Someone sent me Sunday Morning by Wallace Stevens to read.

A woman is sitting in her garden. She’s having coffee and oranges. There’s fruit on the trees, and a cockatoo. Lovely, I thought. It all sounds very nice. But so what?

I struggled through the poem until…

Death is what?

I have experienced plenty of beauty in my life. It was all very nice, but what does death have to do with it? Does death create beauty? Would we still have beauty if we did not have death? Why can’t we have mystic beauty forever?

I had to start over to find the answers.

Our lady is sitting in her garden on a Sunday morning, when she is supposed to be in church. She is enjoying the beauty and her dreams, until the dark dreams start to creep in.

What is that old catastrophe? It’s death, isn’t it? Death is coming.

At first, she is afraid and mourns the things that will be lost when she leaves this life behind. Her delightful garden. Her cockatoo.

Christians tell us life is just a brief preamble while we wait for everlasting life in heaven. But how do we know heaven is coming? We have no evidence for it. People talk about it, and we can dream about it. But how do we know?

The narrator reminds us there is plenty of beauty to cherish here on Earth, without thoughts of heaven. Plenty of natural beauty. Plenty of ripe fruit.

Would we want life to be all delightful, all the time? Heaven is supposed to be always joyful, but I expect it would get boring without the ups and downs that we experience down here on Earth. We need some bad to highlight the good.

Would we even recognise the good without the bad to contrast with it? Do they even have bad in heaven? Or is it just good that goes on forever and ever?

Just imagine. You wake up on a Sunday morning, and there’s coffee and oranges, and then the same thing the next day. And the day after that. And this will go on forever because you are immortal now.

We need to experience the ups and downs to really appreciate the ups. It will soon get boring if every day is filled with sunshine.

Lao Tzu had something to say about this.

A first reading of Lao Tzu says that perhaps if we get rid of beauty, it will save us from the negative emotions that come with ugliness. But do we really want to get rid of beauty?

This takes us back to the lines that helped me understand what Sunday Morning is all about.

We can’t appreciate the good without some bad to contrast with it, and death is the worst bad of all. The promise of death encourages us to cherish life with all its beauty. Without death to focus our desires, the beauty will lose its charm.

Roger Ebert died this week and one of the best things about famous people dying is that Terry Gross always has an interview with them from 1987 when the famous person was at the pinnacle of their abilities and Terry Gross sucked a little bit less at interviewing. Of course, Terry had several interviews with Roger and even one with Siskel and Ebert together that was quite delightful.

I appreciate Terry Gross’s interview recycling because I’ve long had a theory that we have an obligation to remember great people before they got old even, or especially, when we only ever knew them as old or infirm. Inside every old person is a young person who doesn’t really understand that he’s old now. We should all make a better effort to get to know the young person.

My favourite example is Frank Sinatra. People of my generation think of Frank Sinatra as an old man who sang romantic songs in an old man’s voice. Close your eyes and conjure up Ol’ Blue Eyes singing My Funny Valentine. Did you picture someone like who looked like this?

Sorry, you got the wrong guy. Songs for Young Lovers was recorded in 1953 . When Frank was in the prime of his superstardom in the 40s, he looked like this.

And… he had the same voice as that old guy!

The next time you play some romantic Frankie tunes, don’t make the mistake of imagining that old dude whose voice your grandmother was partial to. That’ll snuff out your spark of romance in no time.

Imagine this guy instead.

You can play this game with a whole geriatric ward of interesting old folks. That dude who sang Heartbreak Hotel? He wasn’t an overweight lounge lizard in a sequined white jumpsuit.

It was this guy.

The Man in Black – another guy who sounded ancient?

Who else sounds ancient? Oh yes, the inspiration for a thousand blog titles, Mr Bob Dylan. The guy who sang Blowing in the Wind looked like this.

Roger Ebert’s very best writing flowed when the tributaries of underground memories trickled into his stream of thought as in this meandering tale wandering through the London of his youth and his later battle with infirmity.

On my imaginary walk I could have turned right at the end of Jermyn and walked up St. James to Piccadilly, and down to Park Lane, and up toward Notting Hill, and I could have passed the Mason’s Arms on my way to Pembridge Square and nodded while passing the Hyde Park West Hotel, where I had a tiny room with a window that opened to allow me to stand on a wide roof overlooking London. I could have had lunch at Costa’s, behind the Gate at Notting Hill, the famous movie theater. Or headed on west to Lord Leighton’s House. Or I could have simply walked out the far end of Pembridge Square and stopped for lunch at the Sun in Splendor– the Evening Standard Pub of the Year in 1968. Why do I know that?

I realize this could get boring. It probably already has. I’ll try to get to my point. Sometimes when I write, you understand, it’s like when I walk around London. When I set out I have a general destination in mind, but as I poke around this way and that, I find places I didn’t know about and things that hadn’t occurred to me, maybe glimpse something intriguing at the end of a street, which is how I found Chiswick House, which I had no idea existed.

We should all do Roger a favour and banish the old chubby with the missing jaw from our imagination. Remember, instead, the young chubby who always wanted to be a great writer and be thankful that he achieved his dream.

During the Fresh Air interview mash-up, one interviewee said that the secret to Ebert’s movie reviewing was that he didn’t much care how good a movie was; he cared how much he enjoyed it. His writing was like that too. I’ve been following Ebert’s blog for several years and he always gives the impression that he is writing to delight himself and his delight is infectious. I adore the way he wanders off topic into his own memories and shares them with such simple clarity that they become mixed in with your own.

Reading an Ebert story inevitably makes me want to write one of my own but, as I have a rather busy weekend of me, I’ll have to settle, Terry Gross-style, for replaying a favourite story or two that I stumbled across this morning when I happened to click this link.

The first is about the damage that hidden shame can wreak. Ebert takes a passage from his review of The Reader and turns it into a recollection about a shameful passage in his own history.

Roger Ebert has written a powerful, meandering essay about shame. The essay takes many twists and turns and each one of them is fascinating journey in its own right.

It starts out as a review of the movie The Reader

I was watching Tony Scott on the Charlie Rose program, and he said, in connection with “The Reader,” that he was getting tired of so many movies about the Holocaust. I didn’t agree or disagree. What I thought was, “The Reader” isn’t about the Holocaust. It’s about not speaking when you know you should.

My Deepest Shame

The second is about the limits of empathy and the terrible things that happen when your empathy is too limited.

That brings me back around to the story of the school mural. I began up above by imagining I was a student in Prescott, Arizona, with my face being painted over. That was easy for me. What I cannot imagine is what it would be like to be one of those people driving past in their cars day after day and screaming hateful things out of the window. How do you get to that place in your life?

A Beautiful Mind

In every Ebert story, there is always a whispered shout-out to some character from the past who had an influence on his life. Roger, you are in my past now but, muse be willing, the influence of your stories will live on in mine.

I just read Chapter 11: What is the meaning of it all?

At the start of each chapter, there is a short vignette that tells a little story from a case study. Chapter 11, tells of an elderly woman, Elizabeth, who has an undiagnosed health condition that is making her sick. Her daughter, an ER nurse, becomes her champion and takes her from doctor to doctor, test after test, treatment after treatment while Elizabeth’s health continues to deteriorate. Eventually, Elizabeth announces that she doesn’t want to do this anymore.

Her daughter was stunned. “I thought you wanted to fight this”, she said.

I find this metaphor – “you have to fight” – terribly unhelpful. I think, instead, you have to try to have a good understanding of the choices available and to make decisions that are likely to lead to the best outcomes, even when your information is incomplete.

For my own cancer, a diffuse low-grade glioma, there is very little evidence that surgery is helpful and yet the standard of care is to have surgery. My neuro recommended surgery at our first meeting. Almost everyone I know with a glioma has chosen surgery and many are on their second or third surgery because gliomas almost always recur. Surgery for a brain tumour is very taxing, the recovery is difficult and the benefits are questionable. It’s like the healthcare business has a directive that says something must be done and this is something.

So what is the meaning of it all?

I’ve been studying existentialism for my philosophy degree. Jean-Paul Sartre says that we humans don’t come with any predefined meaning or purpose. We have to find it for ourselves. I find meaning in relationships — family and friends — and in leaving the world a little better than how I found it. I don’t find meaning in racking up more months or years on the calendar.

Sartre also says that once we have found our meaning in life, we are required to make choices to realise that meaning. Most people go through life without ever questioning its meaning and, rather than making choices of their own, they accept whatever option that society or convention or family obligation puts in front of them. To truly live meaningful lives, we must make choices. We are condemned to be free.

I think it’s a shame that our society puts so little emphasis on finding meaning and making choices. It’s a shame that the chapter on meaning is the second to last chapter in a book about the end of life. I expect that more people would lead fulfilling lives if they knew that there were more options available than the school-university-marriage-mortgage-children treadmill that conventional society presents us with.

Using ritual to find meaning

Another part of chapter 11 talks about using ritual to create meaning at the end of life.

I’ve just read an article in Aeon magazine that contrasts the hide-bound rituals of Confucianism with the relative freedom proposed by another Chinese philosopher, Zhuangzi.

This is my first exposure to Chinese philosophy, so forgive me if I am misrepresenting anything.

Confucius recommended a series of rituals to ease the pain of loss when someone dies and to make all kinds of transitions (marriage, business arrangements, political decisions) easier to process. Zhuangzi, by contrast, proposed a more free-wheeling approach to life.

Zhuangzi shares a fable to illustrate the limited worldview of someone who knows only ritual.

There is a well-known story in the Zhuangzi, the ‘Fable of a Frog in the Well’. It is a conversation between a well frog and a sea turtle. The frog brags about its own comfortable abode and way of life in a caved-in well to a visiting sea turtle. When the turtle describes for the frog what the sea is like, the frog is completely dumbfounded, not knowing what to make of the turtle’s description. This is a tale about the limited world of the well for the frog in contrast with the limitless world of the sea for the turtle.

Most of us live our lives like a frog who can’t imagine a world outside his well.

Zhuangzi goes on to talk about a butcher, Cook Ding, who creates a ritual way of carving an ox that respects both timeless tradition and the particular circumstances of the task in front of him.

Every touch and every move of Cook Ding’s is conducted in perfect rhythm, as if he was performing some grand ancient ritual, for a highly scripted occasion. His execution is exquisite and precise, hitting all the right notes, and smoothly cutting open the ox’s body without hacking his way through.

I find comfort in ritual. When I returned to England, a few years ago, I was eager to immerse myself in the ancient rituals of my country. A pint of beer in front of a roaring fire on a wet Sunday afternoon. The glories of Evensong in the soaring space of Bristol Cathedral. I believe the words of the funeral rite in the Book of Common Prayer have brought comfort to untold millions over the centuries.

But there is a conflict between following rituals and making the choice to live one’s life freely. I expect Sartre would say that rituals are good when they are freely chosen.

I appreciated chapter 11’s suggestions to create personal rituals to ease the pain of loss and to remember the person who has died. My daughter and I have created a few mini-rituals, like doing jigsaw puzzles together and drinking cocktails at The Broken Dock.

One day, she will be doing a jigsaw and she will remember me and smile.

I don’t know how Emily found me, but she gave me hope. Emily introduced me to Kristina, and we have shared our fears and wishes ever since.

It’s hard to know when it’s time for faraway friends to leave us, but over the last week or two, Emily stopped replying to our messages. We had no way to contact her family to find out how she was, and we had to fill in the gaps for ourselves. But the bad news came yesterday. Emily has left us.

My sadness at Emily’s departure is heavier than I expected, but it helps me to think what this means for Emily’s family, and for my own.

We talk a lot about what will happen when it’s my time to leave. None of us is in any hurry to move on, but I think we are all ready.

Goodbye, Emily. You gave me hope.

My friend told me “That’s really not the point. It’s not about who knows him. It’s about being there.” He sent me a link to an essay on the Internet called ‘Always go to the funeral’. It’s an amazing essay and it changed my mind about a lot of things to do with religion.

Here’s a little snippet.

On a cold April night three years ago, my father died a quiet death from cancer. His funeral was on a Wednesday, middle of the workweek. I had been numb for days when, for some reason, during the funeral, I turned and looked back at the folks in the church. The memory of it still takes my breath away. The most human, powerful and humbling thing I’ve ever seen was a church at 3:00 on a Wednesday full of inconvenienced people who believe in going to the funeral.

http://thisibelieve.org/essay/8/

Among my circle of friends, we have adopted this rule and have a little ceremony when someone dies, that goes like this.

“Are you going to the funeral?”
“What’s the first rule of funerals?”
“Always go the funeral.”
“See you there!”

Now it’s my turn.

My Dad died last week and I am so very, very sad. We now have a big family debate about how to honour his passing. Dad fulfilled a long-standing dream to retire to Spain (actually, he always said Portugal, but Spain is right there next door) and, after decades away, my family is worried that there is no one left who remembers him to join us as we say goodbye. There’s also a bit of a debate as to whether a Christian memorial service is appropriate for a man who did not have a religious bone, vein or gristle in his body.

The Spaniards were very efficient with the cremation and there was no service. But now we want to do something with a bit more significance and the choices at hand are:

1. Scatter ashes in Footscray Meadows – the scene of many a childhood memory.  Dad taught me to fish there. My brother climbed a tree with me to show me eggs in a bird’s nest. Most of my early misdeeds were there. It’s the first place I ever tried to cycle across a river. I have very fond memories of Footscray Meadows.
2. Memorial service at the church in Rectory Lane. It’s the only church I really know well. My Dad was married there (the first time around) and I was christened there along with my brothers and sisters. My grandmother was buried there a couple of years back.

The nub of the debate is whether it is inappropriate — disrespectful, even — to a man who was not so much an atheist as a never-really-gave-religion-any-thought-eist to give him a memorial service in a church. Here’s my response.

I am the biggest atheist I know but I think the one thing that religions do well is a funeral. Secular funerals feel kind of empty to me — like they are missing the point. I think the best kind of funeral connects you with two thousand years of western tradition and then sends you to the pub where you drink Guinness and laugh about the awful couch that your parents had in the 1970s and the good times that you shared and then you cry about the loss that you all feel. That’s a funeral. Scattering ashes in a park is not quite the same for me.

My sister Carol researched our family tree a few years back. She traced our heritage back many generations – back into the 16th century – and discovered that no one in our family moved more than two or three miles from Footscray in all those centuries. But in a generation or two we have scattered to the four winds. I have cousins all over England and Northern Ireland and in France and Australia and the Clown Family made it all the way to California. My dad’s family was not from Footscray though. His family was from way, way north — about 4 or 5 miles north — in Eltham.

So, is it appropriate to give a decidedly non-Christian from Eltham a Christian memorial service in Footscray where all his children were born and christened? I can’t think of anything more appropriate.

My sister is a bit worried that it’ll be just us there in that church – four sad children remembering the life of a very special man and the very special lady who took care of him during his most vulnerable days. If it’s just us, it’ll be wonderful. But I’m willing to bet that there will be more than a handful of folks who remember us and are willing to fill the empty pews behind us. I hope you’ll read that essay and remember the edict: Always go to the funeral. I’ll buy you a Guinness if you come. You can buy me one too.

I’ll never forget the moment — at my nephews’ christening — where my sister and I had to renounce Satan and all his works and we snuck a glance at each other and my sister said something like “This is the bit where we get struck by lightning or arrested for perjury”.  But I feel very grateful for the privilege of being a godfather even if neither I nor my godsons believe in God. Religious ceremonies are not about religion, they are about ceremony and tradition and the Church of England does those particularly well.

That little church in Footscray is like a Tardis for me. Sitting in those pews transports me back through my memories and even further back into the memories of so many centuries past.

I shared some of these thoughts once before in Don’t Break the Chain. I imagine a chain of tradition and mythology stretching back for a thousand years and we shouldn’t be the ones to break it. It’s too precious.

The discussion led to all kinds of ideas and eventually a business plan for Kev and Jeff’s House of Death. A big part of the funeral experience comes, I think, from the comforting traditions. Traditions are always difficult things to get going of course but, if enough of us put our heads together, maybe we could come up with a few.

Coincidently, Scott Adams is planning his funeral today, too. One of his readers suggested a sad clown for his funeral. Just sitting up front, moping, not saying anything. One idiot poster was surprised that an atheist would want a funeral at all as though atheists don’t believe in death or something. I had always hoped for one of those Tibetan jobbies with the long sticks and the vultures but Georgina is against it. Most likely I’ll end up with one of those gatherings where my best friends sit around and laugh and get drunk and tell stories like at the best funerals that I have attended.

Religious funerals have a built-in advantage over atheist funerals because they help explain the whole what-happens-next issue in a way that is comforting to children. I know what happens afterwards, but it would be nice to have a story to tell my five year old daughter – something that weaves in the Circle of Life with a generous helping of how extraordinarily lucky we are to experience life in the first place.

Julio, Fabienne and Morgane, our thoughts are with you.

I went down to the chapel and there was an old, old priest in there. As old as Methuselah. I was frantic and I couldn’t get the words out.

That old priest held both of my hands in his and the words he spoke were like the wisdom of the ages. They slowed the whole world down and we all made it through another day.

At the end of your street is a facility, A Final Farewell, that offers you the option of a good death. You’ll need confirmation from your doctor that you are really dying, and a second doctor will interview you to be sure you know what you are doing and no evil son-in-law is coercing you. You can change your mind at any time.

On the special day, you head down to A Final Farewell with your wife and family, and they have a beautiful room prepared for you. You hang out for a while with some close friends and say goodbye. You enjoy an entrecôte steak with your family and a lovely glass of Fuller’s Vintage Ale, and then it’s time.

A Final Farewell has prepared a bench for you under an old oak tree surrounded by daffodils and primroses, and the sun is shining. Claude Debussy’s Gymnopédie is playing softly. You have one final hug with your wife, and she whispers, “I love you so much. Safe travels.”

You drink the glass of medication that has been prepared for you and your life on this earth is over.

There’s no obligation to choose to leave your life this way. Palliative care is like a miracle for many people. For many conditions, palliative care can make all of your pain go away — but this doesn’t work for everyone. And even if there is pain, some patients will prefer to bear it. Other patients go into a coma that lasts for weeks and months while their family cleans them and turns them to prevent bed sores. You will still have all of these options, even if the option to choose your own time of death.

The bill to be debated in Parliament will give us the choice of a good death when our suffering becomes too much. I will choose palliative care for myself, but I will be grateful for the choice of a good death if palliative care is not working for me.

These are not the only options, of course. If you are in a coma, you can already leave instructions for your nursing team to starve you to death. Dying of thirst is another option that many people choose, and if the pain becomes unbearable despite palliative care, your doctor can increase your morphine until it kills you.

Dignitas in Switzerland offers the opportunity for a good death but if your wife comes with you to comfort you she will be investigated for assisted suicide. Prosecutions are rare but your wife will be investigated by the police and probate will be held up until she is cleared. You must go to Dignitas on your own.

Suicide is another option. You can connect a pipe to the exhaust of your car. But again, the law says you must die alone.

There will be restrictions on who can choose assisted dying under the new law. It will only be available to those who are already dying. It will not be available to the disabled, neither will it be available to people with depression or other mental illnesses such as dementia.

The courts in Canada have demonstrated the perils of a slippery slope and have changed their Medical Assistance in Death law several times to widen the scope of their law but the assisted dying law in Oregon has not changed in twenty-five years.

There are several options open to you if you are dying in pain but the new Assisted Dying Bill offers one more.

Would you choose a good death?

Credit to Nigel Warburton for the idea for this post.

It has almost been a year since my GP sent me for an MRI. She called me at the pub to tell me I had a brain tumour.

A super-duper MRI confirmed it as a diffuse low-grade glioma. It’s terminal and there is no cure. The surgeon wanted to do surgery (duh!). I declined.

The oncologist recommended a biopsy to determine the type of glioma. We need the type to choose the right chemo — and because I am a curious sort of person. The biopsy was inconclusive and told us nothing. The oncologist recommended chemo anyway. I declined.

The tumour is too big for radiation. I declined all treatment.

The only other option is to monitor the tumour with an MRI every six months and I had the first one in December to set a baseline. The results just came in and showed no growth since the original MRI.

I’m approaching my first cancerversary now. It has been a wild ride. I didn’t expect to make it this far.

But there is a lot of paperwork involved with dying.

• Write my last Will and Testament.
• Arrange my funeral (cotton shroud in a shady corner of woodland).
• Draw a treasure map to show where the gold is hidden.
• Register a Power of Attorney.
• Compile my funeral playlist.
• Teach my family how to adjust the thermostat and pay the council tax.

But then when you are not gonna die imminently it all gets very confusing. If I am dying next week or next month or next year, I can plan. I can book a trip to see the elephants on the Serengeti. I can cancel my appointment with the dental hygienist.

The uncertainty is hard to bear. Three people close to me have died of a brain tumour and they all died quite quickly. I expected to do the same. When you know you are going to die soon, you can plan.

If I am gonna live for another 20 years, I can plan for that too. Work, work, work. Pay mortgage. Save money. Buy new glasses. Get my teeth cleaned.

Not knowing anything makes it hard to plan. It’s more stressful than dying.

The idea of going out like a Hurricane is quite romantic.

And when it’s over I’d just as soon go on my way
Up to some paradise
Where the trout streams flow and the air is nice
And ride a horse along a trail

Being stuck in the Doldrums is less romantic.

Anyway. No growth. Good news for now. One step at a time.