Lately my thoughts have turned, again, towards death. I am not maudlin or morbid by nature-quite the opposite really-its just, there seems to be a lot of it around. Death, I mean.
There's nothing wrong with me. I'm not about to shuffle off, God willing. But near to me, that's quite another thing. My mother-in-law (who is really like a beloved sister) has a lymphatic cancer that, while currently stable, will one day claim her. A friend from my choir has recently had surgery on cancer-related illnesses with a more serious op. yet to come. Whilst in Japan I learned that an old school friend's father had died. My mother has a number of chronic illnesses and is really quite frail.
I've often said that death is like a strange bird perched upon my left shoulder, usually silent, but occassionally whispering into my ear. As a teenager I fell in love with the Romantic poets who, often as not, romanticised death through an examination of the impermanence of all things. Keats was seemingly 'half in love with easeful death', an attitude that is so completely at odds with the current youth-obsessed circus that it seems impossible that a mere two hundred years separates them.
No, I've never called death 'soft names in many a mused rhyme', much as I may once have subscribed to the theory. But I do like graveyards, which, in their serene authority, vanquish the trivial and put things in context.
If I knew that we might all meet again afterwards, in another place, then the loss would be bearable. But even then, only just.
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