NewPhilosopher Death is a powerful teacherstunted the growth of his right leg,
lending him his signature limp. He
used to joke that if he went for a stroll
in the desert, he’d eventually end up
walking in a circle.
Despite the best efforts of the
nursing home staff, they couldn’t pre-
vent him from strolling the hallways
at night, possibly in search of scotch.
It was another fall that triggered his
precipitous decline. He was soon
overtaken by a fever, which exacer-
bated a number of other ailments
of old age. It was clear that, after 94
years, his body was failing, and he was
moved into palliative care.
On that hot October day, the en-
tire family was by his bed. In his fleet-
ing moments of awareness we each
held his hand, shared a fleeting glance
with the glimmer of a tear, the barest
twinge of a smile, before he slipped
under once again. By early evening,
the heat of the day was broken by a
flash of lightning and crack of thun-
der, as one of those early summer
storms that Dad loved about Sydney
roared past. In its wake the air was
calm and still, and it was shortly after
that he took one last deep breath, let
out a long sigh and breathed no more.
My father and I are so much alike
that, sitting by his bedside, holding
his hand, it was like I was watching
myself die. In the house where I grew
up there was a faded black-and-white
photo of me sitting in a high-backed
wooden chair wearing a thick woollen
jumper, aged about nine. That photo
used to mystify me around that age
because I had no recollection of sit-
ting for it. When my mother pointedI thought I was ready for my fa-
ther’s death. I thought philosophy had
prepared me for it.
As the Roman politician and
philosopher, Cicero, wrote: “to study
philosophy is nothing but to prepare
oneself to die”. Sixteen centuries later,
the French essayist, Michel de Mont-
aigne, added that the study of philoso-
phy is “a kind of apprenticeship and a
resemblance of death; or, else, because
all the wisdom and reasoning in the
world do in the end conclude in this
point, to teach us not to fear to die”.
I vainly prided myself on inter-
nalising this view that death ought to
be accepted rather than resisted, and
vainly believed it would serve as a pal-
liative as my own father entered pal-
liative care. But the experience of wit-
nessing his passing proved to me that
I still had a lot to learn about death.
It happened on a hot October day
in Sydney. The family had moved him
into a nursing home earlier in the year
after his dementia had advanced to
the point where almost everybody was
a stranger, and a second serious fall
resulted in a lengthy, and physically
and mentally traumatising, hospital
stay. Falls were always a grave concern
with my father as he aged. He was
old enough to have survived polio as
a child in London in the 1920s. This
out that it wasn’t me but my father, it
bemused me even more.
But our similarities were more than
just superficial. We shared the same
interests (aeroplanes, science, jazz), the
same habits (incessant tapping, mut-
ing ads, telling the same stories over
and over), and the same warped sense
of humour (heavily informed by Brit-
ish surrealism). One year, we even gave
each other the same book for Christmas
(Oliver Sacks’s memoir, Uncle Tungsten,
which we both agreed was a ripping
read). Many men treat those moments
when they realise they resemble their
father with chagrin. For me, they were a
source of pride. For all his flaws, I could
only hope to be as generous, loving, and
charming as my dad.
In the months before that Octo-
ber day, I happened to teach a couple
of philosophy classes on death, one of
which was on the importance of talk-
ing more openly about it. Our society
is famously tight-lipped about death,
refusing to speak about it to the young
or the old. In a culture that idolises
success, we often see death as a failure:
an accident that ought to have been
avoided; an illness that should have
been cured; a tragedy that must be
prevented. To speak about one’s own
death is almost an admission of our
inevitable defeat, of the ultimate folly
of all our vain toil in life.
Yet conversations about death can
uncover our deepest fears and desires,
reveal our strongest passions and ter-
rors – they can remind us of the rela-
tionships that form the bedrock of our
being and encourage us to realign our
priorities accordingly.