Fading from Memory

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Saturday 9 December 2006

After this, no more, I promise

By MM on Saturday 9 December 2006, 23:22 - Journal

Derek recently added some interesting thoughts of his own to the question of mum and dad's attitudes to death:

Mum and Dad’s generation had a far closer personal relationship with death than any generation since. Not only was there the second world war (you know Dad’s experiences here as well if not better than I) which drove home the risk of injury and death at a very personal level, either being strafed on an airfield in France, sitting in a shelter during a bombing raid or even familiar faces missing in the canteen or mess. This will have affected their attitude to both life and death and I suspect made the first more vital and the approach to the second more fatalistic. From memory, I believe that Japanese literature makes reference to the vitality of life after a close brush with death. If we add their experience of WWII to their Christian faith I would expect both Mum and Dad to approach death with a naturalness and lack of concern which may come harder to succeeding generations. There is also the aging process itself. Janet’s mother is now 91 (she will be 92 next May), she has lived on her own since 1993 and manages very well with us visiting about once a month. All of this notwithstanding, she will welcome death. She is basically tired of living.

The other element to recognise, although I am not sure how influential it will be, is the fact that both Mum and Dad had their fathers and uncles in the first world war and, in Dad’s case, an Uncle killed. While, clearly, this could not have been a personal experience as they both were born after the war, they will have heard the stories, been told about dead relatives and seen the damaged men in the streets. Even I can remember Cliff and his wooden hand with the spring loaded thumb. I can also remember seeing amputees on crutches walking around in Melbourne.

This leads me to wonder if Mum and Dad have always had this rather placid view of death (although not of dying) and that while the intrusion of AD has changed things by causing them to forget their own mortality, it may not have had a significant effect in practical terms.

In Mum’s case AD seems to have largely deprived her of language which, given her intrinsic love of words, in some ways will be akin to death and create a frustration which must be all consuming.

In Dad’s case AD has meant that he is no longer independent and in control of his immediate environment. This was something which mattered a great deal to him and I believe is the reason why he preferred to work overseas in single man offices whenever he could. He was less than happy sharing the posting with even one other person and as a member of a team he was frustrated. When you returned from NZ to Derby in 1964, I can remember Mum saying that he was like a bear with a sore head until he got the South Africa posting. Even in Johannesburg, I think that he fell out with the rep based in (I think) Pretoria. I have a great deal of sympathy with you for the disturbance he causes by ringing up all the time (a numerical analysis of the number and duration of calls is not a measure of the disruption and inconvenience) but the sense of incompetence which he feels when he apologises must be huge. Here the forgetfulness of AD will be a blessing.

I am not sure quite where this has led me, except to conclude that both Mum and Dad had no real fear of physical death anyway and so AD has no ability to confer the benefit of forgetfulness of mortality; it does, of course, continue to impose the ‘death’ of isolation and incompetence.

Derek

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Saturday 18 November 2006

What to do with those untidy dead bodies

By MM on Saturday 18 November 2006, 16:11 - Journal

I don't believe it! Another documentary about death - this time on the radio. But very instructive, I thought. For example, did you know there are four proper ways to dispose of the dead? No, nor did I. They are:
  1. Burial
  2. Cremation
  3. Water Resolution
  4. Promession
Options 3 and 4 may well become the norm in future, notwithstanding a few religious objections that may need to be overcome. Both current solutions have shortcomings.

Burial
While generally approved of by religious bodies and having the greatest sentimental and symbolic value for most people, burial is by no means the perfect end to the story. It takes up land, much more than you might imagine. It buries the bodies so deep that they contribute nothing to the nutrition of the top soil. It requires constant care by the authorities, and we all know how much they care about people who don't vote any more.

Cremation
An ancient idea that was resurrected in the 1800s as a solution to the problems cited in relation to burial. Accepted now by quite a few religions and preferred by some testators and testatrices. However, the little prosthetic bits and pieces that we affix to ourselves can cause problems. Pacemakers can explode. The mercury vapour that is released when amalgam tooth fillings are incinerated often exceeds emission control statutes. Almost half the mercury vapour emitted in Europe comes from cremated teeth and many crematoria are unable to comply. And just to make your toes curl - did you know that they use mechanical crushers to powder the bones?

Water Resolution
A common way to dispose of animal carcasses, and one which is seriously under consideration for humans. The body, subjected to alkaline hydrolysis at raised temperature and pressure, is reduced to a watery solution of amino acids, sugars, etc. The bones and teeth leave a crumbly mineral material - a bone meal. The process only takes a few hours. The by-products are all safe and useful. General acceptance of the idea is probably next to zero.

Promession
Bodies are freeze-dried with liquid nitrogen, then shaken so that they disintegrate into powder. The powder is then buried in shallow bio-degradable trays in the topsoil so that all the remaining nutrients - which are very good apparently - can help to fertilise plant growth.

Apologies all round for these too-frequent digressions into death and morbidity. I promise to stop now (or rather, I'll do my best; sometimes I just can't help myself, please stop me before I start to wear black nail polish).

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Thursday 16 November 2006

And yet more...

By MM on Thursday 16 November 2006, 14:17 - Journal

Today's post is very much a response to Redcedar's perceptive comment on yesterday's post. In particular the closing sentence:

Why do we not think of this dementia/oblivion as a state devoutly to be wished?

I can only speak for myself, but in doing so I recognise that there are two quite contradictory sides to my view. First, as I said yesterday, it seems a blessing that mum and dad don't even contemplate death because this means that the don't worry about it. What are the dimensions of this? It means they don't worry about their own, or each other's; it means they don't add a preoccupation with death (there is a poetic term for this that I wish I could remember) to all their other preoccupations. It means that, as Redcedar points out, they concern themselves with little problems that can usually be fixed. It means that while they need help with so many things, this is one thing that they don't need help with. I'm grateful for that, all right! So the benefits of their death-blindness are communal, so to speak.

On the other hand, I've inherited an attitude from Asian friends that takes this preoccupation with death (what is that term?) and turns it into a tool for the appreciation of every living moment. In Japan this is said to be epitomised by the regard for cherry blossom - so delicate and transient, beautiful and yet doomed. The blossom is a symbol for everything that passes - everything there is, in fact. People look at the vulnerable and short-lived and sigh. The sadness is treasured for the depth it adds to experience, rather than treated as something to be scuttled out of sight.It motivates one to get started now, make use of the day before you, carpe diem. It makes you value life.

This is where mum and dad seem (to me) to be doing something, not wrong exactly, but inopportune perhaps. Instead of sitting across a gloomy room from each other in a stupor, which is what they do when they are on their own, I'd like to see them pottering around in the garden, watching the birds and insects, observing the budding of the plants, just rejoicing in the tiny moments of life now that, unlike the rest of us, they have the luxury of time to do this. I'd like to see them in touch with the richness of being.

But of course, they can do what they want to do, even if it is just sitting around, waiting. Who am I to impose a rule that they should use their remaining time in any particular way? It all boils down to which value system one subscribes to, and mum and dad are increasingly disengaging from this kind of encumbrance. I suppose in deep dementia it all becomes meaningless anyway.

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Wednesday 15 November 2006

A bit more death

By MM on Wednesday 15 November 2006, 01:40 - Journal

There was a documentary entitled 'Death' on TV last night.

I don't know which puzzles me more: the number of TV documentaries about death, dying, and terminal disease, or my propensity to watch them. You would think that with continual news reports about fatalities in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Darfur (oh, and Congo, Lebanon, Burma, etc) that the TV companies might lighten the mood occasionally with more nice stories about fox cubs tumbling around in the woods and computer graphics-enhanced explanations of the water cycle. You would also think that when I stop worrying, dutifully, about global warming, terrorism, obesity, world population and the new clamour for a renaissance of nuclear power - and forget about my parents' eating and cleaning habits - I'd be ready to reread 'Wind in the Willows' or reorganise my beer label collection. But that's not the way it is, apparently. It seems like we've all developed a taste for the morbid these days.

It could be that the aging baby boom is finally beginning to acknowledge its mortality. This is a dreary thought. It means that for the next twenty or so years we are going to be deluged with morosity and hypochondria.

On the other hand, it could be entirely subjective. Perhaps it is all just me viewing the world through black-rimmed spectacles.

The interesting thing is how absolutely free of morbid thoughts are mum and dad. Well, mum seems pretty thought-free all the time, so it is hardly surprising that I can cite something she doesn't think about. And dad has had a peculiar attitude all his life. He was positive - he never let himself get too bothered about bad things - but not particularly ambitious. He would often express exasperation at the doings of the world. Watching a news report about a serial killer, for example, he would say 'I can't understand these blokes' - but he never seemed to see the world as something that he could improve. Thinking about it now I realise that he was not motivated by the need to transform things. While he wanted to do good deeds, he was fatalistic deep down - so there was simultaneously little effort to right the big wrongs and little ambition to climb high. He has consequently little fear of death - it is simply one of those untransformable things, an immutable fate. I must remember to ask him about it next time I am there. Mum too, for that matter.

The one benefit that lies hidden beneath the costs of Alzheimer's is that its victims are often unaware of their problem. The agnosia is commensurate with the decline: the worse they get the less they know about it. So, given that both mum and dad can get up in the morning and walk, fiddle around in the kitchen until something edible presents itself, and live in a climate that is (for now) stupendously benign all adds up to a picture that death barely figures in. Simple - the basics for survival are all still there. There really is no need for them to think about anything other than their daily preoccupations (running out of cash in dad's case, and how to get rid of the bearded intruder in mum's).

So, yes, it seems maybe it is just me, and come to think of it, this weekend I did see a documentary that featured fox cubs.

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