I took the picture displayed above in the graveyard that surrounds
All Saints Church in Belton, Lincolnshire. You won't be able to read the
inscription on the tallest gravestone but it remembers the lives of
Kelita Hall who died in 1823 and his wife Syndonea Hall who "departed this
life" twenty eight years later. They certainly had first names to conjure
with. I have never come across either of them before. Strange that they found
each other.
Death happens. It's like we are all part of a big queue that keeps
shuffling along. Every year famous people die. Sometimes you don't hear about
these deaths till long after they have occurred. They have a habit
of slipping through the net of publicity like fish.
We raise our eyebrows at different deaths and maybe they are
accompanied by small clouds of sorrow too. We remember what these departed
people meant to us if they meant anything at all.
This year three celebrity deaths have touched me more than others. From the world of English football we lost two of our World Cup winning team of 1966. Jack Charlton went in July and Nobby Stiles passed away at the end of October. Both were victims of dementia - probably exacerbated by heading heavy footballs during their playing careers.
I once saw Jack Charlton aboard a train leaving Sheffield for London. He was sitting in a second class carriage on the other side of the aisle. Though he was reading a book, I wanted to talk to him but what would I have said? "Once I was a twelve year old boy and I watched you live on the television raising The World Cup in Wembley Stadium. It was a most wonderful game in a magical summer and Hull City were promoted that year too."
The third death that touched me was that of Hull-born sailor and folk singer - Jim Radford. He died on November 6th at the age of 92. Jim was the composer of an extraordinarily moving song called "The Shores of Normandy" that I blogged about in 2014. Go here.
Sadly, Jim was in a magistrates court in September - charged with historical sex offences against two girls. I don't know the details of the allegations but two months ago, Jim's solicitor said they would be fighting tooth and nail to have the charges quashed. It would have been good to get to the truth but now Jim Radford is dead we may never know what really happened and the two girls - now women may never find the legal resolution they were seeking.
I try not to look up obituaries of patients but sometimes I do, special patients that have meant something to me personally. It's always heartbreaking, especially when I find out they've been dead for awhile and I didn't know.
ReplyDeleteIt's where we're all headed though. Worm food or ashes. We all end up in the same place. I remember when my dad died how weird it was. We still had to eat lunch, life went on and as we get older we see that more and more. It would seem that life would stop for awhile at least but it continues on, unmoved by our passing.
How many thousands of graves have I seen on my country walks? So very many. Nowadays most British people choose cremation. It seems more clinical somewhow.
Delete*Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves ... like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.*
ReplyDeleteJames Joyce, The Dead.
DeleteOH! Death will find me, long before I tire
Of watching you; and swing me suddenly
Into the shade and loneliness and mire
Of the last land!
- Rupert Brooke
*Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
DeleteMighty and dreadful, for thou are not so;
Death, thou shalt die.*
Holy Sonnet 10
John Donne
My abuser died without anyone ever publicly accusing him. I am sure I was not the only one. I know of at least one other girl whom he probably abused. And I think there were boys, too. I sometimes think of him, dead now, and how I should be so relieved. And actually, no one told me he'd died until some time after the fact. But there is no real relief. His actions will always have their effect on me and on others too.
ReplyDeleteSorry. Didn't mean to go there but I did as I have actually been pondering these things. I will go to my grave with no real resolution and I accept that.
When I referred to the two girls - possibly victims - I was aware that it would stir some dust. Try as I moght, I just cannot imagine what abuse does to people when they experienced it in childhood.
DeleteI seem to have reached that age when, predictably, death is occurring all around me far more frequently than it ever seemed to in my youth. At one time, the thought of dying terrified me but now I think about it with a sense of acceptance. Not that I am anticipating my going just yet, hopefully, but it no longer holds that same sense of terror for me. Hey ho, as John would say.
ReplyDeleteIt is the one certainty in life. Let's try to find some joy and happiness in the precious time we have left. Hopefully quite a few years yet.
DeleteI love walking old cemeteries. The stories there that only be guessed at
ReplyDeleteThe strangest inscription I ever read had a smiley face and read, 'yeah. I got a light."
There's a famous comedian's grave by the south coast of England. In Irish Gaelic the inscription reads : "I told them I was ill".
DeleteKelita and Syndonea - definitely names I have never come across, either! I wonder whether they were born John and Jane, found each other, got married and decided to give themselves more creative names at some stage.
ReplyDeleteWere there names of their children on the stone?
Sometimes when I hear of a famous person's death I am surprised, having thought they had died years before. It is rare that such a death touches me in a special way; I did not know them personally even though their work may have had a big impact on my life. And that is what lives on.
No. No children were named on that gravestone Meike.
DeleteYou have surpassed yourself, YP, making me laugh out loud: "Death happens". No shit.
ReplyDeletePicking up on Lilicedar's comment: Will you, YP, be worm food or ashes?
U
"Death happens". Of course it is obvious but the conext is important. Many people seem to wear blinkers with regard to the inevitability of death. I shall be pecked by buzzards and crows that will take my spirit up to heaven.
DeleteWell 'worm food or ashes' I remember Bill the grave digger telling me what happened to the body so it will be ashes for me. As it will be for Lucy my dog, much cheaper for animals by the way, especially communal ;) sorry for that, but death is either humourous or sad.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if a communal human burial would also be cheaper. I wopuldn't mind spending eternity with Bananrama.
DeleteThere's enough gloom and despondency in the world at the moment YP, so not the most cheerful of subjects today. The only two positives in life - death and taxation. Some of us might be able to avoid taxation, but none of us can avoid death!
ReplyDeleteSpike Milligan, was I think, the comedian who told them he was ill?
Yes you are right about Spike. My step-grandfather would often announce "In the midst of life we are in debt."
DeleteWhen we are young death is so frightening but now in my last years it holds no fear for me. I wish that I had more time as there is so much more that I would love to do but who knows, I may be back one day. lol
ReplyDeleteBriony
x
Lucky you, CCC. When I was young death (my own) had no hold over me. Then I became a mother. I made multiple bargains, repeatedly, with a god I don't believe in and the devil himself to let me live to see the Apple of my Eye into his adulthood. So far, so fine. The Angel is now twenty nine. He doesn't "need" me any longer. Now? Now I am left with the thought how much I'll miss everything in life I so enjoy - though, of course, by definition in death you don't know what you are missing.
DeleteThe art is in the actual process of "dying". I shall be so useless at it I have already apologized to my son so he knows what to expect when the time comes. Clinging on at the skin of my fingertips. Dignity out of the window. It'll be awful. I can see it now. Doing a Margaret Thatcher: "NO, NO, NO".
THE END.
U
BRIONY: What's on your "bucket list"? On mine, numero uno is "Get new bucket"!
DeleteURSULA: If I had been a member of Thatcher's medical team, I would have yelled back, "YES! YES! YES!".
I don't have a bucket list QP, just to try to get the most out of each day made more difficult by this virus.
DeleteI don't know how long Tom has so it's important to try to relax and enjoy the life we have.
We've had our trauma's and meltdowns over the situation and I think we have now come to accept it, as much as anyone can accept this kind of thing.
Make the most of all you have QP, life throws things at you when you least expect it to.
Briony
x
Well that's an uplifting title for a post! LOL! But as you said, it's a fact of life. I find it so strange that many of the people I idolized as a teenager (musicians, for example) are now practically at death's door. It's impossible for me to think of them as old.
ReplyDeleteI am always happy to cheer blog visitors up with sunny blogposts! Have a nice day Steve! (It may be your last!)
DeleteYouTube.
ReplyDelete*Life After Death: Soul Continues on a Quantum Level.*
(An Interview with British physicist and Nobel Prize winner, Sir Roger Penrose.)
*Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness After Death/Debate Clip//Death is not Final.*
May 8, 20114. Intelligence Squared Debates.
In this discussion watch out for Dr. Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon and author of the controversial book, *Proof of Heaven*.
See Professor Y.Pudding's award-winning YouTube video "Sorry Folks: There Is Nothing Beyond Death". The Catholic Church and The Muslim Council of Britain and The Salvation Army and Jehovah's Witnesses Ltd were amongst religious organisations that tried to ban it because the truth hurts like hell.
DeleteJohn, that's a very interesting book. However whilst he convinced himself I don't think that he's convinced me.
DeleteAs literary editor of *Hamel(d)'s Review of Books* I have asked Dr. Ian Paisley to review Professor Y Pudding's opus, *Sorry Folks: We're Brown Bread Dead*.
DeleteAs many have just said, death is the one certainty. I don't fear death itself. I fear they way I might die. Having staved off death by cancer for 22 years there is a statistical chance that something else will get me. I just hope that it will be quick when it happens. Having said all that I have a lot more planned for my life so if I go any time soon I shall be royally pissed off.
ReplyDeleteWhen you step outside your luxury seaside manison watch out for meteorites plunging to earth!
DeleteG.K. Chesterton said that philosophers - David Hume, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche - thought that they had invented pessimism. They did not. The classical world was obsessed by the idea that everything passed into nothingness.
ReplyDeleteChesterton said that Augustine and Saint Jerome knew all about pessimism, as did the Hebrew Scriptures, over one thousand years before Augustine. Here is Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament, a mysterious figure who may not even have been a Jew:
*The living at least know they will die, but the dead know nothing. They have no further reward, nor are they remembered. Whatever they did in their lifetime - loving, hating, envying - is all gone.*
Yeshua of Nazareth would have known Eccliastes intimately yet he could say:
*I am the resurrection and the life.*
I know my Schopenhauer and Nietzsche only too well. Neither would have claimed that "they had INVENTED pessimism". It's as preposterous as saying that the likes of Sartre and Camus claimed to have "invented" existentialism or anyone, come to think of it, nihilism. Stick that to G.K. Chesterton.
DeleteHow your reasoning "I am the resurrection and the life" follows I do not follow - as much respect as I have for Jesus Christ, the man, nailed to the cross on some preposterous charge (ask Pontius Pilatus). Still, considering that Pilatus too is dead now he doesn't need to live with his conscience. The beauty of being dead, don't you think? Getting away with murder.
U
I overstated the case, Ursula. Only a little.
DeleteChesterton said that modern thinkers were not merely trying to change WHAT people thought (Chesterton had no problem with debating them on that basis) but they were trying to change the WAY they people thought.
I am always meeting people who say, *You can't THINK that way now.* Or they will say, *What has Saint Columba of Iona got to do with Scotland today?*
Nietzsche is so exciting because his exalted prose deceives us into believing that no one has quite thought like this before, but he took loads from the Greeks, and Ecclesiastes was there before him.
Today's atheists, Dawkins, Dennett and Sam Harris, push the argument even harder, firing off the big guns of empirical science against faith. I have no problem with their science, but I am allowed to call their ideology an ideology.
Jesus of Nazareth (whom Dennett and Harris have written out of history because they say the New Testament was written by people who were not eye witnesses) was all too aware of the internal debate within Judaism concerning the resurrection of the dead.
The Pharisees believed in resurrection, the Sadducees did not.
Jesus' statements regarding his body being the new temple (which would be destroyed and raised on the third day) were deemed scandalous.
As were all his other *I am* statements about himself and his eschatological role.
Nietzsche was, as you hint, the poet among philosophers. At age eighteen I got drunk on his "Zarathustra". He could have said anything. The beauty of his language all persuasive. Did you read him in the original? Only asking because there are many texts of many writers which get "lost in translation". As not to be disillusioned, possibly enraged, I have never read Nietzsche in English. I can't see how he'd translate. But then the same goes for Schopenhauer, Goethe and many others. Don't say I am not prejudiced and/or precious.
DeleteAs to Harris (to whom the Angel introduced me in some depth) it's debatable whether you can put him in the same box as Dawkins. Watch some debates between Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson. Even Peterson and his strongly held beliefs can't be boxed into one size fits all. Though Peterson is evasive, a bit slippery eel. There is one podcast in particular where Harris and Peterson spend two hours trying to agree on what constitutes "truth" before they even start on the main subject.
And then, naturally, oh my god, there were the Four Horsemen in communion. Christopher Hitchens (how I mourn his demise), Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett.
I don't agree with you that Harris has written Jesus Christ out of history. If he had he wouldn't be willing to discuss religion and its fallout at length. However, blame my father who instilled this in me at a young age, I do believe that Harris is right that "the New Testament was written by people who were not eye witnesses". That may be is as is. Doesn't matter. A good story is a good story. Give me Rumpelstiltskin any time. However, what I object to that the CHURCH (the institution, not the religion) appropriated Jesus. He became a tool. A tool for sometimes nefarious purposes.
On a more general note: I wish people wouldn't take "stories" literal. They are metaphors. And whilst the moral teachings of that guy Jesus (him of the gorgeous physique and hair, I have one resident) were, largely, to be taken literal, his walking on water, the bread and water/wine in the desert, indeed his "father", God himself, were metaphors. Ideas to be transcended. When I was young (ten/eleven/twelve) I hounded my father for answers re GOD. I wouldn't say he was evasive. But he sure didn't have a clue. He tried. My mother? She put it simply: "God is the good in you". Indeed. Sam Harris, I am sure, will agree with that.
U
Iris Murdoch said the spiritual life is not a game, Ursula. Nor a fairy story like Harry Potter or Rumpelstiltskin. The Lord came to destroy the work of the Devil. In rejecting faith the West is committing moral suicide as we saw when Notre Dame was in flames.
DeleteSomeone asked Charles Sturgeon (London preacher 19th Century) how he defended the Scriptures. *I open the door and let out the Lion,* he said.
Listen to *The Nature of Apostasy 1 of 5* (YouTube) by Arthur W Pink.
Hitchens debated with the gloves off, and it required a response as rough as Pink's in standing up to his arrogance. Hitch cut his writing teeth on The New Statesman, a lefty weekly written for a snooty coterie and never read by the working class. Hitch wrote Christ out of history. Sinners always do.
The Gospel of grace offends the natural man/woman. If there is no offence then the Gospel is not being preached. The historic Yeshua preached repentance even to his own Apostles: *Unless ye repent, ye will all likewise perish.*
The Gospels are rich in metaphoric parables, but these are separate from their historic and miraculous material.
Not one piece of historic or archaeological evidence has ever contradicted what we read in the New Testament, but the enemies of the faith attack it on an ideological basis, which owes more to Joseph Stalin than it does to Marx or Nietzsche.
I meant to write:
ReplyDeleteYeshua of Nazareth would have known the writings of Ecclesiastes intimately.
He rebuked the Pharisees with the words, *You do not know the Scriptures.*
I love the old tombstones you have pictured here. Actually, I love graveyards and the older the better. Celebrity deaths affect me in two different ways. I am sad for the loss of the person, particularly if it was someone I had admired and respected. But those deaths seem to also remind me of the fact that my life is also quite finite.
ReplyDeleteAt the height of their fame we might imagine that they will endure but nothing and no one lasts forever.
DeleteYP, reading your last comment made me think of a comment that 'for ever' is, to some people, a relative term. I was told last night that 'this lockdown has lasted for ever'. I found it hard to dissuade the person from that view.
DeleteI guess that "forever" is rather like "awesome", "fabulous" or "unbelievable". Innacurate usage.
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