with no less potential for a future existence. But out of all those countless throngs of little bodies who strove for the prize, I am the one that made it. I reached the goal, the “afterlife” of the egg. My body, the sperm, died and disappeared, and only the information in the little packet of DNA “passed on” to the “other side” and united with my maker. I got to live on, and the others did not. I got to develop and be born and learn to walk and go to school and take piano lessons and taste chocolate. I get to die. Many are called, but few are chosen.
“If there is no hope of eternal life, then what is the purpose of life?” is a question we atheists often hear. My response is that there is indeed no purpose of life. There is purpose
in
life. If there were a purpose
of
life, then that would cheapen life. It would make us tools or slaves of someone else’s purpose. Like a hammer that hangs on the garage wall waiting for someone to build something, if we humans were designed for a purpose then we would be subservient in the universe. Our value would not be in ourselves. It would exist in our submission to the will of the toolmaker. That is slavery to a master, or infant dependency on a father figure. Besides, if there is a god, what is the purpose of
his
life? If he doesn’t need a purpose, why do we? Doesn’t a father need to have had a father? A true father does not want the child to remain forever subservient, finding purpose in pleasing the will of the parent. A true father expects the child to become a peer, with its own purpose, even if it disagrees with the parent. If I raise a child who is eternally dependent on me for meaning, then I am an inept parent.
in
life. If there were a purpose
of
life, then that would cheapen life. It would make us tools or slaves of someone else’s purpose. Like a hammer that hangs on the garage wall waiting for someone to build something, if we humans were designed for a purpose then we would be subservient in the universe. Our value would not be in ourselves. It would exist in our submission to the will of the toolmaker. That is slavery to a master, or infant dependency on a father figure. Besides, if there is a god, what is the purpose of
his
life? If he doesn’t need a purpose, why do we? Doesn’t a father need to have had a father? A true father does not want the child to remain forever subservient, finding purpose in pleasing the will of the parent. A true father expects the child to become a peer, with its own purpose, even if it disagrees with the parent. If I raise a child who is eternally dependent on me for meaning, then I am an inept parent.
There is no purpose of life. Life is its own reward. But as long as there are problems to solve, there will be purpose
in
life. When there is hunger to lessen, illness to cure, pain to minimize, inequality to eradicate, oppression to resist, knowledge to gain and beauty to create, there is meaning in life. A college student once asked Carl Sagan: “What meaning is left, if everything I’ve been taught since I was a child turns out to be untrue?” Carl looked at him and said, “Do something meaningful.”
in
life. When there is hunger to lessen, illness to cure, pain to minimize, inequality to eradicate, oppression to resist, knowledge to gain and beauty to create, there is meaning in life. A college student once asked Carl Sagan: “What meaning is left, if everything I’ve been taught since I was a child turns out to be untrue?” Carl looked at him and said, “Do something meaningful.”
Who would dare say that Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a nonbeliever, had no purpose in life? She fought for 50 years for women’s equality. Or, what about Margaret Sanger? Many of those who demonize Sanger still choose to practice birth control, which is now prevalent due to her tireless and brave efforts. Or Bertrand Russell? Or any of a huge number of nonbelievers who have enhanced life by focusing on practical matters. If you can find a problem to solve, an issue to work on, then you have purpose in life.
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