Death

They say that death and taxes are the only two certainties in life. But there seems to be a third, linked to death and as painful as taxes. It’s the astronomical cost of organising a funeral. My partner’s father died recently, and for the honour of a bog-standard cremation in a far from fashionable part of East Anglia she was charged just over £4,000. Jo felt no shame in asking for the cheapest option (it’s what her father would have wanted — he was never a man to waste money), and so the answer came as something of a shock. When a figure has you imagining the cheeky little jaunt to the Caribbean it could fund instead, you know things have turned serious. ‘How the hell do they justify four grand?’ I asked. Jo went through the itemised list.

It’s more than four months now since my 75th birthday, but I’m still waiting for a ‘cold call’ from the NHS to ask if I have ‘thought about resuscitation’. This is what the Daily Mail warned me last week that anyone over 75 might now receive. As it so happens, I do quite often think about resuscitation, though only in the sense that I would like to be somehow revived when I fall asleep at my desk. But the Mail was talking about something different: NHS guidelines by which doctors are required to ask their elderly patients if they would like to be resuscitated when they suffered a heart attack or a stroke or other such life-threatening events.

Whether or not you believe in the afterlife, death remains an impenetrable mystery. One moment a person is making jokes and comments and observations about life; the next he is gone. What has happened to that store of wit and wisdom acquired over a lifetime, to that particular way of understanding and looking at things, to that unique muddle of thoughts and feelings that every individual has? Even if someone has gone to heaven, it is difficult to imagine that he has taken these things with him. If he did, they would hardly be compatible with eternal rest.

For the past two and a half years my brother John has been living next door to me in the Northamptonshire countryside. We have both been most of the time alone in our separate houses, 25 yards apart, and, whenever I’ve been there, I have shared at least one meal a day with him. It was a very cosy and mutually supportive set-up. Then, on New Year’s Eve, he suddenly died. His death wasn’t exactly premature — he was 87 and increasingly debilitated by Parkinson’s disease — but it came as a shock nevertheless. On the two last evenings of his life he had come over to my house to have supper and watch his daughter Anna star with Miranda Richardson in the three-part television adaptation of E.F. Benson’s Mapp and Lucia.

The end of the year seems a good time to think about lasts. Not many of us ever do. Firsts are always landmarks: the first time you taste alcohol, drive a car, have sex. Then the first time your child talks, walks, goes to school. All are noted at the time, stored away in the mental file marked ‘life events’. But when do we ever notice, much less remember, a last? We’re doing them a disservice — in many cases they’re even more poignant than the firsts. One problem, of course, is that we often don’t know it’s a last at the time. You’ll register your last day in a job, or your last exit from a house you’ve owned. Recovering alcoholics note (though only in retrospect) the occasion of their last drink. But the last time you go to London?

When I finally reached the hospital, my grandma had already lost consciousness. As soon as I saw her, I could tell she wouldn’t wake up again. We all stood around and waited, and hoped it wouldn’t take too long. I sat on the bed and held her hand. Thankfully, it only took an hour or so. Eventually, the nurse came in and checked her pulse and told us she was dead. Except she wasn’t. Not exactly. The nurse was right – her heart had stopped – but from the way she held my hand, I could tell she was still there. I didn’t say anything. I knew she’d be gone soon enough. For a few more minutes I kept her company, stroking her hand while everyone else fussed around us. It was an extraordinary sensation, one of the oddest moments of my life.

Last Tuesday I tried to sign up to a new life. My wife and I argued, slightly. ‘I don’t think this will work!’ she laughs, and I reply feebly: ‘But babe, it’s the future.’ (My use of the word ‘babe’ is like a label on the conversation — WARNING: HAVING ARGUMENT WHICH I AM ABOUT TO LOSE). She protests that she needs a car for ferrying kids and clearing the allotment and occasional 5.30 a.m. starts at work, and I produce a small piece of plastic and wave it, like Neville Chamberlain. This is my trump card. I have signed up to Zipcar. With this rectangle I can unlock a hire car from a nearby street and just drive. ‘It will be the end of petrol, insurance, repairs, mud and road tax!’ I say.

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_25_Sept_2014_v4.mp3" title="Melissa Kite, Camilla Swift (and Charlie the dog) discuss animal welfare" startat=630] Listen [/audioplayer]We love animals more than we love people. Of course we do. Following the recent fire at a Manchester dogs’ home, people donated £1 million and blocked the M6 with their cars as they arrived in their multitudes to adopt the displaced animals. It would have been heartwarming, it really would, if we hadn’t also demanded the death of the teenaged boy named on Twitter as the suspect in the arson attack. All over the internet apparently normal people, including ‘friends’ of mine on Facebook, called for a 15-year-old boy to be burned alive. I feel sick about the dogs too.

Ed Balls' interview with the Telegraph today is a demonstration of what he learnt working for Gordon Brown in opposition. He is at pains to deny that he is planning any major tax rises; he doesn’t want to give the Tories the chance to claim Labour are planning a ‘tax bombshell’. He stresses that he understands that ‘People feel they are paying too much tax already’ and emphasises that he ‘would rather all tax rates were lower’. He also explicitly rules out a National Insurance increase to pay for extra spending on the NHS and a so-called ‘death tax’. Interestingly, Balls also restates his desire to limit EU immigration. He says he wants ‘fair movement not free movement’ of workers.