Cartoon: New Yorker By Jill Nicholas
THIS week I attended the funeral of a 88-year-old woman I didn’t know particularly well but her late husband of 50-plus years mowed my lawns for yonks. Every summer he kept me over-supplied with tomatoes, two decades ago he helped me buy a car that I still drive daily. My presence at his widow’s funeral was a token of respect for him, not so much her, sad as it was to learn she was no longer with us.
Bett’s departure was described as a “good death”. If there is such a thing hers was it. She played Scrabble with an equally elderly friend on Saturday night, said she felt tired, went to bed never to wake again.
THIS week I attended the funeral of a 88-year-old woman I didn’t know particularly well but her late husband of 50-plus years mowed my lawns for yonks. Every summer he kept me over-supplied with tomatoes, two decades ago he helped me buy a car that I still drive daily. My presence at his widow’s funeral was a token of respect for him, not so much her, sad as it was to learn she was no longer with us.
Bett’s departure was described as a “good death”. If there is such a thing hers was it. She played Scrabble with an equally elderly friend on Saturday night, said she felt tired, went to bed never to wake again.
As I write this a 97-yer-old of my acquaintance is spending his final days in a hospital ward, his kidneys are packing up, a sure sign the end is nigh. When he goes, it will be said he had a good innings.
It’s when those we’ve come to depend on to keep us healthy and run our affairs in an orderly manner die at an age when they should have been expected to live well into the future, that the reality of death’s finality kicks you in the guts.
My no-nonsense GP left this world less than three months after lung cancer was diagnosed. This was a woman in her 40s who’d never held a cigarette between her lips, ran ultra marathons, shortly before her death conquering New Zealand’s most notorious hard slog, the South Island’s Coast to Coast. She was doctor in residence for the region’s rep rugby team.
She was what we tend to refer to in this Covid world as an “essential service”. I‘ve never found a GP of her calibre to replace her.
Next in my line up of professional caregivers to leave me and a swag of others in the lurch was my lawyer. A bloody good bloke who, in my capacity as a journalist, I saw virtually daily as he defended the deprived and downtrodden in court. Long after he’d gone my mind’s eye was still seeing him lurking at the courtroom doorway and hearing snatches of his ribald wit – generally directed at me. If one can be amused by sudden deaths I still get a kick out of knowing the last thing I said to him was “eff off, Harry". He did and will be the one, wherever he is, laughing loudest that he’d put one over me.
Then within weeks my accountant went. He hadn’t taken care of my affairs long but was another great guy with the personal touch his profession’s not renowned for. One Sunday I received an email from him telling me he wouldn’t be handling my books this coming tax year as the news had come in that his number would soon be up, he made light of it. By the following Friday he was dead.
The list of the dear departed who had become an integral part of my life continues to grow; a former, younger colleague had the temerity to die on the operating table while having a heart valve replaced. Hours earlier he’d mailed to say how much he was looking forward to the op.
So to answer that inane question journalists tend to ask how one feels about something as sombre as death depriving us of those who meant a great deal to us professionally as well as personally my initial reaction was ‘I’m buggered if I know’.
Further refection reveals the fragility of my own mortality.
Whatever euphemism we use to describe it death is death, the final full stop. Death dictates its own time and terms.
It’s when those we’ve come to depend on to keep us healthy and run our affairs in an orderly manner die at an age when they should have been expected to live well into the future, that the reality of death’s finality kicks you in the guts.
My no-nonsense GP left this world less than three months after lung cancer was diagnosed. This was a woman in her 40s who’d never held a cigarette between her lips, ran ultra marathons, shortly before her death conquering New Zealand’s most notorious hard slog, the South Island’s Coast to Coast. She was doctor in residence for the region’s rep rugby team.
She was what we tend to refer to in this Covid world as an “essential service”. I‘ve never found a GP of her calibre to replace her.
Next in my line up of professional caregivers to leave me and a swag of others in the lurch was my lawyer. A bloody good bloke who, in my capacity as a journalist, I saw virtually daily as he defended the deprived and downtrodden in court. Long after he’d gone my mind’s eye was still seeing him lurking at the courtroom doorway and hearing snatches of his ribald wit – generally directed at me. If one can be amused by sudden deaths I still get a kick out of knowing the last thing I said to him was “eff off, Harry". He did and will be the one, wherever he is, laughing loudest that he’d put one over me.
Then within weeks my accountant went. He hadn’t taken care of my affairs long but was another great guy with the personal touch his profession’s not renowned for. One Sunday I received an email from him telling me he wouldn’t be handling my books this coming tax year as the news had come in that his number would soon be up, he made light of it. By the following Friday he was dead.
The list of the dear departed who had become an integral part of my life continues to grow; a former, younger colleague had the temerity to die on the operating table while having a heart valve replaced. Hours earlier he’d mailed to say how much he was looking forward to the op.
So to answer that inane question journalists tend to ask how one feels about something as sombre as death depriving us of those who meant a great deal to us professionally as well as personally my initial reaction was ‘I’m buggered if I know’.
Further refection reveals the fragility of my own mortality.
Whatever euphemism we use to describe it death is death, the final full stop. Death dictates its own time and terms.