We were in the pub the other evening, talking about death. My partner and I, with a friend who was widowed not long ago and two people we knew but less well, found ourselves in a conversation that came from God knows where. The question arose of why it is that as we get older we seem to be surrounded by more and more deaths and the answer was, of course, within the question. We’re getting older and, sooner or later, you stop getting older and you die. That’s why people around you start dying.
Perhaps strangely, it was not a depressing conversation, not least I suspect through our life and death experiences we know that one day it will be us people are talking about. “What a great bloke” or, more likely, in my case “what a twat”.
When we were all much younger, many years ago, death was dim and distant. An elderly grandparent or uncle, perhaps. It was sad, but not that sad. Luckily, they were very old and that’s when people died. But then we all grew up and found that actually younger people die, too, but not so often. And that’s where the shock sets in. Then, as we age still more, deaths of people in their forties and fifties become more frequent and they’re shocks too, people “dying before their time”.
Having no religion and not wishing for any, I have tried to come to terms with the fact that once this life is over, well, that’s it. I’m pretty sure my spirit will not survive the oven at Westerleigh Crematorium and it’s important to do the things now that I soon won’t be able to do because I am a) too old or b) too dead. In other words, this is life, not some kind of trial run.
My depression and almost certain ADHD have been a constant, crippling deadweight on my life and both, I believe, have held me back and will always hold me back. I can no more cure myself of mental illness than dear friends could cure their cancers. But time is running out and while I can still breathe and walk and think, I’m going to have to do better.
One day my arthritis will be rigor mortis and I won’t be able to write, play golf (incredibly badly) and travel, all of which are now critical to my current well-being and I am forcing myself, almost literally, to make the best of what I have and what I am.
I need to see my two brothers and stepmother in Canada, so next year we will fly there. I need to get fitter and I need to play more golf so to try to do both I am going to do tons of the latter. I really must finish that difficult second book written and get it self-published. And the thing is, I have to do what I don’t want to do, which is to leave the comfort and security of my home. If you have ever been mental, you may know exactly what I mean. Depression is a big killer of many things.
It was all I could do yesterday to drag myself to the local Par 3 golf course. I wanted to but I didn’t want to. In the end I managed to get there and enjoyed a couple of hours breathing in the gorgeous fresh air of the countryside. The golf varied from very average to dismal but as ever the occasional good shots make up for the majority of crap ones and later I felt glad I’d done it. Today I’m writing and sometime later this week I’m going to travel somewhere.
How long this will last, I don’t know. Today, now that the clocks have changed, the evenings seem to start by mid-afternoon and, to my mind, winter starts today. The prospect of death is both real and inevitable. It’s now or never. None of us gets out of here alive.
