It is the one great certainty in life – the shared inevitability for all humanity, and yet death and dying is rarely discussed. In the west and Christian countries more broadly it’s largely feared, pushed away until the body falls into fragility, the urge to rest becomes overwhelming and we’re no longer bothered. Then death becomes a blessing, a ‘merciful release’ as a dear friend use to say.
Loss and Grief
There has recently been a death in the family. She had been ill with secondary lung cancer for over five years. It was said to be terminal and so it proved. The average life expectancy with that particular brand of death is five years, so it was expected, by friends and family and by her – although not accepted. She leaves a devastated husband, three grown-up children and three grandchildren, as well as a frustrated mother and forlorn father.
Two months or so before she died she was rushed into hospital crying with pain across her shoulders and back – areas harbouring cancerous cells, causing furious speculation that the cancer was active, and death was beckoning. A month later and further painful episodes saw her once again taken into hospital. There is nothing more we can do for you, said the oncologist.
A slight woman, narrow-minded with a fierce grip on life, a fear of death and bitter fury at ‘God’, and what she saw as the injustice of her illness. ‘Why me?’ ‘I’m a good person, it’s not fair,’ she shouted at the beginning and…