Facing Death

Death.

Nobody wants to know about death.

It is something that we all have to face. Nobody knows when it will pounce on us.

Two things brought this up recently.

The first occasion was when we, my wife and I, went to visit one of her old school mates.

This lady is an exceptionally pleasant person living in a small village somewhere very near the back of beyond.

She has cancer. The dreaded ‘Big C’.

They are giving her chemotherapy. She has had multiple doses already and seems destined for more. Hopefully, we pray, that the treatment will be a success and that she can return to a normal, productive, life.

But, inevitably, there is a shadow hanging over her.

There is, of course, scant comfort in the idea that there are thousands, perhaps millions, of people in the same boat. Cancer, like death, is personal; it is chilling and you are alone with it. Nobody can feel what you feel; nobody can understand your fears.

I touched, briefly, on this subject in my first novel. In an early chapter one of the main characters is dying of an unspecified form of cancer. She is defiant yet fearful; terrified of the prospect of the imminent death yet she hides that terror from everyone.

We do that. We wish to appear brave when such courage is, ultimately, useless.

We are, most of us, familiar with the phases of anger, fear, denial and acceptance but no manner of preparation can really be successful. Nobody wants to die.

Even people who commit suicide rarely want, I am sure, to die. They have just reached a point where there appears to be no choices left open to them.

Some people do not have the opportunity to prepare themselves.

Recently, in the news, a young boy was taken from near his home. His body has just been discovered floating in the river downstream from where he was abducted.

Who would do this? Who could possibly be mentally twisted enough to take the life of a small person?

It is impossible to put yourself into the mind of a monster that would carry out such a heinous act.

We are accustomed to old people dying. We observe this as a fact of life; it is something we view as inevitable.

We bandy such words as, “Well, they had a good run,” if the person was elderly. Those words are true.

We sometimes say that ‘life is too short’ for such and such when, truly, life, however long, or short, it is will be the longest thing that you know.

The horror of a small child, a young person, being killed either by accident or by the hand of an adult, is too abhorrent to tolerate. It is bad enough that children are taken from their families by disease but as a deliberate attack by some inhuman hand is beyond logical or sensible thought.

The indescribable reality is that the life of a future Prime Minister, a person who discovers the cure for some dread disease, an astrophysicist who will discover the secrets of the Universe has just ended. That future has now gone and, along with it, the hopes and dreams of thousands of strangers.

None of us know when we will go. We all live life as if we are immortal and that is how it, rightly, should be.

Statistically I should be among the next batch to ‘go’ (I can almost hear the cheers) but who knows? I could live a long and fruitful life beyond the normal span (I can hear the groans!).

Steve Jobs once said, “Live your life as if every day will be your last. One day you will be right.”

Preparation and acceptance are poles apart.

That is why nobody wants to know about it.