FOOTBALLERS and supporters alike bowed their heads on Saturday as Harmsworth Park paid its mark of respect to Michael McNeill during a minute’s silence.
The 23-year-old Academy fan, who suffered from a lifelong illness, had died suddenly in the family home in Wick’s Glamis Road. I remember him as a shy young man with a ready smile.
There were similar scenes at St James’s Park when the Geordie terraces had their opportunity to pay homage to Gary Speed, the former Newcastle United number 11. The death of the Welsh manager in an apparent suicide has shocked the footballing world.
I believe the poet John Donne was correct: “no man is an island entire of itself”... “any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind”.
Death, of course, is still very much a taboo subject in our culture. It’s not something we like to talk about, far less confront or prepare for.
In 2008 the Scottish Government, as part of a Healthier Scotland initiative, launched Living and Dying Well, a national action plan for end-of-life care as part of a palliative care strategy. Even in professional settings there has long been a reluctance to confront the obvious – that we are all going to die at some stage – and, therefore, need to find safe and sensitive ways to put in place anticipatory care arrangements.
Some weeks back, after watching the Jack Nicolson and Morgan Freeman film, I compiled my very own bucket list and shared just a few things I would like to do before I pop my clogs.
(If you are sufficiently interested you can check it out – Now is the time to find joy in your life before it’s too late – at the Caithness Courier’s online website). It certainly got folk talking and I had people approach me in the local supermarket sharing with me what they would like to do with the remainder of their lives. Amazing how many people want to do Route 66...
The Dying Matters coalition is encouraging people to talk about their wishes towards the end of their lives. With more than 15,000 members so far, it is “actively enlisting those that are committed to supporting changing knowledge, attitudes and behaviours around death and dying”.
One of its online polls asks, simply: Does anyone know your dying wishes?
Is this all too morbid? After all, with Christmas just a few days away, shouldn’t we have other more pressing priorities?
MORBID, no. But, a bit like Christmas shopping lists, we can all put things off to the last minute. I always admire people who are organised and prepared. It must be so less stressful.
Good Life, Good Death, Good Grief, a stakeholder group within the palliative care alliance, reminds people: “Death is normal. We can all help each other with death, dying and bereavement.”
Good Life, Good Death, Good Grief “brings together individuals and organisations that share this vision. We are interested to hear from any person or organisation”, it says, “who wants to work with us to make Scotland a place where people can be open about death, dying and bereavement”.
One of its initiatives has been to produce a Dining with Death conversation menu. Starters include discussion appetisers about perceptions about death, dying and bereavement in Scotland and asks questions like: Cremation or burial? Nature taking its course or assisted suicide? Church yard or wood?
The main course asks whether we can learn from other cultures. In Mexico, for example, they hold a “day of the dead” when families gather to celebrate and remember friends and family members who have died.
Twenty Takes on Death and Dying is a short DVD filmed on location in Paisley, Elgin and Inverness and includes street interviews with members of the public who share surprisingly poignant reflections that have, so clearly, affected them. It does seem people are willing to open up and talk about deeply personal experiences and their own very private hopes for their death (when it comes).
SO, have you made any preparations? Have you made a will? Or indicated your instructions to become an organ donor?
Do family members know your funeral wishes, the songs you would like to have played during the service?
Those that do make known their preferences talk about the peace of mind it gives them. Families are clear about their loved ones’ final instructions.
And, actually, reflect about the very positive experience of sharing deeply personal discussions not so much about death – but about a life lived well. “Talking about death is about planning for life – because it allows you to make the most of the time you have,” suggests Dying Matters.
The New York Times held over its production to print a front-page obituary to its contributor, Christopher Hitchens, who died of cancer last week at the age of 62.
A heavy smoker and drinker, the controversial columnist and literary critic suggested his “bohemian and rackety lifestyle” may have brought on the terminal condition he had fought to resist.
Regarded as one of the towering intellects of his generation The Hitch was an outspoken atheist who took on former Prime Minister Tony Blair in a televised debate in which he linked God to a “celestial dictatorship, a kind of divine North Korea”.
Interviewed for Newsnight by his friend, broadcaster Jeremy Paxman, Hitchens said he was more afraid of dying than death. “I feel a sense of waste about it because I’m not ready,” he said.
“I feel a sense of betrayal to my family and even to some of my friends who would miss me. Undone things, unattained objectives.
“But I hope I’d always have that, if I was 100 when I was checking out. But no, I think my main fear is of being incapacitated or imbecilic at the end.
“That, of course, is not something to be afraid of; it’s something to be terrified of.”
Always a combative critic he suggested we should “seek out argument and disputation for their own sake” because the grave he believed “will supply plenty of time for silence”.
What do you think?
