"Don't bury me before I'm dead!"

 This is not about me, I hasten to add. But that phrase at the top did involve me, and I have been thinking a lot about what it means and thinking of other people's experiences on this mortal road that we walk.

Cro said that phrase to me, maybe half way through her 11 months with cancer. The treatment was getting quite gruelling and I - along with everyone else involved - was trying to be as helpful as possible. So I moved a carpet (like the one above)  because I did not want her to risk slipping on it in her weakened state. I thought I was being helpful and doing the right thing, but to Cro it was much more important that she was losing control of her own environment, her own house, and in some way, her own death. 

And one of her own favourite poems, Binsey Poplars, by Gerard Manley Hopkins, has a line in it (referring to the destruction of nature, the poplars in the title). It says: 

Where we, even where we mean

                 To mend her we end her,

And so it goes for people and illnesses too. The unintended consequences of our actions can cause more harm to someone's mental wellbeing than is gained in their intended safety or comfort or order. And there is a deeper moral point here, which is that we should each of us, in my opinion, be allowed not just to live our own lives but to die our own death; to have possession of it, control of it, and to look it in the eye. I would say in passing that I am thoroughly in favour of allowing assisted dying, as it currently being debated in Parliament. 

Another friend of mine told the story of his father, who lived in a tall, old house with steep stairs. Friends had advised him for a long time to move lest he "Fall down those stairs and break his neck". But he was clear that he would rather do that than move. So he didn't move, and in fact did die in the way predicted. To which I say 'Good on him'. Not all deaths are tragedies, and we are foolish to have an automatic reaction of 'Oh how sad!' when someone dies. It might be sad for their friends and family of the person who dies, but even they might with some time realise that they were confusing what was best for them and what the dead loved one had wanted. In fact many people who are closest to the dying process, such as those working in palliative care, will tell you that often the greatest burden on a dying person is the thought of the pain that their death will cause for the ones that they love. Is it not possible to somehow talk through this?

Another friend has just been telling me - with some bafflement - about the very hard experiences they have had relating to the imminent death of their younger brother, who lives in Italy and has several siblings who want the very best for them. The family can see all ways in which they can help (the family situation of the brother is very challenging, with dependent children). But the reaction to all attempts to help is to reject the help and drive it away. It is really painful to confront this, but at the end of the day, the person dying is the person who should be in charge. It is their death, not yours. 

I have spoken elsewhere of how little time I have for Dylan Thomas' oft-quoted poem that urges us to 'rage rage against the dying of the light'. It's not that you should not fight to survive, I am not recommending giving up. It is just that all the raging can distract you from the actual business of dying, which is, as we sometimes forget, part of life itself. And it can sometimes, if you leave the control and power in the hands of the person who is actually dying, be one of the most emotionally rewarding and meaningful parts of their life. And of yours.