Dying Onstage

A story about youth, aging, and the urgency of being alive.

Barcelona, Spain, 2008— Life at the Beach
Photograph by James Navé

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Dying OnStage

Greetings from my last week in Manila.

Please send news from your world.

I’m headed back to Asheville on March 1st. Yes, I’m looking forward to watching early spring emerge in Western North Carolina.

Meanwhile, I’ve been invited to present a six-minute monologue on Saturday, March 14, 2026, in Asheville.—Dying on Stage: Unlabel Death, 12 Diverse Monologues About Something We All Share.

Yikes, now what? Here are my working notes. Since it’s a Moth-style storytelling presentation, I’ll carry the outline in my head rather than memorize what’s below.

Wish me luck!

The poet Charles Wright tells us:

Poets and writers know how to label and unlable not only death, but everything they encounter throughout their lives.

Wesley Nursing Center, 1970–72

I was just beginning to understand labeling and un-labeling between 1970–72 when I was 20 years old, working the 7–3 day shift as an orderly at Wesley Nursing Home on Shamrock Drive in Charlotte, North Carolina.

I was employed at Wesley because I was a conscientious objector, serving two years of alternate service in lieu of being drafted for active duty in the American War in Vietnam.

While I didn’t consider myself a pacifist, I was seriously opposed to that war. I’d seen the reports — the Tet Offensive, the My Lai Massacre — and I knew that all that shooting, suffering, and dying was profoundly wrong.

I rode my Gitane Tour de France bicycle five miles to work every day for my 7–3 shift. My job was to care for the elderly men on the second-floor west and east wings. I served their meals, cleaned up their messes, made their beds, walked with them up and down the halls, and listened to their stories.

I most especially remember Reverend Gibbs, who lived on the west wing, three doors down from the nurses’ station, in a private room that overlooked a small in-town southern hardwood forest.

Reverend Gibbs was in his late 80s, had ruffled white hair and a long beak nose that supported his spectacles, as he called them.

His checkered bathrobe drooped over his pajamas, usually covered with ashes from the Swisher Sweets Tip Cigarillos he smoked while he watched his afternoon soap operas — General Hospital, As the World Turns, Guiding Light, and Search for Tomorrow.

More than once, Reverend Gibbs tugged my sleeve and would say, with a slight tinge of urgency, “You’re young, you’ve got years ahead of you, go out there and do exactly what you want to do.”

Over my two years at Wesley Nursing Center, I lost count of how many times Reverend Gibbs tugged my sleeve. It wasn’t until I was in my thirties that I was able to distill what the good Reverend told me into three words: Label Yourself Alive.

I’m in my seventies now, and I can tell you Reverend Gibbs’ Label Yourself Alive advice still holds. I’ve had my failures, successes, disappointments, adventures, heartbreaks, and plenty of fantastic evenings at the Bar du Marché on rue de Seine in Paris with my good buddy John van Hasselt.

Labeling myself alive has cued me to deal with whatever comes, both good and bad.

Bar du Marché, Paris, France, April 2025 — James Navé and John van Hasselt
Photograph by Alexandra Webber

So when the bell finally dings, I won’t be doing what the poet Dylan Thomas told his father to do, which was “rage against the dying of the light.”

I hope I’ll be able to say, “It’s been a pretty damn good run. I didn’t always do it my way, but I gave it a shot, and now, it’s time to go.”

I’ll bet Reverend Gibbs would have appreciated what Charles Wright had to say about beauty and disappearance.

Warm wishes from Manila.

Stayin’ alive,

Navé

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