Death Is Hard Work

The most touching aspect of this was probably his personal attitude towards death: separated from the Christian faith by his gruesomely materialistic medical studies, confronted all through his life with cruel and repeated loss – including the loss of his own sons, who were sacrificed to England’s warlike plans – his last resort was to turn towards

Before dawn the next morning I heard my father’s voice come through the answering machine. “Mum died, John. That’s all I have to say. Bye.” I felt a love for him and also felt that my mother had indeed said farewell in a completely satisfactory way.

The families who gather around their beloved—their beloved whose sheared heads contained battered brains—do not usually recognize the full significance, either. They see the past, the accumulation of memories, the freshly felt love, all represented by the body before them. I see the possible futures, the breathing machines connected through a surgi

Death in human life only makes sense when death has been acknowledged. It is not a raw biological fact, not for humans. Death is knowledge of death, death is the ritual for the dead. This is why when we hear someone has died we always want to know how it happened: because in order to begin to absorb the pain of the loss we need a narrative. Acknowl