A matter of life and death

By Gordon Hawkins

It was not the kind of question one expects in a casual conversation with an acquaintance. "When do you want to die?" he asked. Not where, or under what circumstances, but when. It is a reasonable question to put to a nonagenarian, I suppose, but not one to which I had given much thought, and I didn't have a ready answer.

 I could have palmed him off with John Donne's "When the course of nature is accomplished in me," which is actually quite a good answer, but it does leave the timing a bit vague.  But do those of us in the oldest-old category spend much or any time wondering when we  would like to take the final curtain or hop the twig or whatever euphemism you prefer?

It is said by some, knowledgeable in the subject that, as we move through our eighties and into the nineties. we  may be interested  in the future of  our relatives and friends, but, from the early eighties on,  our own interests  are concentrated on the present and the past, and our concern with the future declines sharply. On the face of it, it seems a reasonable assumption, but how true is it? There must be many of us who, like me, think about the future a great deal. It is part of the pleasure and zest of continuing to live, when - especially when -the going is rough. A great deal depends, of course, on a number of factors, the state of one's mind and body being among the most important.

But I was anxious to give this acquaintance some kind of an answer to his question, and it took the form of a fable I read a long time ago:

An old Russian peasant is dragging a mighty bundle of faggots through the forest. Whipped by an icy wind, he stumbles and collapses and, in his misery, he cries out, "Oh Death, come to me now. At that moment, Death appears and asks, "Did you call?" The old man looks up, startled. Yes ... yes, please," he replies, "Could you help me on with my bundle?"