Death — a summing up

Winnipeg Free Press

30-04-2025

Opinion
At times, English painter Sir Edward Burne-Jones swung wildly between dreading the end and longing for it.
Two years before his 1898 death, he developed an irregular heartbeat and worried it might kill him.
He wrote to his old friend May Gaskell, saying it would be 'an easy death and a desirable one — but I love my life — and would do all I can to prolong it.'
Pam Frampton photo
Ornamentation on a family crypt in Lecce, Italy. If we talked about death more openly, Pam Frampton wonders, would it seem less frightening?
Josceline Dimbleby, author of the intriguing family memoir May and Amy, notes that the painter changed his tune not long after, this time writing to Gaskell: 'if the scythe man came now — that mower of lives — should I mind? No, by heaven, not one bit.'
How did Burne-Jones pivot so quickly between a strong desire to live and a willingness to die?
How do any of us welcome death with acceptance and grace, if given the luxury (or curse) of foreknowledge?
My father had a beautiful death, if there is such a thing. He was terminally ill, but his pain was managed. He knew and accepted his fate, bolstered by a strong religious faith. He died surrounded by three loving generations of his family.
My husband, in contrast, died briefly on a hospital gurney right in front of me after suffering a heart attack. The urgent, high-pitched whine of the EKG as he flatlined sent a mob of doctors and nurses running. A few jolts of the paddles later, and his colour — and life — returned.
The sharp shock of realizing that he could be joking one minute and dead the next, even while under watchful care, is something that haunts me.
And it has only increased my fear of the scythe man.
I agree with Julian Barnes (author of Nothing to Be Frightened Of) that death defines life; that our knowledge of life's finiteness is what can make it so wonderfully sweet.
But it's the sheer unpredictability of death that bothers me; its sometimes utter randomness.
For people whose lives are ended through terrible violence, poverty, slavery, religious, racial and political persecution or other injustices, there may be precious little sweetness to be tempered by the knowledge of death.
I have always had an image of myself channelling Welsh poet Dylan Thomas: 'Do not go gentle into that good night, / Old age should burn and rave at close of day; / Rage, rage against the dying of the light.'
But Thomas himself neither saw old age nor did he rage against death.
He died in 1953 at the age of 39 after falling into a coma.
In her book The Violet Hour: Great Writers at the End, Katie Roiphe notes that one of the poet's friends wrote to another to say that Thomas's 'body died utterly quiet.'
Indeed, Roiphe observes that Thomas moved beyond an acceptance of death in the latter years of his life to embrace the idea.
'The true mystery of Thomas's last days … is how the unnatural fear and apprehension of death melts into a craving for it,' she writes.
'It seems if you are afraid or preoccupied with something for long enough, you begin to develop a feeling toward it not dissimilar to love.'
This warm feeling towards death has not yet stirred in me.
And I don't think my lack of religious faith is behind my apprehension. The notion of an afterlife gave me no comfort or consolation, even in those years when I did believe in it. It's the current life I want to keep attending, not the after-party.
(I could be wrong about the lack of afterlife. I guess I'll have to take my chances. As Barnes quips, 'The fury of the resurrected atheist: that would be something worth seeing.')
My friend Brendan died in October. While he did not run towards death with open arms, he did not fear it either. He approached it as he did life, with positivity and gratitude.
He certainly wasn't tied up in any existential knots, and I was glad for him.
Barnes writes that nowadays we have distanced ourselves from death and leave the messy parts to the professionals — doctors, nurses, funeral directors, urn purveyors — whereas years ago it was a more hands-on process, with people dying and being waked and prepared for burial at home.
Perhaps that's why we don't talk about it easily now, except in hushed tones. There are layers of veneer between it and our ordinary lives.
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Yet each one of us is bound for that destination.
I like Roiphe's summing up: 'I don't believe that you can learn how to die, or gain wisdom, or prepare,' she writes, 'but I do think you can look at a death and be less afraid.'
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Pam Frampton
Pam Frampton is a columnist for the Free Press. She has worked in print media since 1990 and has been offering up her opinions for more than 20 years. Read more about Pam.
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