Intimations of mortality

Finality

We will not speak of parting,
for I will be where you are
as you will ever be with me,
I will carry every day
with the haunting memory
of every thing you said and did
every dream we ever held
and every moment lived.

by Annie Elliott

Last night I awoke from a dream of death. I have not dreamt of death before. Even in my worst dreams, though shaken I survived. I suppose it is knowing the cancer has been growing in my lung for two years, peppering its malicious seeds to every part of my body where they may take root and grow. I dreamt I was in a busy building of many rooms, perhaps like a university, with dormitories and a refectory, filled with bustling young people. I tried to move with them, but sluggish and tired I lay down. Some stranger noticed me, and came across kindly to rest her hand on mine. It was warm and soft and comforting, but her words were, "you are not well, are you?" and I felt the life begin to leave me in the presence of that angel of death. 

I knew my age - it was the same age my grandfather had reached - and I thought it unfair. I hadn't even made four score years, and there were so many things I wanted still to do, and affairs to put in order. I awoke abruptly, thankful that I had not slipped away in the night, determined to fight to the end - not to avoid the inevitable outcome, but to continue my painting and writing and living as long as I can, for my life is good, I have Ann by my side, and I yet enjoy living.

My grandfather's grave in Burnley

If death should be the end

If death is the end, it is better to die
in the cradle without pain or strife;
yet on we live.
Through thought and writing,
by poetry and art,
in children and friends
we live on.
All we are and all we have been
is poured out through them.

When friends die and children die,
do we then die with them?
It is said that when someone dies,
whole worlds die with them.
We each contain a world of thoughts,
of habits learnt and feelings won,
of loves known and memories earned,
worlds awaiting death.

How little passes on;
some trick of speech,
some memory of a distant day's event,
some happy moment.
How little is the recollection now
of once dear grandparents;
yet all that exists of them may be
that tiny and fragmented memory.
Somehow you try to ingrain it
in children of your own.
But you forget, and they forget,
and though their insidious influence
creeps through your every act,
everything that was and made
that individual fades gradually away
into insignificance,
as surely as their name fades
on an old tomb stone until
one can barely read the scratched out lines.

John Herbert Marr