ENDINGS: Are they new beginnings?

If some persons died and others did not, death would indeed be an affliction.

Jean de La Bruyère

The French generally  have a sharp take on matters philosophical and  La Bruyère’s comment, some three hundred and more years ago has always seemed particularly apt. A French friend, well into her eighties,  says the phrase,  ‘If I should die’ always makes her smile, as though it were some unlikely eventuality.  She herself is very practical about death and would like her family to send out a notice after her demise, simply stating, ‘change of address’.

Since dying is without doubt the single event at which we shall all be present,  despite Woody Allen’s, ‘I’d rather not be there when it happens’, maybe it would be helpful  if we were a tad less  sheepish about it.  Rich or poor, healthy or sick, virtuous or not so virtuous the end awaits. But perhaps the end isn’t quite as final as we suppose it to be.

For some years now,  maybe because so many of my family and those closest to me have, for want of a better word, died, I’ve come to  see death not as an end but  as a new beginning;  as part of a cycle of natural events that we should have no need to fear.   Although,  of course, to see death as a new beginning, if we’re absolutely convinced it’s the final curtain, is probably rather a large ask.  Nevertheless, if we haven’t formed a philosophy about the great departure, at least by three score years and ten,  it’s not going to be so easy for us, nor for those we leave  behind.

Many of us show a tendency to slink into death, suffering  guilt at leaving family and friends to mourn. Or indeed even feeling that to die is a disgrace, an insult to life itself and most certainly to the medical profession.  Why should so many people feel death is such a dangerous subject?  Why should a dedicated doctor,  who knows he’s done absolutely everything in his power, feel he’s failed if a patient dies?  And is being kept alive at almost any cost really and truly  the best way to prepare for a departure?  Death viewed as an acceptable completion to a tangible physical state, never destined to last forever, stimulates very different feelings.

Not surprisingly, given our society’s rather don’t-let’s mention-it  culture, death has  become for many the Topic That Dare Not  Be Named.  We’re inclined to be like the kitten whose tail is poking out beneath the curtains but is convinced he’s totally invisible merely because he can’t see us.

We might talk about ‘dying peacefully’ but that’s not likely to be an easy option if we’ve never lived that way.  If a hefty part of  an individual’s life has been spent in a state of unresolved and agitated emotions, whatever might have been their cause, a peaceful death doesn’t look too promising a final outcome.  From my observations, dying peacefully  requires a healthy acceptance of one’s own shortcomings and those of others.   And toughest of all for many of us – absolute forgiveness of our imperfections and those of our nearest and dearest.

I have a  far distant memory of Mark Antony, aka Richard Burton, dying upon his sword at the end of the film Cleopatra, and making rather a bodge of it.  He said  something to the effect that having not always lived his life very successfully, it was possibly being over optimistic to suppose this would end well.  I hasten to add this is not verbatim, but neither did the screenplay quote precisely from Shakespeare!  But no matter how the thought is expressed, it’s not easy to die with dignity or with peace,  if you’re still at war with yourself or those closest to you.

Dying peacefully and with dignity implies an act of surrender.  It’s considered a blessing and a significant accomplishment not only on the part of the dying, but also on those who surround him or her.  It’s an aspiration surely we all have, whether we admit it or not.

Yet there are many endings that, to our ordinary human eyes, are deeply sad and disturbing,  not  to say tragic. Especially those that involve slow, painful deterioration or shocking violence. And what of those whose wits, as we understand them, have already made an exit from life? Despite these puzzling and seemingly unanswerable questions,  it may still be worth considering the view that we are not, and never have been, as powerless as we have allowed ourselves to believe.

If we can agree that a good ending takes a little more effort than is generally supposed, I offer the thought that at some point in our lives we  all need to form  a viewpoint about how our final destiny might be;  and what bearing the life we live or have lived, might play upon it.  In short what can we do to give the final chapter of our lives a happy ending?

As a spiritual eclectic, always looking for answers, I’ve found it’s possible to draw thoughts not only from Jesus and the Buddha, but from many sources.  In the Egyptian Book of the Dead, it’s said, Men are always dying and waking.  The rhythm between we call life. In the Hindu tradition, the Bhagavad-Gita, suggests: For the soul there is never birth nor death nor, having once been, does he ever cease to be.  He is unborn, eternal, ever-existing, undying and primeval.  He is not slain when the body is slain. However, I’m not so foolish as to suppose I have any definitive answers!

But I tend to the view, put in fewest words possible, that we’re incredible, amazing, beautiful flashes of energy, caught for a while in physical form. Though who knows?In a television programme a few years ago, particle physicist Professor Brian Cox said, “The fact that energy is neither created nor destroyed has a profound implication.  It means energy is eternal.” Maybe  the mystics and the scientists have  more in common than is often supposed.