Death and dying: Rosie Adamson-Clark says it’s time we all faced our mortality

‘I am not afraid of dying. It is the leaving behind of those I love that is my grief.’

A friend emailed me two days ago to say she was placing her will in an accessible place, alongside her last wishes, documents relating to her house, plus other financial information. I said how sensible this was. She replied that, though she was seventy-five, many of her friends and family had thought she shouldn’t speak of such things. I was saddened at this attitude. But I was not surprised. People generally have a reticence to speak of death, dying, and life-limiting illness. How often do people still die without having made a will these days I wondered? All too often, it seems.

Thinking back over my life so far, I wondered what my experiences, or views of the subject, had been? My first memory of this coming up was when I was perhaps ten years old. My paternal grandma had just died and I watched quietly, sitting with my sister, as my father put a black tie and suit on. He said nothing, kissed my mother and said he would see her later. He was going to his mother’s funeral and we children were not allowed to go. So, as we could not be left alone, neither could my mother go. We carried on our day as normal and I don’t recall having thoughts or feelings about it. Grandma Adamson was gone, that was a fact. Later that year a friend from school had an asthma attack and died. That I found difficult. I had chronic asthma too, so it seemed more real than grandma dying. Grandma was old (in fact only sixty-one) but Caroline from school was the same age as myself, and a wheezy kid like me. It shook me for a while. Then I forgot it, or it became less important. A few years later, I sneaked in to see the film Love Story and watched a beautiful Oliver say goodbye to the love of his life Jenny. It wasn’t tragic, or awkward, or painful; in fact she radiated grace and glowed. The whole film, about her death and the aftermath, was just so romantic. Death and dying were therefore romantic, it seemed to me.

I think I was always, deep inside, able to contemplate death. I had a near fatal accident in 1998. I went to help someone who had been the victim of a hit and run accident and was laid in the road injured. He was alone, an old man, so I gave first aid, mouth-to-mouth. As I was rising from the side of his prone body I was myself run over and left for dead. A Volvo estate came through a red light and drove over my body, then drove off. I was not expected to live, in hospital for three months. I made it back to life, albeit permanently disabled. My faith, belief in the Light within, got me through. Undoubtedly my now wife has kept me alive, focusing on living.

I am not afraid of dying. It is the leaving behind of those I love that is my grief. Our lives are meaningful because of those around us, who care about us, urging us on to be the best we can be. I was determined to return to work, to be a person who could walk and enjoy physical pursuits again. I returned, giving the NHS, my job, another eighteen years of commitment.

Around Christmas 2018, I had been ill with pneumonia and a chest infection for a month. In the early hours of Boxing Day, I had a massive heart attack. I had no classic symptoms but I knew what was happening. I had to wait an incredible eight hours for the emergency ambulance to arrive. The paramedic confirmed ‘You are having a heart attack’. I waited a further four hours in the local A&E, only to eventually be told it was too late to administer heart-saving drugs. I was admitted to the coronary care unit, a very sick woman with irreversible heart damage and apparent near kidney failure. I was rather stunned by it all and it was like some sort of a dream. I had four weeks of MRI scans, tests, angiograms, which all told the same tale: my heart was too damaged to repair. No stents, no by-pass, nothing to be done.

The prognosis? A limited, shortened life with the bit of heart that was left working. A consultant at the Cardiac Centre said ‘Four years maximum with no heart and lung transplant’. This was not available to me as I was sixty-two.

After a stunned reaction, initial disbelief that this had happened to me, reality hit. It made me feel there was no point to anything. I struggled to breathe, walk and sleep. My heart was so weak I coughed and became breathless if I did anything. I found that periods of silent worship became even more important to me and my wife. Our Quaker friends rallied around as best as they could.

I felt very alone. Trauma still ran around in my head. The question ‘Was it something I did, or didn’t do?’ kept resurfacing, plus anger at the lack of care from the NHS responders. Some days I felt so low I wanted to die there and then. What was the point of struggling on?

I was locked inside myself. My wife Chris said I was ‘very quiet’ whereas I was normally the talker, silence not being reserved solely for worship. So, what does it mean to have less time, a limited life? Professionals often speak about death and dying in a theoretical way, but who can really speak about these subjects?

Having worked in psychology for years, I felt I should have coped, but my work did not help prepare me for such changes to my own life. Each day I wake in the early hours after poor disturbed sleep, to know that today might bring another ‘event’, or even be the last day I have alive. It is a fact that people do not live long with my level of heart damage, especially coupled with my other life-limiting conditions. The local hospice has helped me to come to terms with my situation, and to live again, with whatever time is left for me. Faith is important and keeps me focused on living in the here and now. A simple life. I am ready for whatever comes next.

‘Are you able to contemplate your death and the death of those closest to you? Accepting the fact of death, we are freed to live more fully. In bereavement, give yourself time to grieve. When others mourn, let your love embrace them’ (Advices & queries 30). I couldn’t agree more.

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Comments

So many of us who read this will be feeling huge love and support for you, and will be reaching out in the silence, and ‘holding you’. How much easier it is to contemplate our own death when not actually being in the process of really having to face it, with a bad prognosis and limited time still available to us. It takes huge courage, and must be so very hard. Being loved, by those who are especially dear to us, and by our wider Quaker community, near and far, will give you some support, but it’s such a lonely place to be, nonetheless. “I am with you always”, Jesus said. Hold fast.

By rosete on 11th February 2021 - 10:10

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