NewPhilosopher What makes a good death?Last year my 92-year-old grand-
mother, April, wrote a letter to The
Times of London:
“Sir, Why do we have to announce, in
death notices, that all our loved ones have
died ‘peacefully’? Why can’t we be a little
more realistic and honest? Why not die
gratefully, reluctantly, joyfully, dreamily,
gently, lingeringly, longingly, lovingly,
defiantly, furiously, humorously, enig-
matically, cheerfully, jauntily, hopefully,
or bravely? At least more meaningfully.”
April – a former actress turned
author, with a nipped-in waist and
dark hair who, to this day, remains up-
beat and glamorous – has seen a fair
amount of death. She survived World
War II in England, feeling a pang of
guilt as Jews like her were murdered in
Europe. More recently, her friends and
loved ones have started to pass away.
by Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore
What makes
a good death?
They include my grandfather, with
whom she shared 62 happy years of
marriage before he died aged 87.
Now, as she approaches her mid-
90s, she has declared that when she
is ready, too, to die, she expects to be
“taken to Switzerland”. But not – she
instructs, with a stern face and a look
of horror – before she has finished her
book. (She would hate to go without
knowing how it ends.)
Death is, of course, the only cer-
tainty in life: just as we are born, we
will die. But the question of what
makes a good death is much more
complicated.
For April, it is control, as well as
some honesty around what death
means. For my grandfather, Stephen,
a good death was remaining cognisant
(my last memory of him is of a man,
suddenly very old and very thin, but
with a twinkle in his eye even then,
holding a great history tome on
his lap). A good death, too, was the
knowledge that his body would be do-
nated to medical science, so that other
young trainee doctors, as he once was,
could learn from his limbs, and brain,
and heart.As Mitch Albom wrote in his hit
book Tuesdays with Morrie: “The truth
is, once you learn how to die, you learn
how to live.”
But such proclamations are ro-
mantic. Death, even for those at peace,
is rarely painless. Death is demand-
ing physically. My grandfather was
ready to go – he had a long marriage,
a meaningful career, four children, and
legions of grandchildren. He had trav-
elled the world, added significantly
to the art of psychiatry, his field, and
learned to love the small things, like a
crisp morning walk in the countryside.
And still death did not treat him
kindly. When he finally passed away,
surrounded by family, his body strug-
gled, until the end, to stay. His limbs
convulsed and his eyes jerked; his
organs refused to give up. Whereas
once a kindly doctor might have
eased him into death with a sudden
uptake of morphine, in today’s world
of lawsuits and legal action such a
step was impossible.
There is a reason why ‘death’ is tra-
ditionally dubbed the Grim Reaper –
a ghoulish skeleton who wears a black
hood and carries a scythe.