Chapter 1: The Beginning

In my seventy-third year, there’s one thing I haven’t done yet. I know I will do it. It’s inevitable. You can only state the bleeding obvious. The one thing I haven’t done yet is die.

Up to this point, I haven’t given it much serious thought. But something happened recently. A change occurred. Basically, I got old. And getting old is known to be fatal. And to top it off, my body started doing strange stuff. It’s like being slapped across the face with a damp tram ticket. Death, my death, has come to my attention, and I can’t really ignore it.

When I say my body has started doing “strange stuff”, I’m talking about how I feel. I can’t ignore it. With everything going wrong, I feel done for. Looking ahead, I have no confidence in any dramatic improvement to my health. I can’t see myself coming good.

If I were thirty instead of creeping toward eighty, I’d have a different point of view. At thirty, I’d fight hammer and tong to survive until old age. But now I’m there. I’m in old age. All I see ahead is a continuous series of doctor’s appointments, pathology tests, x-rays, scans, operations, convalescence, palliative care, then in due course, I kick a bucket.

When I say it like that, it almost sounds like I’m the bucket kicker. We say things like, “He’s going to kick the bucket.” Does he have a choice? If so, why don’t I just walk past it and leave it alone? But no, the bucket will be kicked. In reality, it’s more like the bucket will kick me, it’ll perpetrate an attack on my foot. In due course, I’ll be an ex-parrot dangling upside down on my perch, no matter how you say it.

For now, I’m focused on the beginning of the end. If death is the end, then I’ve arrived at the beginning of the journey toward it. I mark this moment as the acknowledgement of that journey’s beginning. Each journey begins with the first step. This is my first step. I bring to consciousness the knowledge that all journeys conclude with the arrival at their destination. I have begun this journey, and I choose not to look back. In doing so, I hope to arrive at a satisfying acceptance.

This is what I want now, a satisfying acceptance. I want the acceptance to be satisfying. In other words, it’s not capitulation. I’m not just throwing my arms in the air and giving in. I want my natural curiosity to take over. I want to take an interest in what’s happening to me. If I know what’s going on, then I can do whatever I need to do to be comfortable and less of a burden on the people in my life.

The fact is, I didn’t choose this journey in the sense that I choose to die. I don’t choose to die. And that’s hilarious because I didn’t choose to live either. These journeys just happen to us. The choices that we do have are always within the universal constraints that are imposed upon us. What I can do is accept or reject death as something that needs my attention. From that point of view, it looks like I really do have a choice.

This is my choice to accept or reject the journey. My choice to embrace acceptance is influenced by facts. The overwhelming fact is that the outcome is the same regardless. So, my choice is to go with the flow, the path of least resistance. I see this as the least stressful and most satisfying way to go about it. Also, I have to admit that it appeals to my sense of curiosity and bloody-mindedness.

I can’t see the point of making the rest of my life more difficult by struggling to hang onto it. Surely, that’s not living. At this stage, it’s hard enough as it is. Going forward, it will be at least this hard and most likely progressively worse. So why make it worse by adding unnecessary stress?

I want to enjoy the journey, without that sounding weird. I’d like to be grateful for the journey’s end, if you can get your head around that idea. Think of a road trip where you finally arrive, and then you can rest.

The journey will take as long as it takes. It starts now and ends when I die. There will be nothing left to do at the end, so it’s not about my death. It’s about my life while I’m on this journey. Nor is this acknowledgement about what happens after death. That’s another story.

To tell you the truth, I have no idea if anything will happen to “me” after I die. I don’t even know if there will be any “me” as such. What will happen for sure is that life will go on without me. From this point of view, my death is more about the people in my life, how will it impact them? If I exist at all after death, it will be in their memories. This is not belief or theory.

Okay, this can start to sound weird if I draw the logical conclusion. I can see my death as my final achievement. I can list my life’s achievements, and death is on that list as the final one. From this point of view, I want to get it right. Because if I’m remembered, it will be my achievements that mainly make those memories.

I’m influenced by remembering the deaths of both my parents. As it turned out, they were perfect role models for how to die with dignity, on your own terms. I’m going back twenty, odd years for my mother’s death and about ten for my father’s. At the time, I wasn’t looking for learning, but I realise now that I did.

My mother really surprised me with how she went about it. Her journey began with breast cancer treatment. She was in remission for about five years, then it returned in her bones and then her liver. The downhill run toward the kicking-bucket gathered speed. The irony wouldn’t have escaped her. She was a dietitian, and there she was literally starving to death because the cancer had metastasised to her liver.

In her final year, as a practising Catholic, she joined a mindfulness meditation group run by the local parish priest. Go figure. It seemed a strange choice, but it made sense in context. She had changed. Meditation was consistent with her new self.

Her new self wasn’t cynical or bitchy. She didn’t vent her grievances anymore, they seemed to evaporate. She became focused on leaving the world of the living in a better place. For example, she took my father on a tour of the kitchen. He had no native survival skills. Perhaps he could boil water or make tea if no one was there to do it for him. His mind was on more lofty matters. Over her final months, she stacked the freezer with precooked meals so he wouldn’t starve after she was gone.

During her final moments, I was on a plane heading to Melbourne. By the time I arrived, she had left the hospital and was in the funeral home. I soon heard about her final moments from those who were there.

She was on her bed dying. At some point, she asked everyone to leave the room “to rest”. As they were leaving, my aunt and younger brother heard her say, “I’ll be ready to go soon.” They gave each other a nudge, thinking, “She’s not going anywhere in a hurry.”

As it turned out, she died as soon as the room was vacated. She died alone, in the shadow of the lampshade. Was she just shy about dying? Maybe. All those eyes upon her were keeping her alive. This was her final achievement. She needed to get it right. How can you do your best when everyone’s standing around staring at you, waiting for you to perform?

My father was different. As an engineer and historian, he loved an audience. He was a publisher, author, speaker, raconteur. In his mind, he’d be thinking, “It’d be great if you could all hang around while I die.” So that’s what we did.

He sought the limelight but was also efficient. He respected other people’s commitments. While his death topped the bill for that day, it wasn’t going to take up the whole day. “Just hang around for a bit, I’ll die, then you can get on with your lives.”

As it turned out, it took about twenty hours. I think he believed he could just die on cue. He was probably surprised by how long it actually took.

It began with the introduction of morphine. In our family folklore, that’s when the doctor gives you the nod that says, “This is it, mate.” His response was, “Bring it on. This shouldn’t be too hard.”

In those final twenty hours, no one left the room. I can’t remember eating, pissing, or pooing in that time. We just draped around, waiting for change. For the whole time his breathing was heavy and laboured, and he wasn’t conscious. He was drowning in the fluids of his congested lungs. He’d survived four primary tumours and finally died from pneumonia, which he caught in hospital.

In his final moments, his breathing quietened. He seemed relaxed. No struggle or desperate gasping for air. He just slid away quietly. No jazz hands.

The morphine pump metered out the dose. He had no control over it, but he drowned painlessly over twenty hours.

There is one detail that defines the moment. The doctor had been. The decision was made. The nurse had left the room to set up the pump. She was taking her time. Maybe she thought, “He’s in no hurry.” How wrong could she be? Very wrong? He thumped his arm down on the bed. Where is she? He’d decided to get on with dying, so what’s the hold, up?

The common denominator in their different styles of dying was the eyes wide open aspect. I like that. I admire the courage it took to pull it off. It makes me self-assess and ask, what’s it going to take to pull off my final achievement with dignity and respect?

Death, it seems, is really all about life. We don’t get to choose whether we live, but we do have some say in how we live. In the same way, we can’t choose whether we die, but we might have some choice in how we die. Maybe we can approach our own death as our final achievement. To do that, we need to keep living right up to the end. As for me, I know there’s a journey ahead. I wonder if I’ll learn to live better, so I can die well?