I felt privileged that I could assist my late wife with a peaceful and painless death in her own home surrounded by the things and people she loved. As the cancer advanced, reducing the liver function, she expressed on several occasions that she wanted to go, because she could no longer do the things she loved to do. I sensed a feeling of relief in her as her death approached, as she slipped quietly into a coma and away.
I am reminded of an article by Germaine Greer when she wrote about death. ‘The unexpected thing about getting up close and personal with death is that it makes life sweeter……Life is sweeter because we have death.’
Dennis Argall’s previous post somehow echoes Greer. ‘As I have got older my love for this wonderfully elaborate and exuberant little planet has become a passion as painful and ecstatic, as jealous and obsessive, as any human love. The thought that I will be recycled through it holds no fears. A cardboard coffin and a hole in the rainforest will suit me fine. If the goannas dig me up and eat my bones, so much the better.’
When you get to 90 or even 70 you have pretty much seen it all, and particularly today when the pace of change is accelerating. More than anything, stupidity rules. Our politicians continually recycle the same old mantra, fighting unwinnable wars, demonising the natural world and fundamentally changing the balance of nature, all in the name of some empheral power they fleetingly gain through manipulation of others.
Who would want to continue living in a world where our Great Barrier Reef is turning white, cane toads are killing frogs and goannas and the planet is being slowly poisoned as it warms without respite?
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