Life and All That

I thought for a change I would write about something straightforward which I could just sail through and not have to think too hard about. So I drew up a shortlist of two topics: LIFE and the UNIVERSE. As I couldn't make up my mind between them, I tossed a coin and it came up heads, which was 'life'. So there you have it, 'life' it is.

So let's jump in at the deep end and ask the question: what is this condition we call 'life'? I mean, what is it? Well, frankly it's anyone's guess! But whatever it is, one thing’s for certain: we cling onto it for dear... life! Well, we would wouldn’t we? And another thing: without it, there is NOTHING else. Whatever the precise nature of the condition, it is a PRECONDITION for every other condition.

And it doesn’t have to be good and pleasurable for us to want it and want to hang on to it. It can be bad as bad can be, but we still want to keep it. Essentially, it is the Operating System on which all our programs sit, and if our OS conks out, our computer stops working. But unlike a computer, there’s no fixing our OS once it has broken down.

All of us (well, almost all of us) want to live and to live for as long as we can. It makes no odds if we’re old as Methuselah, chronically ill, or intensely unhappy, we still desperately hang on to life for the sake of ... hanging on to life. And we do it because we cannot entertain the thought of our own inexistence, though we know it must surely come one day. It's just too frightening to contemplate.

The state that we call life is different from anything else. Once lost, for whatever reason, it cannot be recovered. It cannot be re-activated, re-generated, or restored to working order. It is a one-off, a one-way ticket, a journey with the same destination for all of us. But, unlike other destinations, it is one which we do not want to arrive at, ever, as it’s a destination from which there is no return. It is literally the end of the road... for all of us, with no exceptions. And... that's more than enough clichés for one paragraph!

In the general scheme of thing, Nature has been unkind to us. The mind does not seem to age in tandem with the body. Our body wilts and withers inside and out. Our skin wrinkles and our hair falls out. Everything slows down and we become frailer and more fragile. We are often plagued by age-related illnesses and disabilities. And yet mentally we see ourselves as younger, it’s as if we’re stuck in a time warp. We may be in our nineties or a hundred plus but we’re not ready to die, we’re not psychologically prepared. We may believe in God and heaven and the whole package but we’re not ready to meet our Maker or dwell in paradise (assuming of course we’re not going to that other place!).

I have seen television programmes about people with monstrous deformities, severe disabilities, awful impoverished lives and nightmarish living conditions, and yet they all earnestly wish to carry on living and fear death. Their lives are full of suffering, physical and mental, their prospects dismal and depressing, but they cling to life and all the grief and hardship it offers them rather than envisage the finality of the alternative. In their position, would we who are more fortunate think and behave differently? Would we opt out of life before our time? Would you?

The reality is that we are all on this earth for but a short time. Some of us are blessed with a relatively long life (at least in human terms) and some of us are cursed with a life cut short by accident or illness, but both are infinitely short in cosmic terms. There’s usually not much we can do about this, barring suicide, and so we really only have one realistic option: to make the best of it while we can and avoid needless regrets in later life. The Latin expression carpe diem (seize the day), which nowadays is heard almost ad nauseam (another Latin saying), even from the lips of the relatively illiterate, is as true now as it’s ever been. Amen.

My Friend George

Two years ago, this very month, my friend George passed away in hospital in the arms of his grief-stricken mother.

George and I had been friends since secondary school and, though we had had our ups and downs over the years, our friendship had stood the test of time and we had kept in close touch. But life had been less kind to my friend and in his later years he was plagued by constant ill health. He had been asthmatic since his teenage years and then put on a lot of weight which did not of course help his condition. But this was nothing to what awaited him in later life.

One fateful day he injured his foot. At the time, though it was painful, he just patched it up and thought nothing of it. But instead of healing after a few days it became apparent that it was getting worse. In no time the wound had deteriorated to the point where it turned septic and he was forced to seek medical help. Unfortunately, despite lengthy care and nursing of the infection, it stubbornly refused to heal. Quite the contrary, some months later it had started to spread up his leg and now he was having real problems in getting about.

Whilst this was going on, he began experiencing inexplicable bouts of faintness and dizziness, and upon medical examination he was given the terrible news that he had diabetes. This of course came as a great shock to him and his mother, but ever the pragmatist George soon settled into the routine of injecting himself daily with insulin. Years passed and the diabetes inexorably took its toll on his health in general but he soldiered on uncomplaining.

However, worse was to come. To the great dismay of everyone, the infection in his leg, perhaps facilitated by his poor health in general and his diabetes in particular (and, be it said, by some wrong-headed and clumsy handling on the part of visiting nurses), had not abated even after sustained treatment but instead had travelled further up his leg and he was now unable to walk without a crutch. Eventually, gangrene began to set in, and the doctors decided that there was nothing for it but to amputate his leg as far as the knee if his life was not to be endangered! And so it was that George lost part of his right leg.

For awhile after this it seemed that his condition had stabilised and that he was out of the woods. But it was not to be. His asthma was giving him problems again, his diabetes was gradually wearing him down, and his general health had taken a turn for the worse. Psychologically too he was in low spirits, as might be imagined. Within weeks he was back in hospital and on a saline drip to stabilise him and he was receiving other medication. He had been in and out of hospital a number of times, so we all thought that this was just another admission, that he would get the care and treatment he needed and be out again. How wrong we were, for he was not to leave the hospital again alive.

Me and my friend George in happier times

The final blow was to come from an unexpected quarter. Whilst he lay in his hospital bed with his mother at his side, he suffered sudden kidney failure and within minutes he was in a critical condition. By the time the doctors got round to trying to recover the situation, he was beyond all human help. Already weakened by diabetes and in a very poor physical and mental state of health, this was enough to send him over the edge and put an immediate end to his life, and so he slipped away there and then beyond the reach of us all.

And so it was that my lifelong friend George drew his last breath and expired in the arms of his tearful mother who had so loved her only child. Moments before his death, sensing that he was not going to make it, he thanked his mother for devoting her life to him, for loving and caring for him, and asked for her forgiveness for the times he had spoken harshly to her or had hurt her in any way. His last words to her were an entreaty to promise him that she would be strong and not fall apart after his death.

And I for one can confirm that she has kept her promise to this day. Despite her continuing grief, her old age and her loneliness, she has hung on, honouring the promise she gave to her dying son. She has been very brave and kept strong, though it is clear for anyone to see that there is a deep sadness in her soul which will remain till her dying day. She had indeed devoted her life to her son and he had reciprocated and now she was left with the memories of a life they had shared so intimately together and which was gone forever.

None of us had expected that George would go before his mother, especially given her advanced years. She had lost her husband quite early on, then her sister, then her brother. But the cruellest blow of all was to lose her son, for this went against the natural order of things. She had brought him into the world and now had had to see him leave it while she lingered on in her late eighties without the company of the child she had doted on for so many years. As a parent myself, I instinctively know that there is nothing worse in this world than a parent losing a child. And in many cases parents are left with a certain feeling of guilt that perhaps they could have done more to save their child.

The above illustrates, I think, that none of us can know when our time will come. And youth does not necessarily guarantee many years of life to come. Our fortunes can take a sudden downturn and before we know it our life has run its course. People behave today as though they will live forever, especially the young. The celebrity culture and materialistic ethos that govern our society in this day and age give us a false sense of invulnerability and immortality. The desire for fame and fortune is inculcated into each new generation at the expense of the deepeste truths and realities of our finite existence. But no-one is spared that final exit from everything and this is vividly brought home to us by the image of a grieving parent embracing the lifeless body of their beloved child, as in the case of my friend George and his mother.

With the untimely death of my lifelong friend George another chapter in my life came to a close too. Something akin to what happened when I lost my mother to illness many years ago. An era came to an end, fresh painful memories were born, and a painful awareness of the ever-present eventuality of death was accentuated. And so the world goes on.


Postscript: His mother passed away in hospital in November 2011 after a brief illness.