Anything connected with dying and death makes me fearful writing about it. At times when one writes about such phenomena something along such lines usually happens to the author. I remember the late Maestro, a famous Trinidadian calypsonian, composing and singing a calypso (in 1978) about a car crash and lo and behold he died in a car crash a short while after. So I hope and pray that my writing about death does not hasten mine nor signal that it is close.

Colville Petty

Well if it comes now so be it, because I have long come to the realisation that we are only in transit – just passing through. The living are the dead on holiday and we will certainly spend more time dead than alive. As a matter of fact, we were dead before we were born and must one day go back to our original state.

It is because of the fore-mentioned reality that I am puzzled when some people make a mockery of other people’s misfortunes particularly their illnesses. For example, in the lead up to the last general election, a few of our politicians made fun of the illness of other politicians. And after the elections we still had some of the same stuff when one of them remarked that we have in government a blind Adviser advising a deaf Chief Minister. How heartless?

Actually, whenever the Chief Minister belches, or passes gas of any kind, the news goes around that he is terminally ill. And every time he leaves the island for any reason whatsoever, they say he has gone to see a doctor. It was in that context that before he left the island for the USA, shortly after the elections, he told the press: “I am not going to Miami because I am terminally sick. I am not going for medical attention. I am saying this because every time I leave the island, the rumour is that I am so sick that I have to be under doctor’s care all the time.”

What most of us seem to forget is that we all get sick, if not today then tomorrow. The late Mark Twain remarked long ago that man is plagued from the cradle to the grave with disease of one kind or another. He concluded, therefore, that man is “just a basketful of festering, pestilent corruption, provided for the support and entertainment of microbes.” I now quote him fuller (from Albert Bigelow Paine’s work): “Man starts as a child and lives on diseases to the end as a regular diet. He has mumps, measles, whooping-cough, croup, tonsilitis, diphtheria, scarlet fever, as a matter of course. Afterward, as he goes along, his life continues to be threatened at every turn by colds, coughs, asthma, bronchitis, quinsy, consumption, yellow-fever, blindness, influenza, carbuncles, pneumonia, softening of the brain, diseases of the heart and bones, and a thousand other maladies of one sort and another. He’s just a basketful of festering, pestilent corruption, provided for the support and entertainment of microbes.”

I trust that Mark Twain’s observations make us think twice about rejoicing over our neighbours’ bouts of ill-health. Even iron and steel wear out so imagine frail human flesh.

We could also learn a thing or two from the Mighty Shadow’s calypso about life. I cannot remember its title but he made the point that man is really nothing: he feeds on worms and the worms end up feeding on him. In this regard, he sang about the fisherman who takes some worms, puts them on a hook as bait to catch fish. He catches the fish which he cooks and eats and then, as time passes, he dies and the worms end up eating him. Shadow sang about how a fowl eats worms, man eats the fowl and eventually dies whereupon the worms end up eating him. That is how he sees the cycle of life.

That aside, the cycle of living and dying is similar for all livings things, be it plant or animal. Take for example, a flower. It is but a bud in the morning. As the day progresses it opens and by midday it blossoms in all its splendour and glory. By late afternoon its beauty begins to disappear and by night time – at the end of the day – it withers and dies. The same is true of man. We emerge from our mothers’ womb and in the late teens and in the 20s and 30s we blossom into real beautiful people. By the 50s we begin to lose it. The wrinkles, double chins, saddle bags, hardening of the arteries and arthritis take over and later we wither and die. The only difference between flowers and man is that man’s day is much longer. But both blossom for a while. And both eventually wither and die.

Sometimes we die before we even wither. The sad passing of Lowell Payne, on Mothers’ Day, is a good example. He died in the prime of his life which he spent working for the betterment of Anguilla’s young people. He will be greatly missed. My sympathy goes out to his family and friends.

There are many theories about death. One is that when we are born our cells are programmed to die by a certain age. And it is not in dispute that we begin dying from the day we are born. As someone once said, “Our birth is nothing but our death begun.”

Another theory is the wear and tear theory. It says that “an organism has to achieve a balance between the energy it puts into reproduction and the energy it puts into maintenance. The better the maintenance, the more the organism approaches immortality.” But we need not be conversant with that theory to recognise that our body cells die on a daily basis and must be replaced. The pace of replacement is more rapid the younger one is. So there is growth. As one gets older the rate of replacement and growth slows down and eventually ceases. To put it another way, when the body’s maintenance system no longer functions, the body dies.

I am of the view, though, that there will come a time when man will live much longer, if not much better, as a result of advancements in the sciences. Such advancements will enhance the body’s maintenance system for it will be possible to replace some of its parts as they wear out. At present we can get a replacement kidney or an eye and so forth. In time to come we will be able to buy other parts from a body-parts store. We will prolong life but will not prevent the inevitable.

In this regard, I recall the experiments with heart transplants and artificial hearts, in the 1970s, and how a man who was given an artificial heart had died leaving the heart pumping strongly. The body was apparently too weak for it; or perhaps the heart was too strong for the body. Either way, the man had the money to get the best possible medical care but it could not buy life.

There is a third theory of death. It speaks to the impact of adverse environmental factors on the speeding up of ageing, the breaking down of the immune system and our bodies’ consequential susceptibility to diseases and eventual death. Whatever theory one believes in, the bottom line is that death can come in many ways.

And I believe strongly that however a person dies that is the way he or she had to die. There could be no other way. Let us imagine a man getting into his car, and leaving his home at 2.00 pm, to go to West End to ask Belto the name of his tailor because he wants a suit similar to the one that Belto wore at the House of Assembly meeting on 12th April. On reaching the South Hill roundabout at about 2.30 pm the man gets into a motorcar accident and dies. Some people would say that if he had stayed home he would not have died. The point I want to make is that he was not supposed to stay at home. If that was the case he would have been at home. Instead, he had to be at the South Hill roundabout at precisely 2.30 pm to keep his appointment with death. Some may still argue that he did not have to go that way –he could have died by drowning. My question then is: Why didn’t he? Simple: he was not supposed to die that way.

The fact that death is inevitable suggests that it has a purpose or several purposes: It puts an end to all physical and mental suffering. It puts an end to the many social and economic hardships which people encounter in their lives. Death is a great reliever and some people often welcome it, preferring to die than to live. Without death man would live through everlasting pain.

Looking at the geo-political environment in which we live, death provides relief by bringing to an end the tyrannical rule of political leaders like Hitler and modern-day replicas. Even here in the Caribbean several of our political leaders only leave office in a casket. Were it not for death many of them would still be in office milking the poor. Without death this earth of ours would be a perpetual hell. As terminal as it is, death has a place in the scheme of human existence.

Further, there is the widely held view by Christians that death is the preparation for a new birth – for the peaceful departure from this life to a new and higher life in heaven. That is why many of them take comfort from 1 Corinthians 15:55, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” They see death as that stage in life where one departs this world of turmoil, disease and suffering on the way to the pearly gates of heaven where such things are no more. They regard death as a resurrection into life eternal. They see it as a coronation – their crowning glory.

Yet still, many of them are afraid to die. That fact was not missed by the legendary Peter Tosh in Equal Rights in which said: “Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.” True. I have seen many a time, on my way from St Martin, Christian sisters on the ferry studying their Bible but as soon as some high seas came along, causing the ferry to roll, they bawled: “Oh God, Ah dead!” That is human nature. “Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.”

In light of all that I have written thus far, I want to say to those who find pleasure in the misfortunes and difficulties of their fellowmen that they need to think again because none of us will get out of life alive. We are here vacationing. Perhaps that was why Hookey used to say: “My belly is my bankbook!” Think again because the Bible makes it very clear that, “Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” Think again and stop rejoicing over the misfortunes of others because a common fate awaits us all. In the words of Thomas Gray’s elegy:

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,
Awaits alike th’ inevitable hour:
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

It behoves us, therefore, to spend our lives doing good. Let us so live that when we die even the undertakers shed a tear. Let us so live that when we die even Hugo, Moran and Steve of Rey’s Funeral Home, and Allister and Makoy of Two Sons, mourn our passing.

Colville Petty

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