The Fear of Death Troubles Me

The state of man does change and vary,

Now sound, now sick, now blyth, now sary,

Now dansand mirry, now like to die:

Timor mortis conturbat me.

The lines above were written by the medieval Scottish poet William Dunbar in 1505. He was thinking about his own mortality, and the Latin line of the stanza — ‘the fear of death troubles me’ — indicates that this wasn’t doing him any good at all.

Dunbar died seventeen years later. Hopefully, he brightened up a bit in that time. I mean, all that gloom and doom. His poor wife.

Funeral

The old timor mortis has been conturbatting me a bit these past few weeks, too. Probably because I attended the funeral of a former work colleague, a man my own age. He was a fit, healthy individual. Until he wasn’t.

Nothing gets you thinking about mortality quicker than one of your peers dying suddenly. Morbid? I don’t think so. Let’s face it, none of us are getting out of here alive. It would be odd, therefore, if the timing of our passing didn’t sometimes cross our minds.

It’s also natural that this happens more often the older you get. If you’re on a bus, you think about your stop the closer you get to it, right? At the age of sixty-four, I’m aware that I have fewer stops ahead than I had, say, when I was in my twenties.

That doesn’t always follow, of course. Sometimes you’re fiddling with your ticket and thinking about your holidays. Suddenly you’re at your stop before you know it. Shit happens.

Sickness

It’s not just funerals that get us thinking like that. A bout of sickness can spark a few thoughts, too. The other evening, for example. I was sitting reading when I decided to make myself a cup of coffee.

I’m lying. It was tea, but no good story ever started with a cup of Earl Grey.

When I got up, I felt lightheaded. Within seconds, my legs felt heavy. I thought I would share these interesting developments with my wife. I was just in the middle of telling her when the nausea hit me.

My wife ran out to fetch a bucket. The speed of her! She hasn’t moved that quickly since she won the Mums’ egg and spoon race at our son’s primary school twenty years ago.

Concern for me or the rug in our front room? You decide.

I spent the next thirty minutes lying on the sofa, unable to move without being sick. My wife phoned the out-of-hours doctor to get some advice. He talked about vertigo and middle-ear infections before coming to the meaty bit.

“The symptoms you’ve described could also indicate heart failure, so I think you should take him to the hospital.”

My wife looked at me, then looked at the bucket. I could see she’d moved on from the rug. She was now thinking about the upholstery in our car.

“He can’t even lift his head. I don’t think I can get him to hospital.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll send an ambulance.”

Twenty minutes later, an ambulance with blue lights flashing pulled up outside our house.

Severed Fingers

Now, I need to put that in context. The ambulance service provision where I live isn’t in great shape right now. Last summer, our neighbour was using a buzz saw in his back garden and cut off two of his fingers.

Accidentally, I think.

His wife phoned for an ambulance and was told it could be three or four hours before one was available. Not the news you want to hear when your husband’s standing in front of you holding his fingers in a freezer bag.

I drove him to the hospital. Terrible journey. He was sitting in the back trying to explain what happened with the buzz saw, but he wasn’t making much sense. He kept passing out for one thing, which made his story hard to follow.

Also, I was focused on driving safely while making sure his wife held his arm up in the air. Slows the circulation, you see. Much less blood loss. Much less mess on our car seats, too.

What? I’m a terrible person for caring about our car seats? Listen, if I was a terrible person, I’d have told her to hang his arm out the window, but I didn’t. The thought never even crossed my mind.

Maybe a brief flicker. Long enough to remember that one of our rear windows doesn’t open fully, but not long enough to remember which one.

Injection

So, you see, given that experience, I wasn’t expecting an ambulance any time soon. When it arrived so quickly, I began to think there was something majorly wrong with me. Even more so when the paramedics started attaching wires to me like they do in the movies.

Suddenly, paramedic number one shouted, “We’re losing him!” Paramedic number two stepped forward and placed the paddles against my chest. Then she shouted, “Stand clear!” Several hundred volts surged through my body, lifting me off the sofa. I could feel myself floating up, up, up towards the ceiling…

Okay, I’m lying again. None of that stuff with the paddles happened. I just added it because what really happened isn’t very exciting. Basically, they checked all my vital signs then stuck a needle in my arse. A little something to stop me vomiting.

Vertigo, they think. Told you it wasn’t very exciting.

Anyway, I recovered after a few days spent flat on my back, but the experience made me think. What if there had been a circulation problem? What if the bus had pulled up at my stop unexpectedly early?

This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but with a dizzy spell or chest pain or heart palpitation.

Timor mortis conturbat me.

You and me both, Billy boy.