Fear of Living

In the absence of a philosophy forum, I'm posting this here for the time being.

Did anyone here Nuala O'Faoláin on Marian Finnucane's radio programme this morning? She is dying of cancer and the heft of death was in every word she spoke.

She talked of not wanting to have chemotherapy because there was nothing left to live for afterwards.

Strikingly, she asked what the point was of having learned, of having stored up vocabulary and ideas in her brain, of having read Proust twice for it all to disappear with her. It reminded me of lines from a poem by Michael Longley called Wreaths:

He was preparing an Ulster fry for breakfast
When someone walked into the kitchen and shot him:
A bullet entered his mouth and pierced his skull,
The books he had read, the music he could play.

I felt terribly sorry for O'Faoláin - not because she was dying, not because she was told of her inoperable cancer in a by-the-way fashion in a New York hospital by a thoughtless consultant, not because she had accumulated a life and beautiful yellow curtains that she would be leaving behind.

She said she was lucky, had had a wonderful life and would have a fine death compared to those who suffered in Auschwitz, Rwanda and Darfur, compared to her two brothers who died of drink.

My heart ached that an intelligent and admirable woman could reach the end of her days and feel that all the elements that had combined to shape and create her counted for nothing. She said she'd like to have been more reflective in life, to have been a better thinker - something I often wish for myself.

The tragedy in her story was in reaching a point where she didn't seem to know or accept (or perhaps want to know or accept) that while she couldn't take her New York home with her and she couldn't leave a vocabulary behind, the space that she occupies in this world is a product of all of these little intertextualities and interdependencies; the unique tabula that she has drawn for herself throughout her life.

But dying tilts the world in ways inexplicable to those who are not immediately confronted with it, ways that are immune to the kinds of judgement that we apply to regular living. It also nudges the rest of us to ask why we're here and what remains of us when we are gone.

As a creative person who crafted words into a form of art, she has carved an immortality for herself through those words - as Shakespeare said:

"So long as men can breathe or eyes can see
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."

Apart from that, like the gearcogs in the banner above, she has had turn in the lives of more people than she can possibly imagine. She spoke of great happiness and wonderful achievements and aquisitions in her life, of great generosity in her dying.

And like Robert Gregory in Yeats' poem, none of it matters.

"I balanced all, brought all to mind
A waste of breath the years to come,
A waste of breath the years behind,
In balance with this life, this death."

But I'm not terrified and panic, stricken, inconsolable at the prospect of no longer being in existence. I can't put myself in that place, even if I wanted to.

I'm not confronted by death so it was easy for me, I know, to shake my head and shout at her in the car that she's got it all wrong; that death comes when you've drawn on your tabula rasa a life that no one else can ever repeat and that Proust and yellow curtains and glorious days in the Prado are the colours that enliven that picture. And that we are not just the completed work of living, dying art at the end of our days but the living that happened in every confident brush stroke, every unerasable error, every painting-over that adds to the texture of existence.

To me, relatively young and happy, not immediately confronted by imminent nothingness and from the vantage point of naive ignorance, that's the point. It's not original or profound or terribly philosophical, but to me, that's the point.

But if that's the point now, I wonder will it still be the point when the time comes to die.

any kids?

No. She said she was glad she had never had children - that she couldn't bear the thoughts of dying and leaving children behind or being sick and trying to shield them from it.

MF reminded her that it was natural for parents to die but, as I say, she was inconsolable and in a very dark place.

lostexpectation wrote:

any kids?

I think, much as I like Nuala O'Faolain, that much of her life she has been in a dark place, and her best moments have been when she has chosen to share this.

Part of her personal history seems to have been no children and no long term close relationship. I think, from her writings, she had a very, very, difficult childhood and that alcohol dogged the family. It sounds overall like a very lonely life.

I had an interesting brush with feelings about death a couple of years ago when I was told by a consultant - wrongly - that I had a normally incurable form of cancer. Shock, and a desire protect my children was the first reaction. Then over a few weeks, my life got tidied up - bills all paid, visits to people I hadn't seen for years, and so on. Then I was told it was a misdiagnosis. I wish I could say that the experience has permanently affected me, and that I live my life day to day etc. The truth is after a few weeks I was back to normal in all respects.

I am certainly glad I had close family and friends around me when I thought I was going to die, it would have been very hard on my own. I suppose it wouldn't do any harm for anyone who likes Nuala O'Faolain to send her a nice letter or card, I expect she will get a bundle after this morning's programme.

just read her bio on wikipedia, i frankly had no idea who she or whats shes done, but i understand partly why she's had no kids now :/

lostexpectation wrote:

just read her bio on wikipedia, i frankly had no idea who she or whats shes done, but i understand partly why she's had no kids now :/

Yes.