I’d like, if I may, to talk about death.
Right, for both of you that are still reading after that little announcement, I’ll explain why I’m broaching that taboo subject. After 29 years of cheerfully avoiding any real experience of death, the grim reaper has come knocking on my doorstep twice in the last year. The second time, he came to my doorstep quite literally: a man perished just outside my front door a week ago.
Lorna and I were heading down the A12 on our way back to London, when Mum called on Lorna’s mobile. She was a little panicked, because she’d heard that the road I live on had been closed, right where my flat is. She was worried that we’d got home quickly and been caught in an accident. As it turned out, about 11am that Sunday morning, a 50-something man had come hurtling down my road at a great rate of knots, lost control of the car, hit the post box just outside my flat, skidded to a halt with his car upside down on the pavement and died of his injuries shortly thereafter.
By the time I got into my flat (I dropped Lorna off at her place first) the evidence was all but gone. All that was left was a demolished post box. a small piece of headlight and a steadily growing shrine of flowers to the dead man. The newsagent down the road filled me in on the details of what happened a few days later.
Now, the reason I was travelling down the A12 that day (still following?) was that the day after would have been my Dad’s 66th birthday. His death, of course, was my first direct experience of death. His corpse, lying cold and still on the double bed in my parents' home, was my first experience of a dead human body. The thought of how cold it was an hour after he died still chills me slightly and brings tears to my eyes.
My Dad was blessed in a way: he never lost anyone close to him through death during his life. He was the first person I lost, yet I was utterly unprepared for it. Why? Because no-one talks about it. No-one talks about what it’s actually like when a relative or loved one dies, or how they feel about their own impending mortality. Even religion these days seems to focus (with some justification) on the process of living in faith rather than what happens when you die.
My mother was the only person who had dealt with bereavement before. Her mother died just before she and Dad got married 40 years ago. She was the only one with a language to deal with what had happened and, despite the fact that she was hardest hit by Dad’s death, she guidance me and Mark through those early days of grief.
My point is, I think, that death is all around us, yet we studiously ignore its impact much of the time, leaving ourselves unprepared to deal with it when it hits. And like that man who died on my doorstep proved, we never know when death will be at our doors, for us or for those we love. Perhaps our society needs to open a dialogue about bereavement once more, so we can better support those who are going through it.
As I walk home tonight, and stare at that shrine of flowers building by my door, I’ll wonder yet again if this is really the best we, as a society, can do to remember one of our own who has passed away from us.