DEATH DEFINING

hat was my long-held vision of the one thing that all human beings will ultimately face, and nothing wrecked that illusion until I was into my fifties. Up until that moment in my life I had experienced the death of elder relatives, including my Dad, yet their deaths had been commensurate to this ideal. Even though I had been ripped apart by the death of my Dad and best friend, once the raw emotion had subsided I comforted myself with the notion that he was old, had enjoyed good innings and that was ultimately the cycle of life. To edify this, I vividly recall when leaving Frimley Park Hospital, Surrey, after saying goodbye for the last time, I walked directly past the entrance to the maternity wing. Even the numerous sudden deaths that I had attended as a police officer did little to alter my rose-colored view. Then my wife Theresa died aged fifty after a courageous battle against cancer, having undergone three intrusive brain operations and two strokes which included, along the way, a moment I will never forget when a nurse called me to one side and enquired if I had arranged her funeral. She was still alive albeit paralyzed in an unresponsive coma and one of my great death deceptions was destroyed in one extraordinary moment. Arranging a funeral didn’t necessarily follow death. This whole experience forced me to engage with a hitherto unwelcome narrative and although it engulfed our small family within its dark, cold grip I started to talk about the taboo that is death. Challenging not only my now shattered reasoning but questioning why the hell do we ask the really important questions when, often, it is too late? Speaking to my Mum only recently I acknowledged that Theresa and I should have discussed our mortality in more detail, over and above that