The Good Death (part 2)

Plan for yours, and then go on about your life.

This is what I aspire to for my death scenario. Source.

Dear little grasshoppers, this is my last post as a vacationing idler. You might have noticed that I ramped up the frequency of my letters in the last weeks; when one is idle, one is inspired.

Sometime last May I was eating lunch with my colleagues in our cave and pondering on life. Now, before you get any weird ideas, I will enlighten you: at my hospital, oncologists have a designated area for lunch in the basement. We have a kitchenette with microwaves, a fridge, a dishwasher and a water fountain that provides cool and fizzy water, and just to discourage us from quitting, a window that has a view to a wall because our line of work is too cheerful to handle. So, back to oncologists talking about life, a close and wise colleague of mine voiced an observation she had made:

“I have noticed that out of all medical specialities, we oncologists are the only ones not to make plans that stretch more than a year from the present.”

“You are onto something there,” replied a younger staff member.

“It could be that we are much more painfully aware of the fact that shit happens.” The wise colleague continued.

You might think that this is a discouraging conversation for any given lunchtime, but nothing further than the truth, since—and here I am paraphrasing another colleague, this time from Spain—working so close to death makes us closer to life.

Going back to plan-making, it would be a stroke of luck or doom (depending on who you ask) if we were to know the exact date of our demise so that we could invest accordingly, waste time in an appropriate proportion and know if we have to figure out what we really want to do in life or not really bother since a long-term career is not in the cards for us.

I have an acquaintance who, whenever someone mentions death or disease, cuts the conversation short, saying, “We do not need to plan for funerals” as if these words were a magic spell warding off death and suffering. It used to irritate me until I understood the words were indeed pronounced as a magic spell, an unconscious one that only reflects that person’s fear of their own passing. These days, upon hearing this expression of theirs, I just change the subject whilst secretly thinking: “Aaaaactually, funerals are the only thing we should be planning for since death is the only certainty we have.”

In a morbid googling experiment I stumble upon this webpage https://www.death-clock.org/ that calculates when one will die, taking into consideration date of birth, sex, country (I put country I live in, not of origin), smoking and alcohol consumption, type of diet and activity level. There is not a former smoker option, so I put in “non-smoker.” As per type of diet and level of activity, I surmise that the “excellent diet” option means 100% unprocessed, free from refined sugars and possibly tasteless, and the “high level of activity” box means “I am doing this test from the Paris Olympics where I will participate in the marathon and I have options for a medal” so to be on the conservative side I tick the “good diet” and the “moderately active” options. Then, here comes the interesting part, you have to also input your outlook on life- “Hmm, let’s see,” I think. “Would I consider myself optimistic, neutral or pessimistic? Definitely not suicidal.” And to follow the middle path I have chosen for diet and exercise, I define my outlook on life as “neutral.”

Here are my results. I love the gravestone touch, the “buy me a coffee” opportunity, and the “Send us your reaction” prompt.

If I retake the test changing the outlook on life parameters and saying I am pessimistic, I will meet my maker when I am 81 years old. If I am an optimist, I will push the date back to when I am 102 years old. This is fascinating stuff. It makes me think that whoever translated the Bible got the Sermon on the Mount wrong (Matthew 5, 3-12), and Jesus actually said, “Blessed are the optimists, for they will inherit the earth” (since the rest of us will have croaked).

Now that I know that I have, more or less, 42 years left, I think it is high time I plan how I want to die. This is one important thing to talk about with family, and unless I die in a car accident, I think I can work towards the ideal circumstances. I am not really relying on death-clock for the time of my final departure, nor can I predict the cause of death (maybe that is another idea for a webpage), but in this odd Cluedo game I am playing, I could potentially choose the location? I envision a house close to the sea (Mediterranean), surrounded by pine trees. The ocean and the blackbirds will be in charge of the soundtrack. It will smell of pine, lavender and jasmine. I will sit on a big armchair (one of those terrace ones made of wood with lots of cushions to prevent pressure sores), and I will have a small glass table nearby where my last gin and tonic sits, with the ice melting and the condensation drops forming on the outside. I have thought many times that I wanted in the background an audiobook, a gentle voice (Hugh Fraser, David Suchet) or a baritone one (Matthew Berninger, Justin Vernon) reading Death on the Nile so I could pass away as Hercule Poirot unmasks the murderer (spoiler alert- it’s plural in that mystery) or some Billie Holiday. But I don’t know; maybe I just want to hear the birds and the sea. I will see when the time arrives. What I do want is a gentle breeze on my skin. Gentle breezes are a masterpiece of nature, her way to hold you and kiss you and comb your hair so sweetly. The sky will show me all the blues it can have, and I might hear the clatter of cooking in the kitchen, my children who are visiting? My husband? A nurse?

These past six months, I have often found myself scouting for houses that could fit the description on this Spanish website called Idealista.com. The market is tough, and I could give up on the sea part but not on the trees. Pine trees and bird songs are a must. The good thing is that what seems ideal for my death sounds perfect as a living situation, so it’s a win-win. I see myself and C cooking in that kitchen, reading books, sitting on that terrace, walking among the trees, and having the children over for the weekend. Invest in a good death; it will probably give great dividends during your lifetime.

If you have made it here, you might be thinking that I should have put on the death-clock site that my outlook on life is, in fact, suicidal. You could, on the other hand, think that this is a genius plan and are already planning your own death scenario. Either gloomy or enlightened, it doesn’t matter. What matters is understanding that time is finite. I have heard so many times from my patients that they want more time when there is no more time to be had. Time for what? You might ask. Well, for love. That is what, in many different ways of expressing it, people who are dying and know it yearn for. It could be they wish for more time to find the love they think life owes them and never delivered on; it could be more time to love their small children enough to fill their offspring’s love reserves to set them up for life; it could be to just sit back and relax and love what they have built and enjoy their fruits.

So, plan for your death or not, my little grasshoppers, but might I suggest that we do not plan too much in general? We might as well just start doing the stuff we love with the people we love and do that on repeat.

A while ago I wrote about the first time I saw a man die. You can read about it here. But to finish off today, I wanted to send you to

Adam Nathan

‘s substack, where he makes a ruthless, albeit accurate, description of what happens to old people who end up dying in a hospital. And how he heartbreakingly spins it around at the very end:

“But there is another outcome.

It is related to beauty. I hold out a hope that beauty has the last word.”

I hope for beauty when I die, too, with every fibre in my body, desperately. I look at the sky lying in my parents’ garden, a sky framed by the green of the trees, and I feel C’s head resting on my abdomen that trembles, shaking his head because he is making me laugh, and I feel the breeze caressing my skin. There is a dog barking in the distance and the sound of someone’s lawn mower (not exactly the sea), but I can also hear the birds chirping, and I think that this is what I deserve when I die: calm, and love, and laughter, and beauty.

Yours in divine (im)perfection,

Ana (idler at large)

PS: It was the butler in the library with a candlestick.

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