Everything ends badly, otherwise it wouldn’t end

“Can I call you back when I’ve stopped crying?”

So starts another working week.

Of course, I am one of the few people who are okay talking to crying people on the phone, but I get what she meant. It wasn’t my feelings she was sparing, she needed to tend to her own.

Her brother was dying as he lived, difficult and obstructive to the end. “At least he is himself” she
said wisely, and often that is the best we can hope for; to die in character, as we really are.

Dying is not the same as being dead, dying is living. We can still spin the threads of our life story
right up until the last second.

And the end is nearly always hard, certainly to witness, probably much more than in the doing.

As a culture we have been beguiled by the notion of ‘the good death’, an extension of our drive to improve all the areas of our life, to see our characters as a project that always needs a bit of DIY. It is an often tyrannical and unachievable goal.

I’m not suggesting that self reflection, hard work on our interiors, scrutiny of our flaws and our failures isn’t a good thing, it’s essential not just for ourselves but for everyone who loves us, I just mean we should be realistic about what we are going to look like at the end of whatever routine we are putting ourselves through. Probably not much different, albeit a little sadder and sober with self understanding.

And so this pressure to be better, to do something right in the eyes of the modern world extends all the way to our last seconds of life, that most elusive of life goals, the good death. Much of the unspoken subtext of this demand is really about those who accompany us. Philip Larkin said “Courage is no good, it means not scaring others.” and there in lies the rub of the good death. Good for whom?

Hospices have transformed much of what happens in the final days of a life, but even they can be guilty of false amelioration. Families are often led to believe that the dying one will feel no pain, that their skilful use of combination drugs mean a peaceful, lucid death.

Often it is actually a choice between those two states, conscious or pain free, but sometimes this distinction is not fully explained or understood by the families, who are distressed by the final moments. It’s not the fault of the hospice staff, even they cannot always fully remove death’s sting.

And so the woman I spoke to was doing everything just right. She was still in relationship with her brother, still as cussed and infuriating as it had ever been between them, but authentically so, not watered down with insincere soothing. He was dying as he lived, fully himself in all his spiky glory.

Philip Larkin isn’t the only great sage we can turn to for truth. Today I’m going to finish with the
wise words of Tom Cruise in the film Cocktail.

“Jesus everything ends badly, otherwise it wouldn’t end.”