I’ve lived nearly ten years now under the shadow of the blood cancer myeloma, knowing that each of those could potentially be my last; that an infection could prove fatal or the chemotherapy drugs that I’m taking stop working. Many others out there live with similar uncertainty. I’m lucky that my medication has thus far worked extraordinarily well (although, at the time of writing, I’m due to have radiotherapy plus extra daily chemotherapy tablets, in a bid to keep things under control), and that I seem to be blessed with an innately happy and positive disposition. Countless others are not so fortunate in terms of their outcome. Too many die of cancer after only a few years. Too many are carried off by other illnesses before their time. Living with our mortality is not easy, but it’s something we all have to face. Faith is important in dealing with it, but so also is realism. To offer pious platitudes or well-meaning reassurance helps no one, as this reflection, from my forthcoming book Now That’s a Thought: A Mindful Guide to Fuller Living, makes clear.
Death is nothing at all, it’s been said
It is not death that a man should fear; he should fear never beginning to live. (Marcus Aurelius)
We trouble our life by thoughts about death, and our death by thoughts about life. (Michel de Montaigne)
Life asked death, ‘Why do people love me, but hate you.’ Death responded, ‘Because you are a beautiful lie, and I am the painful truth.’ (Anon)
‘Death is nothing at all’, it’s been said,
and I understand what they mean:
that there is hope beyond the grave,
life not finally extinguished,
however much it may seem so.
But whether you hold that faith or whether you don’t,
death isn’t nothing –
not for the one facing it,
still less for those left behind.
To say farewell to someone,
knowing you will never walk this earth with them again –
never share their company,
hear their voice,
see their smile –
that most definitely is something:
all too real
and all too painful.
And for the one who knows their days are numbered,
faced with the stark fact of their own mortality,
the end of their dreams and aspirations,
that, too, is a reality hard to bear.
Trust if you can in life beyond the grave;
that death, for all its apparent finality,
will never have the final word;
but do not pretend it’s nothing,
as though that will somehow make sense of loss,
and lessen the pain of bereavement,
because however much you tell your mind to believe it,
your heart will tell you something else.