Prepared

I’ve been asking myself if one can ever ‘be prepared’ for the death of someone close. Rationally, it only needs some effort to get used to the idea that everyone is always dying, that the process is as inevitable as it is undesired. When is a good time to allow the mind to consider the possibility that a living, breathing body will one day be unable to respond to even a direct light shone in the eyes?

The thought of death is one that the mind refuses to admit; in fact, it makes of it such a strong taboo that it feels almost like bad luck to think of it at all. Bite your tongue! we say. Forbid the thought!

For the first part of this year, I had been doing precisely that: forbidding the thought of what should have been – was – obvious to me. As far back as this X-ray, I knew that my father had not got very long. And yet, in the last six weeks of his life, when he began to need four hours, then ten, eighteen and finally 24 hours oxygen support, I kept at bay the thought that whatever road was left open for him at this point, it was not one that lead to recovery.

We’re told warm tales of the power of positive thinking. The idea that fervent wishing can make things happen the way one wants them to be is seductive. But consider: just because we’re capable of blocking certain thoughts it doesn’t mean they don’t exist. The moment you say, ‘I will not think of death and dying; he’s going to get better’, you’ve admitted the thought in and you have to live with it whether you want it to or not.

In early June, when my father was in hospital for the second time, the doctor called me to his office while my father was taken away for a very painful procedure.

‘It doesn’t look good,’ he said. ‘I wanted to tell you and not your mother.’

‘You can tell us the worst, doctor. We’ve been mentally prepared for some time now.’

I lied, of course. Just because I had to face the possibility of my father’s death, it didn’t mean that I was ready to submit to it. After all, what could the doctor have said? With what degree of certainty could he have said, he has two weeks or four or eighteen?

The reason, I am coming to realise, that our ‘preparedness’ for death is at all possible is that we do not know precisely when it will happen, even though we know that death is near. If we knew, we could not continue with our own lives because we would be waiting for that moment. Death deserves our total attention and we would not miss it if we could. We never miss it but that irony escapes us in our living moments.

When the moment arrives, when you realise that the person on the bed with his mouth slightly open, in an attitude of unnatural stillness, will never again change position or clear his throat – will never again be a person, but only a body – you find that you are not, after all, surprised. You find that those thoughts in your mind that did battle one against the other, did after all, prepare you for this moment. You are not surprised that hands can still be warm, hair can spring back from the forehead like it always did; you’re not even surprised when, if you accidentally bump into the legs that stick out of the bed, there is no reaction.

The only reaction is in you. You instinctively apologise and then catch the futility of that apology with bitterness and dawning grief. Once again your mind has admitted the impossibility of death.

And so it goes.

But death is not a matter of belief; it’s a fact, as hard and inalterable as birth. Perhaps what those who are left behind need is not the ability to live with it. Perhaps what we need is the ability to die to it.