Bishop’s guide to living — and dying — well
NOBODY wants to think about it. Yet, when parents and solicitors murmur the dreaded word ‘will’, the realisation that you are on life’s moving staircase and cannot get off usually hits.
Sooner or later, we must all come to terms with mortality. At 84, Richard Holloway, the distinguished writer and former Bishop of Edinburgh, finds himself considering old age and death much of the time.
So he has written a short and quietly beautiful book in which he takes us on an honest, sometimes deeply moving, personal exploration, from his distaste for age spots, thinning hair and deafness, to (in the acknowledgements) a moving tribute to his 17-year-old dog Daisy, who died when the book was being copy-edited.
He sees himself as ‘waiting for the last bus’ — a melancholy thought, but he believes the more you reflect on the inevitability of the end, the more you are able to live.
In his words, ‘if we let it, death will reveal the beauty of the world to us . . . Look at it
now — so beautiful — and be grateful’. But this is no cleric offering easy answers to anything at all. Holloway is a man with many uncertainties and fears suggesting ways that we, with our own dread and doubt, might come to terms with the loss of those we love, and, ultimately, face the end of our own brief span. As he says, with admirable honesty: ‘It is not the thought of being dead that troubles us; it is the prospect of leaving and losing those we love that grabs us by the throat.’
He goes on to consider the prospect of life after death — with its joyous reunions, maybe — but implies that he finds no consolation there.
Faiths other than Christianity are touched on, such as old beliefs. So, too, is the search for ‘meaning’ when you have no belief at all. He pleads for tolerance of both the faith and doubt of others, in the realisation that there are no answers: no one in the world can ‘get behind’ the universe.
This is a man in his ninth decade who is refreshingly honest about the intolerance we oldies sometimes display towards the young — ‘At its root . . . the sin of envy’. We all know elderly folk who bleat incessantly about tattoos, hairstyles, terrible music,
bad habits: ‘It’s an ugly picture, the face of angry, envious old age.’
Yes, indeed — and Holloway is right to suggest this is no way to face our own diminishing futures. To live in the present, you have to accept it, for better or worse. He points out that moralities shift as new ideas take hold, and urges us to accept change. After all, if you don’t, how on earth can you bear the ravages of time?
Unflinchingly, Holloway considers the agony of the deaths of children, the impossibility of consolation, the idea of courage in the face of death, forgiveness, defiance, rage . . .
His very honesty will act as a warning to many readers. Reflecting on his own driven nature, he admits: ‘What I regret most about the rush is missing so much of my own life . . . I am sorry I did not pay more attention to the world while I was racing through it, particularly to those who were close to me.’ Take heed, he says. Skulls carved in ancient churches warn the beholder: ‘ Memento mori’, or ‘Remember you must die’. But, as he waits patiently for that ‘last bus’, the author offers an alternative message to those gloomy old skeletons.
Contemplative, appreciative and always kindly, he advises us to remember that living the life we have really well and facing its end with equanimity is essential, as ‘how we play the last card can win the game’.
After more than 30 works, Richard Holloway’s book is itself a testimony to the resilience and glory of the human mind.