When one is young, one takes life for granted. Old people are well, just old and one day, if our mind cares to wander to the subject, we’ll be the same too – old. When we cast a glance in the mirror, we might occasionally imagine what it might be like to have grey locks and facial lines and wrinkles when we eventually get old.
But such is the arrogance of humanity, of youth and indeed all ages to presume entitlement to this wondrous gift of age. A gift we all, (yes you reading this post as well) universally enjoy, that it seemingly will go on and on for ever. We rarely think of our own personal mortality until something strikes at the core to focus one’s attention on it. Usually, that is the death of someone close, of a loved one, a parent, sibling or, if we’re getting on, a child or younger person – or even such as this week when in the space of two days, a duo of celebrity gargantuism in Clive James and Gary Rhodes both left their own particular mortal coils to the dismay of a loving public.
Taking these two figures as an example, Clive James was comparatively old. He was eighty and had been diagnosed some years ago with Leukemia. Although and unless one knew Mr James or was a relative, it would have been expected that at some stage soon, he would die as he had reached that pinnacle of maturity whose years owe nothing and seek only balance. He was an old man and should, soon, if the stars came out in the night sky in the right alignment, die.
However, in the case of TV chef Rhodes, he was a comparative sprat, a youthful 59. A person might reasonably think that he was in his middling years and with today’s longer lifespans, healthier lifestyles and fortuitous geographical birthplace meant that he might also reasonably be entitled to another 20 or more years. Yet in the blink of an eye, on the day before the great Clive James did his duty and died at what would universally be considered to be a good old age, Rhodes went against the grain and simply passed out at such a relatively young age in full vigour; adding to the shock of a bemused public. “59. Christ that’s young, innit?” Yet should we be shocked at all? Is 59 young? Indeed, is 80 old?
You see life is a gift of indeterminate length. When we exit our mother’s bodies at the point of birth, we all wear an invisible bracelet which contains details of our birth and, sadly but assuredly, our death. The act of being born confirms the once invisibility of the date of birth and so we have something tangible and known to use as a marker for the future. However, as life progresses, that other date, the one we all wear on the same bracelet but never know until it confirms itself to us definitively remains life’s indubitable enigma. If we are lucky, it will be a long time distant – but the reality for us all is that death has no markers, no checks and balances, no logic, no average and no definitive. It happens simply when it will, when fate determines it should do (if indeed one believes in fate) or when one least expects it. Happen it will as sure as eggs is eggs.
Talking of expectation, us humans have a lot of that. Bucketloads in fact. It is built into our DNA but has no control over it. Indeed our level of expectation borders on arrogance and even ventures into the realms of flagrant entitlement. If, having navigated the perils of childhood and youth without too much tragedy and we reach adulthood relatively unscathed, we kind of think that we are now well and truly into that journey called life – the one where we can reasonably expect for live for the biblically prescribed three score years and ten, more perhaps, before snuffing it. Anything less would be a travesty, a breach of one’s inalienable human right – and that is generally to live the length of life we want or expect. BUT THE ACTUAL, FACTUAL TRUTH IS THAT WE DON’T HAVE ANY RIGHT EXCEPT TO DIE AND ANY EXPECTATION IS NOTHING BUT ILLUSORY,
No – entitlement, expectation, (call it what you will), is often imprinted four square permanently on our backsides as if fate (call fate equally what you will) shows us who’s boss and tells us the way our life will pan out and, ultimately, when it will end. You see us humans are really frail, vulnerable creatures with a level of passivity bestowed upon us by the fact that we are exactly that, human – and so it matters not a fig whether one lives a life of probity, good grace and purity, taking in a healthy diet, a life rich full of exercise and all good things. However, when your heart decides to stop, or disease decides to strike or cellular division leads to a big C diagnosis taking one on an inexorable journey along cancer’s crackled pathway – or indeed a quirky and unexpected end such as a loose roof tile which should fall down upon one’s head crushing one instantly – or due to being in the wrong place at the wrong time, we might become a victim of a terrorist atrocity, choke on a chicken bone, succumb to an unknown anaphylaxis or, simply in the case of an otherwise fit Gary Rhodes, suffer an inadvertent slip leading to an unknown and ultimately fatal subdural haematoma, we’ll die when fate, that invisible yet ever so potent date invisibly inscribed one our wrist band at birth – the one we cannot and do not ever see, determines. We have no control over events at all. Our job as humans is to deal with them.
When I was 16 with all the energy youth could muster. With that optimism of life ahead and with so many other plans so vast indeed that I had to have a briefcase just to contain my lifeplan’s contemporaneous notes, I ventured into London’s Selfridges one spring afternoon to see a palm reader on the sixth floor to find out how long I was going to live. If my body played out how fit and vibrant I felt at that time, Madame Fleurie or whatever her name was, would be giving me an insight into real old age – as I felt as fit as a butcher’s dog.
Although it seemed unlikely at the time and slightly over optimistic, Ms Fleurie’s judgement was that I would make the grandiose, old and esteemed age of 104. No ifs, no buts she said, I had old bones in me and a Churchillian constitution that would put in in good stead for a long run at this glorious gift called life. She couldn’t have been more wrong!
Despite a good diet, a childhood free from the constraints of computers and endless TV, I had been fit, played loads of sport, had a family relatively young – one who had kept me equally young of mind and spirit, but fate had other plans for me. Complacency and arrogance and expectation had been my downfall when, at the supremely young age of 46, I had been diagnosed with a quite nasty strain of prostate cancer. With drugs, a good degree of luck and a brilliant surgeon, I might still confound the disease and the writer of wristbands at birth by beating it and going on to reach my intended, planned, nay prophesied age of 104. In France, they have a word for ‘unfortunately’ which I will use here, malheuresement, which although it sounds beautiful when spoken, when actually uttered, spelled the death knell for myself when I contemplated the average age of diagnosis for this disease is 74, not 46!
As I sit here ten years post-diagnosis (one might consider me lucky – I’m a glass half empty person), all I will say is that my arrogance believed that my gift would be a whole load more altruistic than around 58 years. I thought, even if I was not to become a centenarian, one could reasonably expect to be gifted those promised three score years and ten, Mr Average if nothing else, even though my life has been anything but conventional. I’m sure Gary Rhodes felt the same, yet he had good reason and no cancer diagnosis to expect anything else.
In the final analysis, and I do talk in terms of final now that I have failed all known drug treatments and pathways including chemotherapy, we should never be so arrogant, no matter how positive and bloody optimistic our core nature is, to expect that that second date, the date of our death or the invisible wrist band to be anything other than that which is written in invisible ink, only revealing itself at the point when one comes face to face with one’s maker. We should be expectational of nothing other than that what we are given. We have no divine or other right to life nor anything else on this plane come to that matter. We are all, no matter our social rank, wealth or geographical location, insignificant specks on a rather special but also in the grand scheme of things, equally insignificant planet. We deserve nothing except our fate and can do nothing to alter the odds in our favour of extend the date which is predetermined in our genes.
The moral of this post is not therefore, as one might imagine or proffer, to enjoy the moment and live every day as if it is your last – because it could well be – but to truly contemplate one’s own fate, to properly realise that although you may have expectations about a whole host of things in your lives, you have control of very few and of everything – and you ain’t guaranteed a cent by anyone when it comes to longevity. From exiting the womb to your eventual eulogy, you have as much right as a the man or woman on your left or right to life, a long life in particular – and it is that arrogance in the human psyche which expects it which is really is the frailty that can do most damage, not just the disease itself.
Barry Cashin - Journalist, Columnist, Life Lover 