The Death Suite
In hospital
my diary thins in concert with my body:
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday?
I’ll be ill.
Doctor, doctor!
There’s a corpse in my room.
In fact there are fifty.
Am I not entitled to be spooked?
This is the way
to the Bitter Suite,
the place in which they learn if something’s
looking rather bad.
The nasty news
was going to be that I will die.
But now I think the matter through
that isn’t even news.
I've been dying so long
one day at a time
and never quite felt it.
Now I can feel!
The art
of losing
may not be hard to master,
but it seems a big ask
to pitch right in to losing everything at
once.
We know
the runner will finish the race.
The interest’s entirely
I might have
guessed...
I was born the same year
as Michael Jackson,
and look where that got them.
Is that the dead bell?
It’s surprisingly quiet,
tinkling the odds -
but quiet can be insistent.
Death?
I know, it’s only a matter of timing.
Yet think of the difference that makes
when I’m playing tennis!
So much for my plan
to be a surprisingly vigorous
90 year old who does well in his age group
because all the strong players have died or given up.
'We're all gonna die'
I've no problem with that -
yet somehow
I’d sooner not be told so by a doctor.
Let’s say the aim
is dying young, at least at heart, yet maximally late.
I’m on track for the first, I guess,
but unsure of the second.
Should I take offence
at the waste of my sunset years?
Or feel pleased to be spared
the painful elongation of decline?
I’d rather like
to file past death and back to life.
I’ll ask the doctor
what can be arranged.
‘Quality not quantity’
would make
a better mantra
did I not
fear
that my quality’s all in the past.
Lack of practice
can explain
why I don’t know how to die:
imagine discovering, this late on,
that you don’t know how to live.
Good news
I've reached my diet target of 11 stone.
Less good news:
that's on the way to the world beyond weight.
I’m not
stopping. If death can’t stop
for me,
that’s tough -
I will not be compliant.
‘That’s life’
they say, by which they might mean
it’s made unique
by how it includes its opposite.
Call that a
dominion?
Birth’s in charge: for if there weren’t
more births than deaths,
death itself would die.
The flip side of death
is the life
to be found
in sardonically
mocking
its
pretensions.
Even as a good republican
I feel slightly sad for a queen
who did little to reinforce my convictions…
but I’d take her 96 mark in a flash!
Life
should be seized
by the scruff of the day -
just in case your neck is on the line.
I don’t mean
to denigrate death:
it’s actually my second favourite
state in which to be.
I dismiss the possibility
of life after death.
What matters is how much
life there was before it.
I wonder
how it’s going to work out
for Truss and Putin and Xi Jinping.
Maybe I’d rather not know.
Even the wonderful Steph
will benefit: spared the carting back and forth
of books and tech and clothes and suddenly-fancied foods
to meet my eccentric requests.
The problems with embracing
in Marvell’s fine and private place
are mildly foreshadowed
by all these tubes.
I know Steph loves
me
as I love her.
But will she love me when I can’t?
It would be easier for her if she didn’t.
I don’t expect
to arrive in any undiscovered country.
Is that one hell of pity
or a heaven-sent stroke of luck?
Should I regret
that I'm
an atheist?
Hardly: I
could be a believer,
but that
wouldn’t make God exist.
If I feel I’m hammering
on paradise's portal
either I’m dreaming or I won’t get in,
given that I’ve never confessed my sins.
And if God does prove himself to be
after
I've crossed the bar,
I fear I
won't believe in him still,
given what he allows.
I lie awake
with
wondering:
what's
the point in sleeping now
with so
much sleep to come?
It's cold
There’s
wind.
My new neighbour’s talking in his sleep.
2.19 is
dark.
It seems a shame
to pre-decease my mother
when she's provided such a template
for how to do old age.
The guarantee I’ve always had
that this will happen
leaves me no excuse –
I really should be ready.
Is death the same state
as you’re in before life?
It sounds pretty good
to return to pre-existence.
I suppose it’s time to ask
Am I happy with my life,
given the defining frame of death?
Or do I feel the deep regret of the inauthentic?
Let’s be positive
Death is the very purpose of life,
the end we’re bound to strive towards
and must, therefore, be good.
Rosie, Anna, Thomas, Rowan
how will
you grow up?
As children
you are definitely grand.
It doesn’t surprise
me
that death has undone so many.
It’s just that I’m not done
with not yet having been undone.
What’s it like?
We lack the data.
Maybe that which can’t be verified
cannot be said to exist?
It makes no sense
to fear the inevitable:
how would the practical point of that
compute?
Don’t gloat, death
After all,
you’re only getting me
the same old once.
You think that's a sting?
I’d take your poison any day
in preference to a life
in the drip-drip grip of agony.
Stilled life
is not for me.
I’m moving on
as fast as I can go.
I’ve heard it said
that life is just boredom and fear.
I wish it was,
for then I wouldn’t worry about using it up.
The consensus is
that immortality’s inescapably tedious stretch
is not the way to go.
And yet I wonder.
I know the mind
has cliffs of fall,
but I’m not going down,
will stay upbeat whatever the whatever.
My life may be
weaker than death,
but all life is out-powered:
I haven’t been singled out.
Enough of this
too-too-sharp way to concentrate the mind:
I’m ready for the doctors to admit
they got the diagnosis wrong.
Notice
how respectfully the surgeon steered clear
of my roundabout button –
as set out, not doubt, in The Bellyway Code.
I’m a generous man
After
years of low cost the NHS is spending big
on me.
Yet I’d happily put my budget back
to where
it used to be.
This is the efficient life
No cooking time, as hospital.
No eating time, as nil by mouth.
No pissing time, as catheter in place.
For four days now
I’ve been on nil by mouth
and fitted with a catheter -
but still the patient toilet waits...
Am I ready
to head for the great horizon?
Maybe I am, but the gap remains large
between ready and willing…
I accept
that 1958-2023 is likely.
But ending in eight would give my dates a tidy ring.
And 2058 would be neatest of all!
Why worry about death?
It isn’t an event in life.
But dying is: can I please
miss that bit out?
I guess it would be interesting
to see posterity,
but I’m happy
to postpone
the opportunity.
Consider the options
Buried alive. Boiled alive.
Hung, drawn and quartered. A thousand cuts.
Lucky old me.
If I should die
think only this of me:
I must have written this
before I went.
Life
is a death sentence.
I knew that – but I had hoped
to finish with a more complete
Notes
Context
After admission to Southampton General Hospital, aged 64, on 17 September 2022 for sepsis, explorations of the underlying issue indicated cancer of the bowel and liver, with a likelihood that it had also spread to the lungs. That seemed to point in just one direction: I found myself thinking about death, and jotting down jestingly macabre thoughts. Meantime, I was feeling fit enough to roam the hospital corridors, taking the accompanying 64 photographs of 'hospital still life'. Some of the poems mention my immediate family: mother Shirley, unmatchable wife Steph, children Ursula, Kim and Greg, and my six grandchildren - all wonderfully supportive, along with my brothers and scores of artist friends. It proved, incidentally, very easy to outlive the prime ministership of Liz Truss ('I wonder'). I was moved around the hospital a fair amount, but spent a dozen days in Bay D of Ward D8 - Gastro Hepatology - and that's where I wrote most of these poems (the staff in D8 were great, incidentally). I lost two stone between the opening and closing photographs: the last followed on from bowel surgery ('Notice'), after which I was moved, initially to my own room for four days due to the ward I came from having had a covid alert (as per 'For four days now') then onto a post-surgical ward, where the last few poems were written in less luxury. I returned home on 11 October.
References
I'm not the first to deal with death, and when I looked at what I'd written, it wasn't too hard to spot echoes of some of the greats:
Seneca ('I've been dying so long') - On the Shortness of Life, c. 49 AD
William Shakespeare ('I don't expect') – Hamlet, Act III,
Scene 1, published 1602
The King James Bible (‘You think that's a sting?') - I Corinthians
15: 55, 1611
John Donne ('Call that a dominion?') – Holy Sonnet 10, 1633
Andrew Marvell ('The problems with embracing') - To His Coy
Mistress, 1681
Arthur Schopenhauer ('Let's be positive') - The
World as Will and Idea, 1818
Emily Dickinson ('I'm not') – collected poems 712, 1863.
Gerard Manley Hopkins ('I know the mind') - No Worst, There
Is None, 1885
Alfred Lord Tennyson ('And if God does prove himself to be')
– Crossing the Bar, 1899
Rupert Brooke ('If I should die') – The Soldier, 1914
Ludwig Wittgenstein ('Why worry about death?') - Tractatus
Logico-philosophicus, 1921
T.S. Eliot ('It doesn't surprise me') - The Wasteland, 1922
Martin Heidegger (‘I suppose it’s time to ask’) – Being and
Time, 1927
Dylan Thomas ('Call that a dominion?') - And Death Shall
Have No Dominion, 1933
Virginia Woolf (‘My life may be’) - The Death of the Moth,
1942
Sylvia Plath ('Is that the dead bell?') – Death & Co,
1962
Philip Larkin ('I've heard it said') - Dockery and Son, 1963
Georges Perec (‘Lack of practice can explain’) - The Man Who Sleeps, 1967
Bob Dylan ('If I feel I'm hammering') – Knocking on Heaven's
Door, 1973
Seamus Heaney ('I dismiss the possibility') - Whatever You Say, Say Nothing, 1975
Elizabeth Bishop (‘The art of losing’) – One Art, 1976
Julian Cope ('Am I ready') – I Remember This Life, 2008
Looking more broadly across the sequence as a whole, I can see that Donne (type of wit), Wittgenstein (exploratory mode), Larkin (relish for gloom) and Perec (the infra-ordinary) are my presiding spirits, and that doesn't surprise me.
Keith Haring (1958-1990), Michael Jackson (1958-2009) and Prince (1958-2016) all pre-deceased me by a fair margin.
Photographs
The pictures are glimpses of a major hospital, employing 12,000 staff, but without showing any visitors, staff or patients (except for me). I've never seen so many dead flies in a light fitting as there were in an isolation room in which I spent one night ('Doctor, doctor!'). There are enough endoscopy rooms to make up a fateful suite, and this is where my colonoscopy confirmed the primary site of my cancer ('This is the way'). That isn't a bell cord ('Is that the dead bell?'), but the emergency pull in a loo. The candles ('We're all gonna die') and the tribute to Queen Elizabeth II ('Even as a good republican') were in the hospital's chapel. The black shoes ('If I feel I'm hammering') belonged to a prison officer, sitting behind a curtain guarding the patient opposite me at one point. Many notice boards around the hospital feature the planned account of cleaning standards and performance ('What's it like') in which all that is visible are the instructions for using the frame! - that said, the premises were generally clean. 'I've been dying so long', ‘Lack of practice can explain’, ‘I lie awake’, 'Let’s be positive’ and ‘I know the mind’ all show views from my window-side bed. The image for 'That's Life' is a cardboard urine bottle left, somewhat paradoxically, in one of one of my ward's toilets. Sticking with bodily liquids, perhaps the least attractive images show my bile bag ('You think that's a sting?') and commode ('Enough of this') - though I took the latter photograph to record what sister Maria asked me to keep back for her... there's no accounting for taste. Finally, 'If I should die' shows a corridor poster of a microscopic photograph of bone by Professor Alan Boyde.