The word that dare not speak its name

As I write this, my brother is in Altnagelvin Hospital, seriously ill. When I tell people that he is approaching his ninetieth birthday, they shrug their shoulders literally or metaphorically. If you’re ninety, well,  you’ve had a good innings, you should be ready to lay your burden down.

Speaking as another old man myself, my only response to that is “Bullshit!” Or even “Batshite!” Having lived for a long time doesn’t make you agreeable to the very-soon prospect of life ending. You’re confronted with the one thing that we all learn quite early in life: one day all this will stop. The world we know will vanish. We will be transported into a state of which we have very little understanding,  no matter how devout or how atheistic we may be.

As atheists- and we’re all atheists, if only in momentary failures of faith – we see our death as putting a stop to us entirely. We won’t exist.  This is often described as an eternal sleep, but it has one serious difference from sleep. As we know it, sleep is a pleasant experience, one which we happily experience every night. We go into that weird state of unconsciousness and awake the next morning comparatively refreshed. In the sleep of atheistic death we don’t waken at all. Ever. We’ve stopped existing, and that is a frightening thought.If it weren’t,  we wouldn’t check for oncoming traffic when crossing the road.

If on the other hand we are what are termed believers, and think that this life is an ante-chamber to another world, you’d think we’d be consoled. To some extent that may be true, but it doesn’t make passing through death to this other world particularly inviting, for the good reason that we haven’t a clue what it’s going to be like. We don’t even have a clue how it could be : that like John Brown’s body, our body lies a-mouldering in the grave, while something called our souls goes marching on.

So even devout believers aren’t crazy about dying – at its best the next life is very vague and frankly unattractive.  Going to Hell – burning for eternity to balance out the small or big sins we’ve committed – really makes little sense. Disproportionate response by God:  you did bad stuff for a few short years, so you’re going to be punished  FOR EVER. And did I mention I’m the God of Love?

But even leaving aside Hell, Purgatory or even Limbo, or even, for God’s sake, Heaven, dying is literally the worst thing we could face. And have to face.

Which is why we don’t talk about it and try not to think about it.