NewPhilosopherFor many, particularly in this
secularagewhenmanyconsiderthe
afterlifea fancifulmyth,thereis the
fearofnothingtocontendwith,what
PhilipLarkincalled:
Thetotalemptinessforever,
Thesureextinctionthatwetravelto
Andshallbelostinalways.
Forothers,it is thedistressaswe
transition.“Iam notafraid ofdying,
I justdon’twanttobetherewhenit
happens,”quippedWoodyAllen.
Indeed,mostofuscanthinkofa
thousandwaystohavea baddeath:a
planecrash,a fire;beingbludgeoned,
stabbed, or strangled; crushed, bat-
tered,ordrowned.
But what makes a good death is
more contested.Is it euthanasia,the
option to choose the when and the
how? Is it dying inyour sleep? Isit
dyingwithtimetospare?Timetosay
your goodbyes,to payyour debts,to
mendyourregrets,tomakepeace?Or
is it dyingsuddenly?Istherecomfort
inwhatis mercifullyquick?“Shedied
instantly,” they murmur as reassur-
ance.“Shewouldneverhaveknown.”
Or,likeAdolfFrederick,the18th
century King of Sweden,is it dying
doingsomethingyou love?Healleg-
edlyatehimselftooblivionin 1771 at
a feastinwhichhedevoured– among
otherthings– lobster,kippers,caviar,
champagne, and 14 bowls of selma, a
hot milk dessert.
IanCognito,a respected60-year-
oldBritishcomedian,madeheadlines
whenhesuffereda heartattack,dying
onstage duringhis ownset infront
ofa confusedaudience.A fewminutes
earlierhehadjoked,presciently,“Im-
agineif I diedinfrontofyoulothere.”
OnefriendtoldtheBBC it wasthe
wayhe “wouldhavewanted togo...
except he’dwantmore moneyand a
biggervenue”.
Thentherearethosewhogiveup
theirlivesfora largercause.Nietzsche
oncesaid:“Hewhohasa whytolive
for can bear with almost any how.”
Perhapsthesameis trueofdeath:the
samuraiwhocommitsharakiri(ritual
suicide by disembowelment) to pre-
servehishonour,ortheJapaneseka-
mikaze pilot who blows himself up
forthegoodofthenation.Thepeo-
pleofMasada,themountaintop fort
in Israel,who,the story goes, killed
themselves – the children first,then
women,andfinallythemen– rather
thansubmittoRomanrule.
Graceandhumourintheface of
deathis alsohighlyvalued.According
tolegend,whenSaintLawrence(dis-
turbingly the patron saint of cooks)
wasroasted alive,he told hisexecu-
tioners:“Turnmeover– I’mdoneon
thisside.”
Inthe western worldtoday,how-
ever,the vast majority of people will
dieofheart diseaseora stroke(com-
bined,theyaccountedfor15.2million
deathsin 2016).Deathformost,in this
age ofprolongedhealthcare,won’tbe
violent,butslow.Almostallofuswill
moveintothe“kingdomof thesick”,as
SusanSontagcalledit,atsomepoint;
manywillendourlivesthere.
Studies have shown that having
controlover painrelief is paramount
tothedying,asis havingsomesortof
decision-making power over where
they willdie(andwhowill bethere
whenit happens).Thereis also– as my
grandmother April pointed out in her
letter – the war over language.What makes a good death?
Studies have
shown that hav-
ing control over
pain relief is
paramount to
the dying.
This is most apparent in the way
we talk about cancer. Those diag-
nosed are ‘brave’; the illness is often
described as a ‘fight’ or a ‘battle’. The
more disturbing aspects of the disease
are covered up with rousing platitudes.
It isn’t helped that death remains
taboo in our culture. We can talk
about ‘winners’ and ‘losers’, those who
‘fought to the end’ and those who ‘nev-
er gave up’. But the realities of what
death means – the thousand physical
degradations, the crippling pain, the
spasms, like those my grandfather suf-
fered – are rarely discussed.
And what about the mental agony?
In his book, When Breath Becomes Air,
neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi, dying of
terminal lung cancer, decided to have
a baby with his wife. “Don’t you think
saying goodbye to your child will
make your death more painful?” she
asked him. “Wouldn’t it be great if it
did?” he replied, adding: “Lucy and I
both felt that life wasn’t about avoid-
ing suffering.”
In Better Off Dead, journalist An-
drew Denton’s podcast on euthana-
sia, one episode stays with me. It is
the story of Raymond Godbold, an
Australian palliative care nurse facing
life-ending gastro-oesophageal can-
cer. Aware of the physical horrors that
awaited him, he secured the illegal,
and deadly, drug Nembutal to take
when the time came.
But then, every day, waking up to
his wife and children, he couldn’t do
it. He wanted one more hour with his
family, one more hour to see the sun
shine, one more hour to talk. And then
another. And then another. And an-
other. Eventually, he became too ill to
swallow and he died the way he never
wanted to: in hospital, in pain. He bar-
gained away his ‘good death’ for time.
For just one more day of life.