h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Different Ways of Dying
I don't mean for my journals to be grim or depressing: that would be taking death far too seriously. Pratchett's Death rides a pale horse named Binky, and in describing him thus I think Pratchett strikes exactly the right note. I have nothing to say about afterlife or afterlives except to disclose that I'm a practising Quaker, because these journals are not about the religious experience.

Several of my 25 serial roommates have died. A Separatist Catholic priest administered last rites to one such, last summer, on the other side of the curtain from where I lay with my kindle, doing sudoku. The foreshadowing, the assurances, the orders given to legions of saints to turn out and welcome her personally made heaven seem like a heavily trampled parade ground with squadrons of precisely feathered angels playing trumpets and zithers, perhaps forming religious symbols upon the ground like some marching band. Suddenly the priest was finished, plocking his vials of oil and water into a little carrying case and flicking out of the room. The woman died several hours later, so peacefully that her assembled relatives didn't even notice.

Another room mate, morbidly obese, diabetic and schizophrenic, wailed and monologued for three days, a chaos from which she passed, finally, in an exhausted silence into death. She died alone, and nobody promised her any kind of reception in a next life. A nurse was sitting with her (they do that), but had stepped from the room, and the patient chose that time to leave (we really do that).

Then there was Theresa, stricken with brain cancer and metastasis. Her children fought hard to keep her -- she's the patient whom I described having gamma ray surgery last summer --but after a certain point she made up her mind, turned away from the world, and waited to die. They moved her to long term, where she died a few days later.

In these three examples, death was more or less expected by the professionals, and all but one of the patients themselves knew it was coming.

I suspect L knows it's coming. A stroke victim who whistles or pantomimes to make his needs known, L gets up and is helped into a sort of walker the staff call a merry wheeler. The resident stands inside a square PVC tube frame with wheels at all corners, and there's a seat to catch him when he tires, Except for meals, L walks all day until they put him down (put him to bed). Oh, sometimes he stops, sits, and naps in the middle of the corridor, but the rest of the time he trudges round and round. Back at the beginning of the year I got a harsh barking laugh out of him in the day room when I tried to run over a balloon with my electric scooter, but now he barely acknowledges that I know his name. L is determined to play to the whistle, as the sports commentators say, and I admire the hell out of him for that. When Pratchett's Death comes for L, he's going to have to ride alongside him a little ways down the hall.

[Amy P]

reddit

Well done for striking the right note yourself. There is both sympathy and humour in your writing. Another lovely and interesting journal.

Deb

[WM]

[Mag]

Thank you for this Lil, I like your portrait of L especially, and the philosophy of playing to the whistle.

F S

I want to know what a separatist Catholic priest is.

This article explains it very comprehensively:

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2006/winter/the-new-crusaders