You are human and you are lovely. And Jane, thanks for the translation coz otherwise I'd have had to ask. Feeling much better today. I don't know whether its the drugs or the prayers but I'll take whatever makes me feel better.
Just watched Angela's Dying Wish on Channel 4. Its about a woman with terminal breast cancer. It was very moving. It struck me though that no-one (apologies to the religious types) really knows how to talk about death. We don't seem to have the vocabulary. Which is strange because death is something that we all live with from the moment we're born. So why can't we talk about it? Discuss. j x
5 comments:
Why don't we talk about death? Because it means accepting that a loved one won't be with us any more and that is hard. We can just about manage the physical stuff and appreciate decay, but saying goodbye is hard. It's difficult enough waving to a departing train, let alone realising its' passenger isn't coming back.
I'm sure we bloggers all think that being positive is more constructive and helps more to get you in the right frame of mind to recover.
We wouldn't be here tapping away if we felt there was no hope. Hope (well, that n' drugs n' humor n' Love n' the lovely medical staff and your Mum and Dad - oh and Us) is what we rely on.
Actually what I really want to say here is Buck Up and stop being morbid you soppy sod.
There was a serious point to the topic. In the programme Angela stated at the beginning that she didn't want to die in hospital like her Mum had. The problem was that even though she had been given a "terminal" diagnosis she didn't put any arrangements in place to govern where and how she died. In the end therefore she ended up dying in hospital anyway. It struck me that part of the reason she didn't make any arrangements was because no-one would discuss her death with her and, indeed, she seemed reluctant to do so herself. If one has the "luxury" of being able to predict with any certainty when one is going to die it seems to me that it is better to talk about it rather than just jolly oneself along pretending its not going to happen. None of this has anything to do with me personally since, as you all point out, I'm going to get better but I thought the debate was worth having. J x
P.S. Is it OK to stay with you Fig when we go to see Wicked?
I agree with you J, that we don't talk about it and don't prepare for it. Perhaps the reason is that we never see it, it's dealt with behind closed doors so is all unknown. Presumably when people died in their own homes and the whole village trooped in to pay their respects, it was more a part of the natural order of things. But nowadays death is as secret and taboo as sex was in the middle classes a hundred years ago (please discuss, 1500 words on my desk on Monday).
When my youngest was born, their dad and I made provision for what should happen to the boys if we parents both died together while they were small. I thought this was a sensible thing to do, to save argument and uncertainty or even - horror - the boys going into care. But a surprising number of intelligent educated people told me I shouldn't talk about the possibility of that happening let alone plan for it. It's the taboo, y'see.
But you, J, have peeked into the abyss and sidestepped it completely, and are now blooming and thriving and going to theatres and shopping to the max and got a good 50 more years in you yet. And they will be slim, snake-hipped, oh-so-good-in-those-jeans years.
As the portuguese would say: O pulverizador de cabelo está no armário sobre o dissipador.
Of course you can come and stay viz Wicked. I was hoping you might.
After the show we can spend a happy evening dicussing the fabulousness of your funeral arrangments. I will, of course, lead the mourning throng in a rousing chorus of 'Ding Dong The Witch is Dead' and then follow up with a free form dance interpretation of 'My Mama Told Me'/'Living On Video.'
Ps. The deleted entry is mine. I thought of funnier song titles.
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