Back in February, a friend forwarded me a profound and joyous article written by Simon Boas about his terminal cancer diagnosis. (I knew Simon a little at university, where he was both much cleverer and much cooler than me). Originally published in the Jersey Evening Post, it’s since been reproduced here, and seems to have, as they say, gone viral. In the age of mindless clickbait, where cute animal memes and chest-feeding men dominate the internet, it’s reassuring that something so beautiful, which mines the fundamentals of human existence, still resonates. And does it with such humour and grace and intelligence and warmth that while Simon is devoid of bitterness, it’s hard for the rest of us not to feel aggrieved.
When I got back, my mother took me straight from the airport to see his body
That article has also made me think a great deal more about death – something I try to avoid doing. Indeed, one of my least charming habits is to be abroad when those close to me are nearing the end. It’s not deliberate but I wonder if my id knows what I’m doing. I’m uneasy with physical contact at the best of times, and especially so with sick people – teenage pilgrimages to Lourdes were really protracted CBT. Not much psychoanalysis would be required to ascertain that this is probably in response to growing up with a beloved mother who is far less sanguine than Simon. She’s essentially obsessed with, terrified of, and yet amused by death. Pretty much in equal measure.
During my childhood, she would sit up in bed reading that seminal 1968 page-turner, A Dictionary of Symptoms by Dr Joan Gomez, in a bid to manage imaginary conditions which she was sure would see her off before dawn. The result is that she’s a pretty good diagnostician and a total fruit loop. We spent our childhood convinced that she could drop dead at any moment (especially if we were to tickle her or if she were to suppress wind).
Unsurprisingly against the background of constantly being on standby for imminent maternal death, I developed a distaste for both science and the sight of blood, so my mother turned her attentions to my younger brother and basically groomed him into becoming a doctor – no mean feat on her part given the intellectual sluggishness he displayed as a child.
My mother’s morbid fixation extends to how she handles the deaths of others. I suspect that funeral parlours across London have circulated her photograph, accompanied by a warning to avoid dealing with her at all costs, such are the frequency of her visits when someone cops it. Her parents’ deaths, more than a decade apart, caused predictable weirdness. She particularly adored her father who died first. So, after much deliberation and many visits to Mears & Cotterill in Wandsworth, she decided that while she was happy for him to be burnt to a crisp, she didn’t want him ground. When she was presented with a rather cumbersome box, she executed a macabre volte face, chucked him in the back of her Volvo, and returned to the crem, having changed her mind about having him put through the grinder. She therefore knew the drill when her mother died, but then had to wrestle with what to do with their plastic urns. They’re currently in a cupboard with her Wentworth jigsaws, stashed between a Breughel and a Van Gogh. It’s what they would have wanted.
By contrast, when dealing with my father’s death, her pragmatism was unsettling. He wasn’t cold by the time a plot in his favourite churchyard in Dumfriesshire had been secured and the transportation booked. I can’t claim any moral high ground, because, true to form, I was in the States when he died. When I got back, my mother took me straight from the airport to see his body. There’s something horribly ghoulish about such visits, not least because morticians insist on making the dead up to look like drunken drag queens at the tail-end of a night on the tiles. I was feeling quite tearful when I became aware that my mother was bent double. I assumed that the finality of the situation was sinking in – only to discover that she was in fact crying at his face paint with the sort of laughter that actually hurts. It took her several minutes to compose herself, which given the lugubrious Lurch-types hovering to box him up, nail the lid down, and take him to the church, was rather awkward. It must have all been captured on the CCTV which is presumably a necessary precaution in an undertaker’s. We can only hope that it makes for educative footage on the varying manifestations of grief for funeral directors in training.
Gallows humour / My mother’s peculiar approach to death
53
1
10.05.2024
Back in February, a friend forwarded me a profound and joyous article written by Simon Boas about his terminal cancer diagnosis. (I knew Simon a little at university, where he was both much cleverer and much cooler than me). Originally published in the Jersey Evening Post, it’s since been reproduced here, and seems to have, as they say, gone viral. In the age of mindless clickbait, where cute animal memes and chest-feeding men dominate the internet, it’s reassuring that something so beautiful, which mines the fundamentals of human existence, still resonates. And does it with such humour and grace and intelligence and warmth that while Simon is devoid of bitterness, it’s hard for the rest of us not to feel aggrieved.
When I got back, my mother took me straight from the airport to see his body
That article has also made me think a great deal more about death – something I try to avoid doing. Indeed, one of my least charming habits is to be abroad when those close to me are nearing the end. It’s not deliberate but I wonder if my id knows what I’m doing. I’m uneasy with physical contact at the best of........
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