SHE WAS DEADSET SERIOUS
ANN WASON MOORE
LOVE is dead.
Look, I’ll admit I have never been a huge fan of Valentine’s Day, but yesterday I hit my romantic rock bottom.
Instead of sharing an intimate date with my husband, I spent the morning planning my mother’s funeral. With my mother.
Who is not ill.
But she sure is organised. While Mum is set to hit the big 8-0 this year, death is hardly knocking at her door. In fact, barring a horrific accident or illness, it is not even in the same neighbourhood. Or possibly state.
After all, she walks kilometres every day, plays competitive(ish) croquet, sings in a choir, is learning Italian and (painfully) persisting at the guitar. The old dog just keeps learning new tricks. Even if she can’t necessarily perform them.
While I absolutely love making fun of her – in fact, it’s one of the things I will miss most when she is gone – I’m seriously impressed that she is so wholeheartedly embracing the fact that one day she will die.
Because most of us don’t. While headlines are filled with death and destruction – whether it is fatalities from floods, fire or the coronavirus – somehow, in our heart of hearts, we believe we are immune from the inevitable.
That is why the unexpected death of an international star like Kobe Bryant shocks us to the core. If his money and fame could not keep him alive, what hope have we?
Does that make sense on a logical level? No, of course not. But we feel what we feel.
In a society where we prefer to say “passed’’ than “died’’, and where we would prefer to ignore the inevitability of our end than talk about it, we are doing ourselves a sincere disservice. And, worse, we are doing it to our loved ones.
Mum is not pre-planning her funeral out of some macabre or morbid desire, but out of a rational understanding that when she goes – sorry, when she dies – the last thing I will feel like doing is selecting a coffin, organising a funeral plot and figuring out which readings and hymns we should select.
I will be grieving my mum, and I already know I will be regretting so much of my behaviour towards her.
Given both my husband and I were Catholic “mistakes’’, born a decade after our siblings, we have had our fair share of family funerals of late … but it never gets easier. And while I love to make jokes about my mum, I know that the gravity of her loss will render me useless when it comes to planning.
And just to be clear, our meeting yesterday was not with some as-seen-on-TV funeral insurance plan where you pay more than your life is worth to get a decent coffin covered when you cark it. It was actual, mindful decisionmaking on the service, as well as discussing end-of-life care.
Mum is making it easier for me, but also easier for herself.
After all, the more we can accept that death is a part of life, the less of a burden it becomes while we are alive. There is no bargaining or good behaviour that will pardon us from the end, so get on with living your best life. We only die once, but we live every day.
In fact, there is a growing movement to try to take away the taboo of death.
Take the Death Cafe, for example. The social franchise has spread quickly across Europe, North America and Australasia, with more than
10,000 Death Cafes operated in 69 countries since September 2011.
It is a non-profit organisation with no staff. You just set it up and see who comes to eat cake, drink tea and discuss death. The objective is simply “to increase awareness of death with a view to helping people make the most of their (finite) lives’’.
Talking about Mum’s funeral yesterday, I asked how she felt discussing her impending demise. She said she had only one regret: that she won’t get to enjoy it.
Also, she was disappointed to hear that her final song selection was in fact the most popular choice in the UK –
Monty Python’s Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.
But mainly she is happy that her very last party will be a celebration that reminds her children and grandchildren that she will continue loving us from beyond the grave, wherever that may be.
So maybe love isn’t dead. Love is in death.