Death (w)rites

A dear friend killed himself recently. And it’s as shocking to write this now as it was to hear of his death a few weeks ago. Ordinarily it wouldn’t be a topic I’d write about easily and I certainly wouldn’t want to trivialise J’s death in this column. It’s still really painful to think about, especially as my overactive sense of empathy tries to imagine what it could be like to plan and implement suicide. What goes through a person’s mind as they gather the things they need to end their lives, are they emotional or have they entered a “fugue” state where they automatically and methodically carry out what is ultimately their last act? J was a gently sentimental soul who had a penchant for The Secret. In fact at his funeral, a text which had comforted J from The Secret was read out. Alas I did not find it comforting in the cold light of his memorial service.

J did not leave a note to tell us why he ended his life but the whole event made me think about what I’d want to say about my own life if I was looking back on it. What message would I want to share with the world about what it had all meant? Lord knows I don’t know what it all means right now but perhaps the taking stock process would unravel what often just feels like a mess. Our gay lives are often so messy (no this isn’t internalised homophobia, and yes I know straight people have messy lives too, just a point of view) that getting it all down would make War and Peace (or that tome about Mumbai, Shantaram) the equivalent of a child’s story. Just fitting in all the fashion faux pas, the boyfriend dramas, the ins and outs of the closet, the anti-ageing measures, would take 500 pages.

Perhaps it’s just me, but I’ve often felt that I’ve lived on the outside looking in, a notion which would shock the friends who see me as the life and soul of the party, the gregarious, joke cracking bon vivant. Actually this is an act, a convincing and not altogether fake one admittedly, but a role nevertheless. The deeper truth is that I feel very aware of not always fitting in, and, paradoxically, not actually wanting to fit in. So the working title of my autobiography is “I am not a we”. This isn’t a typo by the way, what I’m really trying to say is that I just don’t often feel part of a bigger whole (no puns please).

Someone else I have been reading who seems to march to this same idiosyncratic drum is Diana Athill. I guess you’d call her a memoirist (in darker times I suspect she would have been called a husband stealing slut, but then times and labels have changed). She’s about 90 now and she’s looking back at her life in her latest memoir, Somewhere Towards The End. It’s a marvellous collection of chapters (the theme is remembrance but each chapter really stands on its own) about things like sex (surprise), when sex ends in old age, getting old (dis)gracefully, letting go, not regretting anything, coping with ageing parents when one is already ancient oneself, all written with wit, wisdom and an extraordinarily unselfconscious grace.  Having made peace with the idea that for her there is no god and that the human race will probably disappear, Ms Athill gently sails on, living each day as if it’s her last. And let’s be honest, at that age this approach is not so much a philosophy as a necessity!

So, thinking about J, who only made it to 38 before he’d had enough, Diana who is just serenely and vaguely puzzled about why she’s still here, and Me, who has death “issues” (I guess you’d picked that up huh?), I’m pressed to ask, what’s it all about? And how DO we sum up a life, our lives? What do you think?