The Sunday Times Magazine • 51I
n a few years’ time, after I
succumb to a terrible disease, no
one is going to say that I fought to
the bitter end bravely or stoically
or with much in the way of
dignity. Because I fear I’ll spend
my final days howling, sobbing
and quivering in a corner, while
telling all the nurses that it’s not fair, and
the doctors that they’ve got to invent a cure.
Or will I? Over the years I’ve been with
many people in their last moments and I’m
always staggered by how sanguine they are.
How accepting of their fate. There was one
girl, a dear friend, who’d been diagnosed
with cancer shortly after she became
pregnant. This meant doctors couldn’t
administer any form of chemo or
radiotherapy and as a result, after the
inevitable caesarean, she only had the
chance to cradle her son for the briefest of
moments before she died. And yet, despite
the gut-wrenching sadness of the moment,
she smiled and was calm.
My dad was similarly peaceful. Even
though he was only 61 years old when the
icy hand of death came curling through
the window, like a tendril of nerve gas,
he didn’t thrash around wondering why
he had to go when Arthur Scargill did not.
He simply decided his last word should be
“Geronimo”. So he’d shout it out, loud and
proud, close his eyes and then, a few
moments later, open one and say quietly,
“I’m not dead yet, am I?” Even in his final
moments then he wanted to make us laugh.
Imagine that. Knowing that you are
minutes away from death and accepting it
without a fight. We saw the same thing with
Saddam Hussein when he was led into his
execution chamber. I’d have been biting
and kicking my jailers, but he just stood
there as the rope was placed around his
neck, as though they were doing up his tie.
We hear that Mary, Queen of Scots
behaved in much the same way. Even
though her execution had been ordered by
her own cousin, she thanked her jailer for
offering his arm as a support as she climbed
the steps to the scaffold and then, before
kneeling and placing her head on the block,
she said: “This is the last trouble I shall
ever give you.” Even at the end, when you
might imagine her knees would be
knocking and her bladder emptying itself,
she remembered her manners. It’s weird.
Or is it? Because I turn 62 tomorrow,
which means death cannot be that far away.
But instead of hiding in a wardrobe, hoping
it won’t find me there, I’m writing this, and
when I’ve finished I’ll go to the pub. I do
think about dying, a lot, and it bothers me.
But not as much as it should. Not as much
as I thought it would when I was kicking
around on a piece of ground in my home
town, waiting for something or someone to
show me the way.
It’s not that I believe I’m going to a better
place and that in this better place I’ll beenjoying a refreshing glass of ass’s milk and
some honey with AA Gill and all my other
dead friends who, like my dad, died far too
young. I don’t. I know I’m going to be in a
hole where I shall rot. And I shall be there
for ever, or at least until a property developer
decides he needs the graveyard for a new
housing estate. And then I’ll be landfill.
I think I can cope with this because of
the way age affects us. No one wants to die
when they are 22 because there’s so much
still to see and do. And no one wants to die
when they’re 62 either, because ... actually,
I don’t know why. I’ve done my bit already.
I’ve produced some children, which is all
the species wants, and now I’m just sitting
here consuming stuff unnecessarily. I’m
a drain, a waste of blood and organs. And
soon I shall start wetting the bed, which
means I’ll be a nuisance as well.
But though I know the party’s nearly over
and it’ll soon be time to go home, I’m
imprisoned by medical science, I’m forced
to forge a path through uncharted waters,
living a life no one in all of human history
has ever led before.
In the olden days people would wake one
PREVIOUS PAGES: MATRIX PICTURES, CHARLIE CLIFT FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE. THIS PAGE: PETER MARLOW / MAGNUM PHOTOS day, usually at the age of about 33, to find
From top: Clarkson’s
parents, Eddie and
Shirley, on their
wedding day in
1957; on a plane to
Mykonos with
AA Gill for a Sunday
Times Magazine
feature in 2002Dad shouted
“Geronimo” then
moments later
opened an eye
and said, “I’m not
dead yet, am I?” ➤