" Hi. I'm Gloria. Are you shit scared of death?"

So it's not necessarily to do with how we face the moment of death, it's how we deal with our awareness of mortality, with the end of ME-awareness. The business of dying might be lengthy, or abrupt. In the latter case, we might hardly have to "face" it at all. In the former, we may try to shut away what we know is coming - though I am impressed, to put it mildly, by the people I hear of who plan calmly for their demise, get their affairs in order, and say goodbyes. But I'm not thinking, for the moment, of facing the business of dying. I'm more concerned at present with how we deal with the knowledge that we must die, one day, one day, one day, one day, one day, one - what, now? But I haven't quite finished, er, just have to ....

The Reaper's a Ruffian, the ultimate mugger.

Some people seem to have a high degree of acceptance and resignation. Others put it out of mind, seem hell-bent (no,not literally!) on enjoying themselves for as long as possible. I think of George Melly, who had done an awful lot of things in his life, and when the time came, turned down therapy for chest cancer, opted just for pain control, and apparently faced his end with defiance and melancholy humour.

So some people don't seem anxious about mortality, as far as one can tell. It's not something it's easy to ask people, I guess. " Hi. I'm Gloria. Are you shit scared of death?" Not a good dinner party piece.

But some people are anxious, and my working guesstimate is that for most of us it comes and goes. Not necessarily terror-scared, but melancholy-anxious, sometimes resigned, sometimes,as Wilfred Owen called one of his bleakest poems, "wild with all regrets." And sometimes deeply troubled.


I'm going to assume that most of us are in that sort blended state, not running scared, not witless hedonist, not noble saint (nor, er, sociopathic suicide bomber) waiting impatiently to die and go to heaven.

It's with you blended people I'd like to discuss ways of dealing with this mixed awareness of our mortality. The reason I need to work through thoughts and feelings in this area is firstly, because of my job as a funeral organiser and helper, a celebrinister. Well, fairly obviously,that's a job that brings you right up against grieving people, coffins, and lots of black clothes. It's not a gloomy job, and I don't think I'm a gloomy person, but it is sometimes sad (if you have any empathy at all, which you need if you're going to be much use)and it rather does raise one's awareness of mortality. And these things are not much discussed during the training of humanist celebsters, or afterwards. We work mostly on our own, and with regard to such things, default mode is "get in touch if you've any problems." That doesn't really cover it. I've no problems, but I need to think about this stuff. Because I am going to die sometime, and so are you, sugar.

The second reason is that I am in my mid-sixties (I don't post a photo because I don't want you all/both saying at once "surely not, you don't look a day over..." and because I value anonymity. Fame is such a tart.) It is, I find amongst friends, natural to begin to think it a bit more about the ending of one's life, either at a practical level (revising wills etc) and/or a more philosophical or spiritual level, as time rolls by.

A thread running through discussions from the GFG is that we shun death in our culture, hide it away, don't know how to deal with well or honestly at funerals, and so forth. I think this is often but not always true,and it must surely relate to how most, or many, of us feel about our mortality. i.e. it's not just about the fact of death, its appearances and processes (to embalm or not? etc)it's about the reality of human mortality, the fact that:

however famous we are

however much we race after wealth and ease

however much stuff we accumulate

however much we enjoy ourselves

we're gonna go.

Maybe that realisation makes the above striving feel pretty hollow sometimes?
(It's also screwing up our planetary life-support system, but later for that.)

I'm not going to turn puritan - nothing wrong with a spot of hedonism, pleasure's fine by me - but I think we need some help to drag mortality out of the closet. We'll enjoy life more if we do.

That help is my theme in future posts. Which will be less death-obsessed than this one - I'm trying to lay foundations.

If you've got this far, very good of you to stay with all this opinionated stuff, thanks. Do let us have any thoughts.