Apologies in advance for this post, it’s not here to offend or annoy. It’s part of my 30 days of truth, it’s stuff I think about so…warts and all, eh?
Sometimes I will sit there, mulling it over. It doesn’t matter where I am. I can be in bed, watching a trashy film or on the bus. Suddenly though, these thoughts fill my head, jostling for space, crowding out reason and normality.
Imagine if the phone rang now. I think. Imagine it’s someone you don’t know. It’s your parent’s phone and they’ve been in an accident. What would you do? What would you think?
My stomach curls but my brain won’t stop. Thinking, thinking, thinking. What if? What if? What if?
You’d be alone. You’d have no one. What if you hadn’t talked to them in a while? What if they were ill and you couldn’t get to see them before it happened?
The voice changes.
What would you do? What if it was you? What if you knew you were going to die? The melodramatic neurons continue. What would you do?
Contingency planning starts, unbidden. What I would have at the funeral? Would would turn up? What would they think? What would the ceremony be like? What hymns would I have? (although clichéd I think I’d have to have The Lord’s my Shepherd – it’s so pretty)
I don’t have an obsession with death. It’s something that I view in quite a … I don’t know, is calculated the right word? No. I see death as something which just is. It’s not nice, it’s not something I long for and I don’t want it to happen to those I love. But it will. It will happen. Sooner, later, whenever, it will happen.
However, there is one thing I do know about death. About my death, about anyone’s death.
I don’t want to be able to say goodbye.
The thought of knowing that someone’s death was imminent. The thought that I’d have to say something to someone, knowing it was the last thing they’d hear from me. The thought that I might have to think about what was going to happen.
No. I don’t want to be able to say goodbye.
This post is part of Hope’s 30 days of truth series.
Part 6: Something you hope you never have to do.
Part 5: Something you hope to do in your life.
Part 4: Something you have to forgive someone for.
Part 3: Something you have to forgive yourself for
I get the panics…but i can’t take such a controlled view of it, it really is all out panic and i have to force myself to think of something else.
The panics – I like that term for it. I’ve never thought of it as panicking. I always think of it as me being morbid.
I think what happens to me is the panics too. Every time I even think about something happening to my family, my heart pounds, and I pretty much start to cry. It’s something I can’t accept, even though I know, someday, something is going to happen.
I think it’s a hard one to accept. I don’t think anyone is ever totally prepared for the death of a loved one, even if the death is expected. The panics seem to have subsided a little recently – I haven’t thought that way for a long long time.
I also get them about my place in the world and ‘what if this is all my life ever amounts to and i die never having been properly loved or achieving anything’
But deep down, PJB, I’m sure you know that you have achieved and you have been loved. Everyone, everywhere, is loved by someone and everyone, everywhere, has achieved something, no matter how small.
I would rule out jobs at Dignitas.
Thanks! To be honest, it wasn’t ever on my list of potential careers.
The thought of knowing that someone’s death was imminent. The thought that I’d have to say something to someone, knowing it was the last thing they’d hear from me. The thought that I might have to think about what was going to happen.
This is the most heartbreaking thing about what happened with The Designer and his Dad.
At least I didn’t have that. At least it was over and I found out after when there was no arguing with God (other than to call Him a bastard for what had happened), no pleading for it to not happen because, aside from listening to the voice of denial in my head, I knew it had happened already.
I thought about you a lot when I wrote this post Soupy… I can’t imagine what it must have been like for TD to have gone through that. Similarly to your experience – my preference (I’d like to think) but then you never know until it happens.
Here’s the one thing I know about death: It’s coming. Studying meditation and Buddhist philosophy helped prepare me for my mother’s death. You just let go. So simple. So difficult.
Death and taxes – the two certainties in life (who was it who said that? I can’t remember). I’m lucky in the fact I’ve never had to let someone go. It would be nice to think that I could be stoic about it and just let it happen. In reality, I don’t think I could be that strong.
I’m crap at saying goodbye and it always makes me sentimental. My dad died suddenly and I “couldn’t” say goodbye, but to be honest, I wouldn’t have been able/willing to say it properly anyway. And it must be worse to know the end is coming than to simply slam into death in an instant.
I agree with you TB. I think I’d prefer not to know about death. If I knew that I was on the way out, I’d spend my remaining days worrying that I hadn’t achieved what I set out to instead of enjoying the time I had left.
It doesn’t worry me in the slightest, as you said, it just is.
We knew my mum was dying, we just didn’t know exactly when. Even though it was expected, it was still quite unexpected when it happened (if that makes sense!) – which looking back I’m kind of thankful for, as I don’t think I could’ve said goodbye either.
Yes, CS, you make sense. You knew it was coming, and yet, when it did, it still was a shock. I don’t think any of us like the thought of what our final words to someone might be.
The worst thing I have ever done is go and say goodbye to my grandad in hospital. Just heartbreaking.
I went to see my grandfather in hospital when he was dying. I didn’t say goodbye though. Partly because I couldn’t and partly because he didn’t recognise me anyway. I think that made it, strangly, all the easier.
I’ve had to say goodbye – I was in denial the whole time.
That’s tough Kes. I think I would be too, if I were in that situation, and I don’t think we’re the only ones.
Pingback: Stumbling block « Parlez-vous moo?
Pingback: A letter from January 2004 « Parlez-vous moo?
Pingback: Scruffy « Parlez-vous moo?