I’m toying with changing the title of my book.
Twenty years ago I started writing a book that I saw as a diary of my descent towards death. In that twenty years I have neither died nor developed any symptoms that death might be imminent. Hence the idea of a diary seems inappropriate. The book has become my ramblings about death.
For that reason I have decided that I need to think more about the title.
Which do you prefer?
The Death Diaries
or
The Book of DEATH
I’m still working on my book on death. It was intended to be a diary of my road towards death. Nothing much has happened on that side yet. Not much of a diary, eh? Never mind. It is proving to be a vehicle for me to ramble on about death. I’m finding that entertaining.
Life after death
Death makes you think about after-death. Is there life after death? I think not. Indeed, looking at the state of the world and lives of my fellow humans I wonder, in a lot of cases, if there is life before death.
Life after death presupposes some internal spirit/soul that resides in the living body, contains the essence of ‘us’, and, after death, leaves the body to go somewhere else.
For Hindus and Buddhists this spirit is reincarnated to reside in the body of another human or animal. Spiritualists believe this too. They believe you keep coming back to live different lives in order to learn lessons and progress (not sure what the endpoint of this progression is – similar to Buddhist nirvana I imagine). For most other religions the spirit heads off on a journey, crossing rivers with ferrymen or working through circles of hell, or simply wandering around lost, until they are guided or find their way into some promised land. In some religions you earn the right of instant passage and wake up in Paradise, with all its cooling fountains and 24 virgins, or Valhalla with its laden tables, flowing lager and winsome wenches. The Egyptians believed that you entered the underworld of Duat where you were given various challenges in order to achieve eternal life.
This idea of a journey and challenges in the afterlife is fairly common. In Vietnam and China I attended various packed ceremonies in temples to celebrate ancestors. They venerated their ancestors. To help their ancestors on their journey in the afterlife and make things easier they provided them with the things that might come in handy. Whereas the Celts and Egyptians provided weapons, food and female companions (they sometimes killed attendants and placed them in the tomb to bring ‘comfort’ to the dead chieftains), the Chinese and Vietnamese provided all the comforts that modern technology could bring. These were symbolised. There were market stalls full of paper images. You could purchase large cars, TVs, hairdryers, scooters – any and every gadget under the sun. You took them to the temple and burnt them in a specially constructed kiln/shrine. The smoke of the objects wafted up to the heavens where, amazingly, it was reconstituted as the real thing so that your ancestors could drive around and watch TV in luxury as they wended their way through the world that comes next. I found this hilarious. I had a picture in my head of my dead relatives driving around in a place called heaven and popping off ‘home’ to their house in the sky to catch some drama or soap – probably ‘Trouble In Paradise’ or some such. This afterlife seems to be indistinguishable from our present life. Strange that.
There’s no accounting for what people choose to believe. All these descriptions of worlds after death seem equally weird to me. There’s also no shortage of people ready to exploit these beliefs for profit (power or wealth). I was amazed to find the Vietnamese temples having cages crammed with terrified small birds and pots crammed with baby turtles or fish. For a sum you could gain good Karma by paying for the release of these creatures. That seemed a tad strange to me. What about all the bad Karma of placing the poor creatures in these conditions in the first place? That was brushed over.
Conversely the afterlife is not so good for all the non-believers or those that have strayed off the path and not obeyed the rules (the elaborate rules include, according to your brand, the eating fish on Friday, consuming a pork sausage or beef pie, working on Friday, Saturday or Sunday, masturbating, killing, eating non-kosher, eating seafood, having sex before marriage, possessing a foreskin, or not wearing the right hat, veil or robes, not praying enough or attending ceremonies, performing prayers or rituals, penances). Diet, clothes, austerity and sex are very big in religions. They all have different rules and regulations, requirements and penances that enable them to stand out and be recognised. It’s cultural. It is intended to identify and divide. The ‘real’ believers can be separated from the heathen other believers. True disciples demonstrate their allegiance and strength of belief by their strict adherence to the rules and extra commitment. This will, we are assured, pay off in the afterlife.
Of course, the rules can be circumvented. Thou shalt not kill can quickly turn into ‘your god demands that you should kill in his name’. Then it is OK to smash babies’ brains out, blow up whole rooms of innocent partygoers, fly plane-loads of kids into buildings, indiscriminately bomb and stone or burn people alive for public entertainment. It is justified to torture people horrendously to force confessions so that their souls can be saved. The sexual rules are also very strict unless it comes to Popes, like the Borgias, and young boys and sheep, or priests and altar boys. As long as you do it all in God’s name, against the right people (the others) and repent of your sins. So as long as Hitler confessed to his sins he has a place in heaven. Whereas a young road accident victim who was killed at a tender age, had recently masturbated and not had time to confess and ask for absolution, is doomed to everlasting torment from the god that loves them. Rules is rules. It’s more than me job’s worth.
So life after death is not so hot for the ones who made the wrong choices or broke the rules. They can look forward to everlasting agony. That seems a trifle harsh to me.
But all that is only if you choose to believe in souls and spirits. I don’t. I don’t think I have a soul. No spirit will flee my dead body to roam around as a ghost, waft up to heaven or drop down to hell. There will be no virgins, fountains, lager, wenches or singing in celestial choirs for me. I am the pattern of electricity in my neural network. Nothing more. When it ceases to zing around in my head I shall no longer exist. For me death will be like it was before I was born; what it is like in a dreamless sleep. No pain, no regrets, no pleasures, no fears, no ambitions, no nothing.
I’m not looking forward to death but I accept it as inevitable. Somehow, knowing that it is looming makes life all the more precious. Every second counts. Death, with its endless nothingness, makes life all the more precious, makes this universe all the more wonderful, magnificent and spectacular. For me, every waking minute is a miracle. I do not need to create fanciful futures of heavens, hells and karma with its reincarnation, no matter how psychologically pleasing they might be. I am reconciled. Life is super precious. Until my death I shall enjoy it to the very maximum. I shall enjoy every aspect of the magnificence of the universe I woke into and take pleasure in all the range of wonders nature and human creativity have to offer. Life is my smorgasbord.
I shall also enjoy the rich variations in costume and ritual from cultures all over the world. I shall greatly enjoy not having to be a slave to any set of rules, rituals or gospels.
In my view death has greatly enriched our cultures! Long live death!
I’m busy writing my book on death – The Death Diaries. I’m enjoying it!
Death is the final frontier.
Bollocks.
Death is the end. There is no frontier. A frontier implies that there’s something on the other side.
There is nothing after death – at least nothing we can be at all certain of. That is what terrifies us. Everything we hold dear; our minds, our lives, our family, friends, possessions, likes and dislikes, and the whole damn universe blinks out of existence for ever.
That is so sinister and final that we invent religions in order to avoid having to deal with it.
We can’t bear the thought that we will cease to exist; that the universe will go on without us, that there is no plan, no purpose, no reason.
All life, the universe and everything is all an accident. Infinity gives plenty of scope for an infinite number of totally improbable accidents – given enough time, space and chemistry. That’s what I believe. I’m an accident.
I am a firm believer in accidents.
I am not a believer in gods, angels, heavens, hells, satan or fairies. I believe them to be products of fevered minds struggling to come to terms with reality.
I believe life happened by chance; it evolved.
I believe consciousness is merely a survival mechanism.
I’m not sure how the universe blinked into existence through some Big Bang but I feel no need to invent another mystery in order to explain it. If god did it then where did god come from?
I believe in science, evolution and chance.
When I read creation myths like Adam and Eve they are farcical.
When I consider the notion that there is a heaven and we will meet up with dead friends and family to live forever in some paradise, that is beyond farcical; that is absurd. They are all invented in order to deal with our neurosis about death. I don’t like pretence. I don’t like psychological games invented to fool ourselves into believing that we don’t really die. I view religions are human creations; attempts to explain the Big Bang and life and death. For me they explain nothing. They’re a sham. I prefer to marvel at the wonder of it. We are surrounded with the unknown. Religion doesn’t come near to explaining it. Science only gives us glimpses. Art and nature abound with it. I like to sit in the mystery with a sunset or fire to transport me into the contentment of wonder. Life, the universe and death are wondrous cycles to be absorbed into the psyche and relished. I reject all simple answers. We have life. We live in a spectacular universe. We die.
No, for me, death is final.
This life is all we have. I aim to live every second and make the most of it. There’s nothing more.
When my brain shuts down I will cease to exist forever.
Do I like that? No.
But I don’t want to create some ridiculous, fanciful story in order to shield me from the reality of the abyss of eternity. I can’t remember anything from before I was born. That’s because I didn’t exist.
That’s how death is.
This then is the story of my death.
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.
74 – How am I doing?
It’s been twenty years since I first thought about the concept of this book. I was a mere stripling of a lad in my mid-fifties. I’m now in my mid-seventies. That’s twenty years nearer death! Twenty years of ageing with all the possibilities for terminal illness! I’m still waiting!
So how am I doing? Have I made good use of my time?
Three score years and ten. Well I’m past that!
I remain relatively fit and rudely healthy. I am a bit overweight and could do with losing ten pounds but not too bad. My joints are not doing too bad. I don’t think I’m going to need surgery in that department. My memory is a bit hazy and I have the usual age-related problems of remembers facts, names and words. I do the classic thing of walking into a room and wondering what the hell I came in here to do. I am diabetic now but seem to have that relatively under control. I’ve cut out my cereal and have less sweets, chocolate, ice-cream and puddings (woe is me!). My blood pressure and cholesterol is under control.
So, at seventy-six I have to accept that I’m not going to be playing football again. Indeed, there aren’t many sports I can do. I could do swimming or cycling but I don’t fancy that (unless we move to a warm climate and I get a house with a pool). I’ve just taken up bowls! That’ll have to do.
I exercise fairly regularly – a burst of interval training and weights in the gym plus a bit of walking. I watch my diet more (though not as much as I should – I have a sweet tooth). Breakfast is not berries and yogurt, lunch is an egg and slice of sourdough toast, evening meal is vegetarian or fish. I don’t eat much meat, cakes or biscuits. I do have the occasional yum-yum, chocolate bar and ice-cream though. I want to cheat death but I also want to live life.
I take three lots of medication – amlodipine for my blood pressure, atorvastatin for my cholesterol and Orlistat to reduce fat uptake.
So far so good. No heart attacks, strokes or cancers. I can get around, walk, even jog, travel, read, write and do most things. Death is not imminent. The balance seems to be working. I’m living well!
I started writing this book about twenty years ago. I was in my fifties at the time and was obviously beginning to become aware of ageing and my own mortality. I thought it would be an interesting literary exercise to record my decay and approach to death. As a writer I believed it would be an interesting exercise to record my thoughts and feelings regarding death and describe the symptoms and impact as the inevitable approached.
I envisaged that in the ensuing years I would wake up one day with a pain, a lump, a cough or such-like and receive a diagnosis. Then I could the symptoms and emotions. Interesting. So I called the book ‘The Death Diaries’.
Well, twenty years have passed and I have aged. The process has been slow and frustrating as I lose strength, libido and energy, as my body develops aches and limitations, as my memory fades and my sharpness recedes, but, so far, no incident I can identify, no diagnosis, no terminal illness or date I can hang on my death. I live and function and greatly enjoy life.
This book has been something I have returned to periodically as the muse struck me. I used it as a vehicle to investigate death and my thoughts regarding it. I’d written around fifty pages when I lost it. A computer hard drive failure. The book was dead. I resurrected a number of bits and started again. This is Death mark two! Death warmed up as my Mum used to say about how she was feeling.
Today I passed a hundred pages and thought I’d share a little. Below is today’s rough effort!
The Death Diaries
So what do I expect to happen after I’m dead? Will I discorporate and find myself up at the ceiling looking down at my dead body? Will I drift around as a wispy spirit, a ghost, to wander the earth forever? Will my guardian angel be there to guide me? Will I be attracted to a tunnel of light? At the other end of that tunnel will I be ecstatically reunited with lovers, friends and relatives (no enemies or nasty people)? Will I be dragged down screaming by demons to burn forever and be tormented in pits of burning sulphur? Will I be carried on the back of a giant condor to a fabulous land where I will spend forever? Will I spend eternity singing in a celestial choir and worshipping god? Will I wake up in a glorious paradise where the weather is always warm, but not too hot, cooled by fountains and waited on by twenty four handmaidens whose only task is to bring me pleasure? Or perhaps I will find myself in a great hall on a wooden bench at a long wooden table groaning under the weight of meat and tankards of ale being waited on by buxom wenches? Will I have to pay Charon to cross the Styx? Or bribe St Peter to put my name in the book so I can pass through some pearly gates? Will I find myself in a happy hunting ground? Or will I become a star travelling through the Milky Way? Will there be a camp among the stars where I will meet up with friends and family? Will I come back as a blue bottle fly or slug? Or will my good Karma lead me to life as a happy person, a man (or woman) of contentment, creativity, fulfilment and wisdom? Will I join with some universal mind and find my identity dissolve into oneness with everything? Or, as my mother believed, would I go off to the mansion of restoration and healing where I will be healed of all physical, mental and emotional ailments, restored to new and sent out for another dose of life to learn new lessons so I can progress to higher and higher levels and achieve perfection?
Well, as you might imagine, I reckon it’s none of the above (even though a few are quite appealing). It always amazes me that people are perfectly capable of simultaneously holding a number of these options and outcomes. It also amazes me that every culture has different after-death variations that seem remarkably to suit the needs of their circumstances. The American Native Indians imagine a land abundant with wildlife to hunt while the Norsemen imagine a great feast with plenty of meat, ale and sex, the desert Arabs imagine a Paradise with cooling fountains and plenty of sex, while the poor Christians have to content themselves with harps, cherubs and chaste singing forever. The other thing is that the women always seem to get a rough deal. They are only ever there to wait on the men and give them limitless sexual pleasure. You can’t imagine that the kitchens providing the food for those eternal feasts are manned by men can you? It’s the poor women doing the cooking and washing up!
You don’t think that these visions of eternity are the product of very macho, male-centric patriarchies, by any chance?
Every culture has its own version and every culture insists that its version is the only one that is correct. There are as many after-death myths as there are cultures. Most of these stories have already passed into eternity and are as dead as dodos. The ones that are new enough to be written down still exist. We find most of them utterly ridiculous, fanciful and quaint (while clinging to our own stories) and recite them to our children as fables and myths while keeping a suitable whimsical smile on our lips. Those people can’t be blamed. They are so innocent. They didn’t know.
It’s a shame really. I quite fancy a flight on a giant condor and sailing through the Milky Way has a certain charm (though I can’t help wondering if the Cherokee who envisioned following that trail to the camp among the stars really had any concept of the distances involved).
No. For me (with a sad sigh) I have to put all these fabulous eternities aside. As I die I imagine the biochemistry in my brain cells will grind to a halt, the cells will die, the neural complex that connected me to my sensory input will decay, the electrical network (I use the term lightly) that forms the construct of me as a person, my personality, thoughts and memories, will fade away, and I will cease to exist.
The universe will simply have to go on without me.
I am sure that the loss of my consciousness will impact greatly on the billions of galaxies and countless zillions of stars and planets that make up this infinite universe. My loss will be mourned west of Beetlejuice. My influence will ripple through infinity forever! The impact of my life will resound!
No it won’t. I’ll just be gone forever.
The universe will go on and on and I won’t know. My body will decay. Tissues will break down. Atoms and molecules will flow into the air and fluids seep into the ground. I will be consumed by decomposing worms, maggots, bacteria, fungi and various invertebrates. My bits will dry and blown in the wind. My skeleton may even fossilise. All my atoms, like all the atoms that have ever been in my body, will be released to play with other atoms, forever. They are perpetual motion machines that will only fall apart when the universe cools to absolute zero – -273.15 Celsius. That will take quite a while. Meanwhile, after a mere few billion years, the sun will expand into a red dwarf and incorporate the earth and most of the other planets and I will shine just like my Mum always said I would.
10.
Dying inside? Yes!
Outwardly I am going through that process of ageing. It’s a bloody nuisance. You know what it’s all about. As a man I am doing all the usual. My hair is thinning (who wants fat hair anyway?), I’ve put on weight, my skin has lost its elasticity, I’ve lost a few teeth and I’ve got a case of pattern greying. I’ve also lost strength and agility.
There’s not much about it that is pleasant.
On a biochemical basis all the chemistry in my cells is running less efficiently. The pathways are getting clogged up with waste metabolytes and protein placques. It’s like someone’s poured sugar in my petrol.
On a genetic basis a number of deleterious genes are kicking in. They only start up once past the age of thirty. They cause a bit of mayhem. Some of them are fatal. I have to hope I don’t have one of those. It’s the luck of the draw.
On a cellular basis my cells are replacing themselves as they wear out. The replacements – due to the damage – are not likely to function as well. The main problem cellular problem is with the brain. The brain cells do not regenerate. Once you hit twenty five you have all that you’re ever going to have. After that they begin to die off. Every glass of wine, bump on the head, or toxin wipes out a goodly number. A glass of beer does away with 60,000 or so. So I’m a good few million down. Fortunately we have surplus and they take up the strain. It’s only when you get old that the numbers tell.
My brain is less efficient. My short term memory is crap.
On a tissue level it’s all about sagging and atrophy. My muscle strength is down – I’m losing fibres daily. My collagen and elastin fibres are much fewer. My skin sags. The places where there is articulation are eroding. My back, hips, knees and finger joints ache. The cartilage is wearing thin. In terms of my back, hips and knees that is only to be expected. We have not evolved to walk upright. Our bipedal nature is recent. It puts immense strain on the lumbar region and lower joints. We should shuffle about like other chimps. It would be better for us.
On an organ level my essential organs – kidneys, liver, heart and brain are all becoming less efficient. I can’t process alcohol as well. I am not so resilient. I can’t run or bend very well.
To sum it up – I’m a sad case. I’m dying by degrees.
It probably means I’m not going to play rugby for England now, attract Haile Berry to run off with me, write the greatest book in the world, solve the greatest astrophysical conundrum or take up gymnastics.
I’m busy dying day by day.
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3.
So how would I like to die?
Peaceably in my sleep like my grandfather – not screaming and terrified like his passengers.
Well yes. I would prefer to die peaceably in my sleep without any long drawn out illness. I do not relish pain or the fear that comes from having to confront the end of everything. I’ve watched people going through the process of dying. It is not pleasant but perhaps it is worse for the spectators?
Heart failure is the best – at around three in the morning just after completing a pleasant set of dreams. The heart stops and the oxygen supply dries up – the brain shuts down. The various other tissues and organs follow suit in order of their oxygen requirements. I think the skin is the last to go – days later. That’s why you have to shave corpses.
Here are a few of my books. They are available on Amazon in both paperback and on kindle.
Anecdotes – paperback just £6.95 Kindle – just £1.99 or free on Kindle Unlimited
More Anecdotes – paperback just £7.29 Kindle – just £2.12 or free on Kindle Unlimited
My other books are also available. There is some unique to suit most tastes if you like something thought provoking and alternative.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Opher-Goodwin/e/B00MSHUX6Y/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1459501044&sr=1-2-ent
1.
I am sixty six and three quarters. I have lived two thirds of a century. I don’t want to die but realistically I know that the probability is that I will do sometime in the next twenty years, in all likelihood a lot sooner than that.
Presently, apart from the aches and pains and limitations of age, I am fit, healthy and still have my mind. There is nothing wrong with me. I am merely dying by degrees. We call it ageing.
Death is biologically programmed. It is not necessary. We are coded to die. It is in our genes. We have to get out of the way so that there is food and space for our offspring. We are past reproductive age and hence superfluous.
We do not like to think or talk about death. We ignore it and prefer to pretend it isn’t going to happen.
It is.
As Dylan said – ‘he not busy being born is busy dying’.
I am dying.