The Last Farewell

i

If this day were to be
 my last,

I would die
 loving


the long shadows of autumn


as light filters through the apricot tree;


celebrating the chattering flight of a fantail;


rejoicing in the architectural splendour


of a Bach partita, arch after musical arch

soaring upwards.

ii

The tomorrow when I will be dead,

there still will be a lilting blackbird's song,


the iridescence of a spider's web


but I will not feel the lack.


It's now, when the day's last sunlight


flames horse chestnuts against the darkening hill;


there's the yawning ache at a remembered loss.


Tomorrow will be different.

iii

The trajectory of my death

has changed over time.

Ten years ago, the idea of death

was spiritual, focusing me

on the beauty of the moment;

tree lined shadows,

conversation with a fantail,

Bach's grand pinnacle of sound.




Five years later, even though

I had one tentative foot

across the threshold,

I was still introvertedly

gazing back at the moment I had left;

a spider's web, blackbird's song.




But now, five years further on

with death shadowing my every footstep,

I have been forced

to face that I was afraid.

In my fear I relegated

my friends to the outer suburbs

when they really belonged

on the main thoroughfare.

If tonight were to be my very last,

I would be desolate

at leaving behind

a lifetime of friends.

Living Will

A living will is all right in theory. I don’t want you to intervene to save my life… in five years time, next year, even next month. But how about the day after tomorrow? I had always had a feeling that I would have wanted to retract, but then something happened.

A few weeks ago I had a laryngitic bug which went down into my chest. I don’t often get infections and when I do the M.S. plays up a treat. I say that it doesn’t like not taking centre stage, or to change the metaphor, I have only a limited number of troups and if I have to deploy them elsewhere that leaves my flank exposed. My flank was, metaphorically speaking, very exposed on a Saturday and Sunday when I couldn’t get the doctor. The M.S. went through the roof. Normally, I can move my right elbow up a little but then, I could not do that, I could not drive the wheelchair, I could not clean my own teeth. All that I could do, was turn my head to left or right against the headrest. I spent the evenings drifting in and out of a Brother Cadfael DVD.

The next morning, despite the fact that I had a hideous, phlegmy, chesty cough, the M.S. had returned to what it regards as normal. The doctor came in the evening, tested my lungs and found the infection had got down to my trachea but not as far as the lungs. Because of the living will, he asked me what we should do. The M.S. was picking up so I said to him that a carer from seven years back was on her way to New Zealand from England and I didn’t want to die without seeing her, that a dear friend had just had a tragic loss and I didn’t want her to have any more grief at that time, but he said I needed to consider me. But my will to live had been restored and I didn’t want not ever to see again the early evening light painting the upper branches of the walnut tree pink and gold or the white roses at evening coming towards me out of their arch as the greens of the garden merged into two dimensions; I wanted to finish my current book; I had many friends I wanted to connect with again. If he had asked me on the Sunday I would not have spared a thought for the walnut tree, roses, book, friends. Nothing mattered and I could have quite willingly slipped into death.

I find this astonishingly comforting. When I get pneumonia and I say when, not if, advisedly, given how the compression is restricting my breathing, then the M.S. will reduce me to such a state of nothingness that I will not mind the dying. I will not be dying with a great urge left towards life. I am immensely reassured.

Paul’s Death

Today is the anniversary of Paul’s death. He was twenty-three when he died; it has now been dead for twenty-four years. I find it intolerable that he has now been dead longer than he has been alive. This anniversary has joined other hideous memories from the first year after his death; he died yesterday, last week, last month, last year (a particularly nasty milestone), a year ago.


The Relay Race of Life
With his dying, he confiscated my talisman for the future. Watching my friend’s lives, I see them like a relay race. They are passing the baton onwards to their children and grand children. I received the baton from my grandparents and have splendid memories; I know the name of the plant Solomon’s seal. from following my grandmother around her garden when I was four; when I was fifteen and she was in her late eighties I remember taking her for walks. She carried an umbrella even on the brightest of days, not against the weather but so she could hide inside it little cuttings of plants she had nicked from peoples’ front gardens. She was an inveterate gardener. I’d say to her; “what will you do if it rains?” and she’d giggle. I remember my grandfather shaving with his braces hanging down his legs or playing patience at the desk I now own. So I certainly received the baton but I have no one to pass it on to. I will reach the finishing tape of death on my own.


A Grief Time Will Never Heal
Obviously I don’t sit here dwelling on this but, nevertheless, it is an aching grief that time will never take away.

Who’s going to remember me?

This haunting cry could belong to any of us, surrounded as we are by teeming millions and vast reaches of space and time. But it came from the heart of a 14 year old dying of leukemia. He collapsed before breakfast, was diagnosed at lunch time and dies that evening with no time to prepare his mind for his approaching death.

Hunger for knowledge

Charlie had run away from a dubious foster home when he was nine and lived on the streets for over four years with a group of similarly disadvantaged children. Then in the last few months of his life he had been given the chance of a normal education, which he responded to as if he had been starved of knowledge for years. It even turned out that he had, during his street years managed regular visits to the public library where he had read The Three Musketeers.


The importance of little things

Activities we take for granted became for him miracles of living: he was beside himself with joy at riding a bicycle. He just wanted to be ordinary. The head teacher of his school acknowledged Charlie had seen more evil than everyone in the school put together, but Charlie wasn’t one to indulge in self pity. He gave those who knew him the gift of himself and touched the lives of people who merely had heard his story.

Charlie, you will be remembered.