Death

Did you know that in the UK September is a month devoted to suicide prevention? And that on the 10th of this month, it’s World Suicide Prevention Day (WSPD)? No, neither did I. And neither did any of my friends. Yet we’re all aware that suicide is a serious problem. Every 90 minutes someone in the UK or Ireland dies that way. It’s the biggest killer of men under 45. And suicides among teenage girls and young women have almost doubled in recent years. We’ve been having these suicide prevention events every September for more than two decades and yet the rates are not going down. Maybe it’s time to challenge what I’d call the suicide prevention consensus.

It was the day after The Spectator’s summer party and I was on my way to something called a death café. After an unknown quantity of Pol Roger the night before, I was already contemplating my own mortality. This death café was being held in a Gail’s in Horsham (after closing time, mercifully for its customers). The coffee tables were shoved awkwardly together in the middle of the shop floor. Eight of us, all women, sat: a healthcare worker, a retiree, a lawyer, two death doulas (we’ll get to them later) and me, at 26, three decades younger than anyone else present. We were there because ‘death positivity’ is having a moment. There are death cafés, death doulas and funeral celebrants who’ll narrate your cremation like a wedding DJ.

My favourite hunter has died and I am bereft. No disrespect to the myriad other horses I have known and loved over the years – Ianto, Alfie, Mr Darcy, Thurlow, Boris, Shannon, Etonia, Langford, Motown, Eddie Stobart, Foxy, Totto the polo pony, Sunshine, B.G., Barnaby and the legendary Spartacus. But Carpenter was in a league of his own. ‘You sound more upset about Carpenter than you are about Grandpa,’ said Boy, referring of course to my beloved late father Malcolm, whom I have just buried. ‘Yes, but Grandpa never carried me over hedges in life or death situations,’ I replied. This is the thing that non-hunting people will never understand. Your mount isn’t so much a horse as he is your closest wartime comrade.

Nothing can prepare you for the death of your father because, by definition, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime event. You have these ideas in your head about how it’s going to be: the children gathered at the bedside saying all the moving, important things that hitherto they’d held back; the fond paternal benison. But the reality, in my experience, is unlike the scenes in literature. My dad couldn’t wait to get rid of us. He was far too preoccupied with the intimate, difficult and very personal business of dying to indulge our let’s-pretend-everything’s-normal chit-chat. His last words to me – perhaps to anyone – were: ‘I’m feeling really buggered. Call me a nurse.

The hawthorn hedges are white with blossom; the countryside looks set for a wedding. Even in the small garden of my hospital, spring is inescapable. Cherry and magnolia bloom. Viburnum scents the air, young leaves come to the trees. Hospitals are where most lives begin, and where many end. Hospices shepherd only a small minority of deaths, about one in 20, often those of the middle aged whose diseases are more predictable. Frailty is less orderly, and the fitful hazards of age bring many to the general wards where I work. More of us die in hospital than anywhere else. What sort of spring wakes the hedgerows and the weeds, but not my boy? In the Emergency Department I met the woman who became my wife.

We knew the church would be packed as Shelley had died so young. We knew the church would be freezing, as her funeral fell during the Arctic spell that whitened the bracken and iced over puddles the colour of Dairy Milk. When we drove into Simonsbath just after lunchtime, the sun was only grazing the hilltops, leaving valleys in deep shadows. We’d allowed plenty of time, but the lanes were already crammed with vehicles. My husband and I had intended to stand at the back of St Luke’s so as not to take up precious places, but thanks to Ivo’s near-village-elder status we were ordered into the emergency seating in the chancel.

For teenage girls on TikTok, the makeup routine is an almost sacred ritual. Manicured fingertips dart around at virtuosic speed, applying dabs of foundation, blush and highlighter with precise artistry. Normally the commentary is about the nuances of brushing and blending – but Sophie, a bewitchingly pretty 18-year-old from New Zealand, has something more pressing to discuss. ‘I’d been having headaches for about two months,’ she says, placing dots of concealer under her blue eyes. ‘And then one night – it was my [high school] graduation – I was having a few drinks, which you’re not meant to do when you have glandular fever, which is what we all thought I had. So I kind of expected to wake up hungover.