Dying to know

Sudden death is nature’s way of telling you you’re fired. (Anon)

Dear Holly,
Today’s letter starts on a sad note. Tom, a friend and fellow bus driver with whom I shared lodgings for a couple of years, died this week after a fall. Tom could never abide English winters and, as was his habit, had taken the opportunity to absent himself from this one in favour of the Caribbean for a couple of weeks. It seems that after an afternoon spent carousing he strayed from the cool of the bar into the heat and bustle of a sunlit street, missed his footing, and just like that, his life on earth was over.

THE STRAND.

How fragile is the strand that plays,
Through life, in which we’re always caught
Which, winding through our unmapped maze,
Proves so much shorter than we thought,
Spun days are marshalled into years
Hand dancing in the daily round
They glitter brightly in the sun
Then disappear without a sound
Don’t sleep with all that might have been
Don’t stand to watch the one that weeps
The spinner’s hands toil on unseen
Awake! Before the spinner sleeps.
(Chris White.)

Ignore that sound, its just Wordsworth spinning in his box. Now, young ladies of eleven are far too young to be thinking on death, come to think of it, we all are. What is the point of obsessing on, or worrying about the inevitable? It would be a bit like me fretting about my bus breaking down every time I took it out of the yard. Common sense tells me that it has got to break down at some stage, but until it does I’m simply going to sit back and enjoy the ride.

Anyway, we, as a society, have managed to get our priorities concerning life and it’s inevitable demise arse about face. The truth is that dying is the easy bit, my cancer taught me that. When my illness was at its’ bleakest, and the road leading back to normality lay hidden under a mass of medical complications, I became aware that opening my hand and letting go, so to speak, was the easiest and a not all-together unattractive option. Fortunately the hospital’s nursing staff along with family and friends made sure that there was never the time or opportunity for me to seriously examine this avenue of escape.
No, it is life that is the difficult art to master. It has often occurred to me that it should be approached the same way that a recovering alcoholic approaches his or her affliction, that is to say, one day at a time, and after all, a wine this wonderful deserves to be sipped! (Sorry, I know it’s wrong, but couldn’t resist)

Philip Larkin summed it up beautifully in his poem ‘Days’ when he wrote;

‘What are days for?
Days are where we live.’

It completely encapsulates the unavoidability of our situation. Days, he points out, are where we spend our allotted time, with the question, framed in the first line, being answered only when the priest and the doctor, in their long coats, come hurrying to aid our final moments.

Ah! The doctors and priests, here representing the twin corner stones of our society, that is to say science and religion, and that should in fact read science versus religion. For the truth is that both of these parties continually seek to gain the upper hand in the pursuance of knowledge in the area of the after life. Not content with that, they then attempt to enlist as many of us as they can, to stand a watch on their own carefully built defence platforms, where once installed, we are encouraged to hurl insults and platitudes in an attempt to unravel the other party’s rainbow. Given that the main aims of both camps seems to revolve around the acquisition of as much money as they can lay their learned little hands on, my advise to you Holly would be to ignore both camps and make your own way.
A fuller explanation required? Ok…

It is a commonly held view, and one often proffered as a form of consolation, that the only person who is not aware of the sudden death in the family is the deceased. From time immemorial we have banded together in our collective grief and offered a balm against our common loss. Echoing around the halls, the drawing rooms and the kept-for-best parlours of our burial/burning gatherings, the theme is always the same. Be it the well heeled, crested plate, catered-in affairs of Knightsbridge or the mean back to back tribal gatherings of inner city Liverpool, whether accented by the long voweled music of the valleys or the terse cut and shunt of Walthamstow, it’s the same old litany offered in tones of comfort and total certainty. ‘Well, at least he/she didn’t suffer.’ we say to one another, whilst balancing plates and cups on knees or arm rests. ‘I mean it’s hard on those of us who are left behind, but at least he/she didn’t know a thing about it.’

Oh come on, look me in the eye and tell me that you’ve never said it. Yes, I thought so. Well, I suppose I’d better hold my hand up here and admit that, whenever I’ve come face to face with the suddenly bereaved, my brain has invariably assumed the quintessentially British position of stone dead, and left me coming up empty in my desperate search for an original line of condolence. As a consequence I’ve suddenly heard the trusted, rusted and trite lines just falling out of my mouth. It’s as if another me has taken over, and although I know it is going to happen I am totally powerless to prevent it. And I hate, and I mean I really, hate myself afterwards. In fact, on the ‘amIdead?o’meter’ (patent pending) it’s right up there with that first bleary evaluation the morning after that unbelievably pissed night before. You know, the bit where you tell yourself that it could have been worse, and all the while the truth, in the shape of the incontinent, window licking, bus pass recipient is snoring her unshaven gorgons head off right beside you. (Sorry, bloke writing here)
There must be an alternative, a more authoritative approach.
Science!
Ah, well, science of course has this problem. Now whilst it’s true that a fair slice of those within academia have made a shit load of money telling us what cannot exist and why, not one of the God burying brigade has ever managed to get his finger on, let alone under, the veil. Although, come to think of it, making a shit load of money without compromising the status quo is pretty good going. So sorry, as you were fellows, science has not only not got a problem but is doing very nicely thank you.


So on to the church, which, come to think of it, is also doing very nicely. That really shouldn’t be that much of a surprise of course, given that it is the other half of the status quo, the yin to science’s yang.
Whatever, the established church must trot out a good line on this, I mean after all, it’s part of the job isn’t it?
Well, no, as it happens. The main job would appear to be managing vast tracts of the British Isle whilst pontificating about camels and eye’s of needles. And another thing, I’ve probably just missed it but you know I can’t find that bit in the new testament where Jesus, having just finished feeding the five thousand, turns to the multitude and says, “My bells need re-hanging, so with that in mind Simon-Peter and Mary Magdalene will now be passing amongst you with a bucket, feel free to give until it hurts.” Ah, it’s probably just me.
Anyway, the best they can do is trot out that twenty-third psalm thing, which for the uninitiated is a three thousand year old piece of rap supposedly composed by a King David. (No that wasn’t his stage name, that is in fact what he was.) Anyway, whilst hanging out in his pastoral idyll he’d find himself given over to flights of orthography and go banging on about fearing no ill because hey! the man upstairs, complete with his rod and staff, was going to be all over it at the moment of your death.
Really? Jam tomorrow anyone?

A PSALM OF DAVID.

The Lord he is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures;
He leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul;
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
Yea, thou I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil;
For thou art with me;
Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

(King David) allegedly.


Well your majesty, truly great poetry, but sort of thin on the old reassurance level. And while we’re here, has anybody else got a question or is it only me? Apart from anything else, and resisting the temptation to be lewd, what is a rod and staff? No, I don’t know either, and I’ve got to be honest, anybody that comes at me with his rod or his staff whilst I’m busy walking through the valley is going to get a bloody good kicking. (Ok, so I gave in)

So if both science and the church cannot give me a satisfactory answer, then who can? Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but of course the answer is nobody. That’s right, absolutely know one. I don’t care if their name is Hawkins, Dawkins or Pope Eric the twenty-first, whatever they have to say about the subject, and no matter how cleverly they couch their arguments, it still comes back to that one small man shouting loudly into that good night. Refuse to go gently we may, but claiming we go knowingly we cannot. So this (for free!) is the unvarnished truth. For heaven’s sake live with it.

I’m going to leave the last word to a chap called Nathaniel Hawthorne, a 19th century American novelist who had this to say about passing on.

“We may sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream; it may be so the moment after death.”

I can live with that.

Love’n’stuff.

Chris Wilson White.