Dying (3 page)

I told him that I was up for any and all forms of pain relief. ‘Or better still,
just shoot me.'

‘I'll make a note,' he said.

I duly showed up for my appointment with the palliative care specialist at the Catholic
hospital. I wasn't predisposed to like the hospital after what my family doctor had
said. And it didn't help that my mother's nursing home, also a Catholic institution,
happened to be part of the same complex. So some of the despair I'd always felt visiting
my mother shadowed me as I made my way up to the
consulting rooms on the fifth floor.
As soon as the lift doors opened there was the same smell as the nursing home next
door, stale urine masked with something artificially floral, the two scents fusing
into a cloying fug. A corridor led me past the chapel, the entrance to which was
festooned with sombre paintings and photographs of deceased nuns. Naturally enough,
there were crosses everywhere, and images of Christ, intended to provide comfort
to the faithful. But the iconography put me off balance, as if I was about to sit
a test for which I'd done no preparation.

My meeting with the doctor was less reassuring than I'd hoped, even though he was
softly spoken and sympathetic enough. Sitting in on the meeting was an older woman,
a nurse, who, like the doctor, rarely smiled. If this had been a school I was assessing,
to see if it was suitable for my children, I would have decided against it instantly,
but I was going through a far more bizarre exercise, trying to form a judgment about
the place where I might soon have to die, and finding it disappointing, even frightening.
I thought of my drug. If it came down to a choice between dying in this place, and
dying by my own hand, I knew which I'd prefer. It was only common sense.

Thankfully I have since found a palliative care specialist I like, and he has referred
me to a home-nursing service run by Buddhists. The nurses aren't Buddhists but the
organisation was established by, and is supported by,
monks and nuns who have trained
in Tibetan Buddhism. I have had a couple of visits from one of the nuns, not formal
counselling sessions, but conversations about how I'm dealing with my situation.
The question of religion has, of course, come up in these chats, but mainly because
I'm curious to hear from the nun how she came by her faith. I gather it was a gradual
process of realising what was right for her, and of studying and meditating for years
before she was allowed to commence her formal training. What I am most curious to
know is how she views death. I have already told her that I don't believe in an afterlife,
but she begs to differ.

She describes to me how the body closes down at the end, leaving nothing behind but
an essential spirit. Sometime after the body breathes its last, the spirit is released
into the ether.

‘I've been there,' she tells me. ‘I've seen it over and over again.'

‘What happens next?' I ask.

‘The spirit searches for its next physical embodiment.'

‘Why does it do that?'

‘Desire.'

I know enough about Buddhism to understand that desire is seen as a curse, and when
the nun starts to describe the endless cycle of reincarnation that is the fate
of
the average soul, I can see why one might want to be rid of it. That is not the part
of her story that interests me, however. It is her proposition that our essence is
perceptible. She has seen a lot of people die. If she says she has witnessed the
body give up the ghost, then who am I, a complete novice in the field, to argue?
And if she's right, I want to know whether it makes a difference how we die—fast
or slow, violently or peacefully, by accident or by our own hand?

‘What do you think of assisted dying?' I ask.

‘I'm against it,' she says. I had a feeling she might be. I have yet to come across
anyone involved in palliative care who isn't against it. But I like the nun, so I
am not about to argue with her. I like how serene she is, and how she looks directly
at me when she speaks. I have even decided to invite her to say a prayer at my funeral,
one she has picked out from
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
. It strikes me that
this might provide an element of ritual to the occasion that might otherwise be missing.

For this is one of the most lamentable consequences of our reluctance to talk about
death. We have lost our common rituals and our common language for dying, and must
either improvise, or fall back on traditions about which we feel deeply ambivalent.
I am talking especially about people like me, who have no religious faith. For us
it seems that dying exposes the limitations
of secularism like nothing else. I felt
this most acutely when I turned to psychology for some advice. My family doctor had
mentioned that I was eligible to receive free psychological help from the Cancer
Council if I needed it.

‘Six hour-long sessions, with more available if required.'

‘Why not?' I said.

He brought up a referral form on his computer.

‘We just have to decide what to call your problem,' he said.

‘Dying,' I said.

‘Insufficient.'

He silently scanned the list of problems for which help was available.

‘Adjustment disorder.'

I laughed. ‘You're making that up,' I said.

He turned his computer screen so I could see for myself.

I sat with the psychologist in a windowless meeting room furnished with brightly
coloured lounge chairs. A box of tissues was placed handily on a side table, along
with a long glass of chilled water. The psychologist looked to be in her early thirties,
pretty, neatly dressed. She took notes as I told her the history of my disease up
to now. She asked
a few questions about my home life, about my husband and children,
about my daily routine. She asked if I was sleeping, eating, exercising, whether
I had any fears.

‘Of course,' I said. ‘I'm frightened of dying.'

‘That's perfectly normal. How do you deal with your fears?'

‘I try to think about other things. I read, I watch television, I see friends.'

‘Have you ever heard of mindfulness?'

I had heard of mindfulness. A counsellor visited me in hospital after my brain surgery.
She took me through a few of the basic exercises: how to breathe, how to listen to
the sounds around me, how to observe my thoughts as they passed.

‘I use it sometimes,' I said.

‘It's good,' she said, ‘to set aside time every day, to just enjoy the small things,
the taste of an apple, the play of sunlight on the water, the smell of the rain.'

‘I know,' I said, feeling a sudden urge to leave the room.

This was not what I'd come here to listen to. Surely this highly trained bright spark
had something more up her professional sleeve than basic relaxation tips I could
have picked up online any day of the week. I've read that the profession of psychologist
is one of the forty or so predicted to disappear in the near future, along with bus
driver and hotel receptionist. The research says that people are now more forthcoming
about their problems when they're communicating virtually rather than face to face.
Or perhaps it is because people like me expect more of psychologists than they can
possibly deliver, some superior wisdom about the mysteries of life and death. It
was a good thing I wasn't paying for my counselling, I thought, or I might have asked
for my money back.

I ran out of things to say. Obviously I wasn't a particularly challenging patient,
my adjustment disorder being mild to non-existent.

‘Really I'm just sad,' I said, trying to wrap up the session. ‘About all the things
I've lost. I could have had another good ten years. But then, as Sartre says, everybody
dies too early or too late.'

The psychologist nodded. I'm not sure she had heard of Sartre, or rated his opinion
on anything. ‘Grief can accumulate,' she said. ‘Little losses one after the other
can mount up. Perhaps that's something we can talk about next time.' She closed her
notebook to signal that my hour was up.

‘You can book your next appointment at reception.'

‘Thanks,' I said, although I had no intention of coming back.

The psychologist was right about one thing. Losses do
mount up. Sometimes, when I'm
sitting on the front verandah being mindful, I'll be distracted by the sight of a
couple out on their evening walk. They'll be heading for the river, which isn't far
from our house. There's a park down there that runs along the riverbank for a good
three or four kilometres. I would walk with my husband along that stretch of the
river every morning and evening. It was how we bookended the day. The water is never
the same, sometimes calm, sometimes rough, sometimes rushing out to sea, at other
times racing in. We might stop to watch a mother duck guide her ducklings to shore,
or a cormorant on a fishing expedition. As the evening sky darkens, the fruit bats
come streaming across in the hundreds from their rookeries on the far bank to the
giant figs on this side. We don't do that walk anymore. I'm frightened I'll fall
and break something. Nor do I ride my bike along there, another pleasure gone. With
envy, I watch the passing cyclists, gliding along the way I used to, pedalling hard
when they come to the hill. I even envy drivers. I had to give up driving after my
brain surgery, because of the risk that I might have another seizure. How I'd love
to pack the car and head off to some deserted beach for a swim. But I weigh less
than my neighbour's retriever. I'd never make it beyond the first break. And so it
goes, the endless list of pleasures I can no longer enjoy. Pointless to miss them
of course, as that won't bring them back, but so
much sweetness is bound to leave
a terrible void when it's gone. I'm only grateful I tasted so much of it when I had
the chance. I have had a blessed life in that way, full of countless delights. When
you're dying, even your unhappiest memories can induce a sort of fondness, as if
delight is not confined to the good times, but is woven through your days like a
skein of gold thread.

You do reflect on your past when you're dying. You look for patterns and turning
points and wonder if any of it is significant. You have the urge to relate the story
of your life for your children so that you can set the record straight, and so that
they can form some idea of where they came from. In recognition of this need, my
home-nursing service employs volunteers called biographers, who visit patients, record
their stories, then put together a bound copy of the finished product to present
to the families of the dying.

Susan Addison was my biographer. She came every Wednesday for more than three months
to listen to my tales of triumph and failure, during which time we became more like
friends than volunteer and patient. It was a happy coincidence that we were both
interested in books and writing. Susan had a daughter who was a screenwriter in Sydney
and knew some of the same people I'd known
when I'd lived there and worked in the
same job. Having a lot in common, we talked quite freely during our sessions together,
and I came to learn almost as much about Susan's history as she learned about mine.
Very early on, for instance, she told me she had lost her only son to brain cancer
when he was nineteen, a loss she had written about in her published memoir
Mother
Lode.

She lent me a copy and I read it with a mounting sense of humility and respect. For
someone like me, who knew so little about death, it was chastening to read this beautiful,
unsentimental chronicle of someone who knew so much about it. Soon after her son's
death, Susan had lost a number of other close family members in quick succession,
and it had made her something of an expert in grief. But in spite of her losses she
had refused to succumb to self-pity. She'd had help, she told me. After some searching
around for spiritual solace, she had joined the Quakers and was a regular member
at their meetings. It was the silence of the Quaker meetings she liked, she said,
preferring it to services where there were sermons and singing. And she had the
support of a loving husband, to whom she had been happily married for more than forty
years.

Under the circumstances, Susan's attentiveness to my ramblings about my own life
was flattering. None of my past troubles could compete with the death of a child,
not my parents' messy divorce, or my own romantic
flounderings, or my failures and
setbacks as a writer. Mine was the privileged tale of someone who had not truly suffered.
The fact that I was dying now was sad, but not tragic. I had lived a full life. Susan's
son had died on the brink of manhood. The two deaths didn't bear comparison. This
fact reminded me over and over again that my circumstances were less a cause for
sorrow than an opportunity to feel thankful for my unearned good fortune. My two
sons were still alive. I would not have to outlive them the way Susan had had to
outlive her son. That alone was an immeasurable comfort to me. And I think Susan
knew that. I think she understood that she wasn't just my chronicler, but my guide,
my travel adviser to that bitter country she had already traversed a number of times
before me.