Learning in War-Time – C. S. Lewis
As I get older I begin to realise more acutely the impact that death has. Not just the mindless conflicts being fought around the world over in the name of various religious and political causes but on a selfish level. Suddenly once I passed the fifty years mark more of my friends and relatives were being taken. This has had a profound impact on my way of thinking.
As a child, I wasn’t exposed to death very much. I was five before anyone close to me passed away and although I was aware of the concept I remember constantly asking when I would see them again. Death at that stage of my life was not something I considered a permanent arrangement.
The next huge death to shatter my life was when my Nan passed. I had spent most of my young life with her because my parents both worked. I was in my teens and, as was the custom then I was not allowed to visit her in hospital while she was ill. There was no gentle breaking of the news for me, my mother simply told me that she had died and as far as she was concerned that-was-that. She did not even entertain the notion that I as a mere child was to be given any credence regarding bereavement. I had no previous notion just how seriously ill my Nan was, so I was totally unprepared for how to cope with the fact that she had died. Children were defiantly seen and not heard as far as my mother was concerned and as such has no claim on any emotions, rational or not. Naturally, as a teenager in the 1970’s I took myself off to the local rec with my best friend and we sat on the swings and got hammered on cheap cider.
I was incredibly lucky as far as my encounters with mortality as a child and young adult but the next major impact was when my dad passed. I was just twenty-four and just days after I had given birth to my second child by caesarean, following months of confinement in hospital due to complications. There was no gentle disclosure by my mother. Being the type of person that she was she blamed me for a life-in, life-out situation. Dad had been claimed by a fatal heart attack. There had been some warning but my mother decided that he was exaggerating and so phoned the doctor to visit, by the time he did later that day an ambulance was required as a matter of urgency. Dad died soon after getting to hospital. After that thankfully death was not a feature of my life until my Grandfather passed. He was in very advanced years and had been ill so it was not a shock as it had been expected.
Murder is a hard thing to cope with. War necessitates this kind of thing and it is somehow accepted as being a mandatory preoccupation, but for it to happen outside of a conflict situation, and the knowledge that another person has deliberately taken a life is unimaginable. My partner was the victim of a gang attack on a pub in which he was drinking. One gang had gone out with violent intentions (tooled-up with knives and guns) to set about another city gang on their home turf. He had nothing to do with either rival gangs but was, as they say in the wrong place at the wrong time.
So, I have made a will, I have tried to ensure that those close to me are looked after, and I have stated how I want my death to be handled. Now, it’s just a matter of living how I want to live and to stop wasting time and energy on the things that don’t matter.
There are two things we all have in common are birth and death, and however they come about either can be regarded as a blessing or a catastrophe.