Death is a powerful teacher
I thought I was ready for my father’s death. I thought philosophy had prepared me for it.
As the Roman politician and philosopher, Cicero, wrote: “to study philosophy is nothing but to prepare oneself to die”. Sixteen centuries later, the French essayist, Michel de Montaigne, added that the study of philosophy is “a kind of apprenticeship and a resemblance of death; or, else, because all the wisdom and reasoning in the world do in the end conclude in this point, to teach us not to fear to die”.
I vainly prided myself on internalising this view that death ought to be accepted rather than resisted, and vainly believed it would serve as a palliative as my own father entered palliative care. But the experience of witnessing his passing proved to me that I still had a lot to learn about death.
It happened on a hot October day in Sydney. The family had moved him into a
