In the Midst of Life

without trace
    into old age.
    —
David Hart
    From
Running Out
(Five Seasons Press, 2006)

SOCIAL ATTITUDES TO DEATH
     
    Most people die in hospitals and not at home any more. This seems to be largely expected, and it feeds our fear. We shy away from closeness to a dying person, and from seeing the body, and, even if the relatives are there, in the hospital at the time, the body will be quickly whisked away and never seen again. Many people have no contact, before, during or after the event.
    Yet basic, primitive and stark, hidden behind a curtain, death remains, and human imagination cannot resist it. We need to take a little peek now and then, and so we lift a corner of the curtain to get that frisson mingled with fear. The media know this and feed our desire by showing violent death in all its detail. The producers seem determined to show the most horrifying and bloody pictures. And this is as much as most people see, or want to see, of death.
    Some producers have tried to show, realistically, on television how people die, and, on a couple of occasions, have actually filmed a man whilst he is dying. I am not sure whether this is helpful or not. It certainly shows that dying is not a time of physical pain or mental distress, but of peace and quietness. This is probably reassuring to some people. But, on the other hand, it is only a ‘virtual reality’. But perhaps that is what people want. The idea of filming a man dying quietly in his bed so that viewers can get an impression of what goes on is no doubt praiseworthy, but, of reality, they will see virtually nothing.
    Only those who have been close to the dying and seen death in all its awesome mystery can get a glimpse of what it is about – and even then only a glimpse. The whole picture includes a spiritual dimension. God is not in the churches, or the mosques or synagogues. He resides not in temples and minarets. God is not thepossession of priests or rabbis or mullahs. God is at the deathbed, tenderly drawing the living soul from the dying body. God is in the grief and suffering of those who are left behind, who catch a glimpse, perhaps for a few fleeting seconds, of what life and death are all about.
    Reality is not to be found in a television screen. The closeness to real death means, inevitably, closeness to our mortality and questions about the divine. Perhaps this is too much to take. If we can find no spirituality in life, death is an uncomfortable reminder of a missing dimension.
    We have to go to a very different society and mingle with a people closer to nature to see a more realistic approach to death. In southern Morocco, in 2007, I was invited by a young Moslem woman to take tea with her family in her home. We entered a hole in the wall and went down a long, dark passage towards a dim light and into a tiny kitchen. There was a central place for a wood fire on the floor, and a hole in the ceiling let out the smoke and also let in the daylight. We went from the kitchen to a large room, about thirty feet by twenty. A beautiful carpet lay on the mud floor, and around the walls cushions were scattered on the floor for seating. High windows let in the daylight and oil lamps stood on low tables. Silk hangings adorned the high walls. The room was both elegant and beautiful. There was no upstairs, so this one space, plus kitchen, was home for the entire family. Other women and children came in, eager to see the stranger in their midst. The lady of the house, in good French, invited me to sit down whilst she made the tea. The cushions were very low, and I was apprehensive about sitting down in case I made an exhibition of myself trying to get up again! Seeing what at first I thought were some higher cushions I walked towards them. The lady must have read my mind or, if not, it is as well she spoke when she did.
    ‘That is my grandmother. She is nearly a hundred years old. She is near the end of her life, and Allah will come for her soon.’
    A woman was cooking, another feeding a baby, children were running around, and an old woman was dying. This is the realisticacceptance of death. The children will take it in their stride, as children always do, and as they grow up they will look upon death as a natural part of life. They had probably seen birth in that room and, without being told, had absorbed the fact that birth, life and death are all part of the whole.
    But
we
cannot see this. We are too busy ‘getting and spending’. The hush and momentary