How is this book going to end?
I started writing this in my mid-fifties to record my death. I imagined that at some point I would have a symptom, a warning, go in for tests, start a treatment and receive a diagnosis of a terminal condition. I envisaged recording my feelings and physical symptoms as the disease and treatment progressed. I was aware that the event could be sudden and I would have no opportunity to describe anything, in which case the entire premise of the book would be made obsolete. Ho hum. It’s only been twenty years.
At no time did I contemplate that I’d go over twenty years without a symptom or how and when I might publish this thing. That surely should have been a prime consideration! How stupid am I? (Don’t answer that – it was rhetorical!).
The book is now a hundred and twenty pages. I’ve rambled around as the mood took me. Given my views on life and death and gone into the beliefs and rituals that fascinate me. I’ve arrived at this point. The book has no coherence or structure. It’s going nowhere. How can I end it?
Did I expect the bulk of the book to be a detailed well-documented description of my illness and descent towards death? I suppose that I had imagined writing all these feelings and descriptions down until, near the end, with a feeble finger on the button and all the last dregs of energy I would press the button to publish the beast and then slip away into eternity.
All very romantic and exceedingly unlikely.
The reality would have been much different to that. As soon as I became ill I might have gone off the whole idea. I’d likely be too depressed to be bothered. There’s no telling how imminent death would affect me. Until there you can’t tell.
What is apparent is that I can’t actually record my own death.
I did think of a way round that though; I would ask my wife or a friend to write the last paragraph and then publish it…..
After a short illness, with his finger still on the keyboard, courageously typing until the very last seconds, Opher Goodwin slipped into unconsciousness never to wake again.
The end.
Well, that’s better than the miserable git buggered off and left me to deal with all the finances, books, CDs and vinyl!
Or – Towards the end he became truculent and depressed, withdrawing into an inner world of pain punctuated by the occasional moan and grunt. – Not quite so heroic.
Ends are difficult. We rarely find the perfect one.
The end.