On Life and Death
“Good Old Captain Tom, eh”
“Um. Yes” Special K nodded abstractedly whilst continuing to peruse latest posts on Corona phenomenon website “View from my Window”.
I know when my partner is not giving me her attention. She was not giving me her attention. Threatening to interfere in The Garden usually does the trick. It is her pride and joy. She should post it on “View from my Window”.
“Thought I would plant a few lettuces and salad veg in that far flower bed tomorrow”
Bingo!
“No, you will not. I decide what goes in the garden and you know very well I do not want vegetables”
“Just trying to get your attention.”
“Hmph.” The Luminous One, Light of My Life, returned her gaze to her iPad
Maybe I will share my thoughts about Captain Tom with you instead.
What really delights me about the Captain is that he has lit a fire under the word “vulnerable”. I have never liked that word. Maybe crouched in a rainfilled foxhole in No Man’s Land with shells exploding around me and machine gun fire clattering over my head I would accept the description. But applied loosely it drips with a patronising pity and is rarely properly applied. The thought that in being confined to home, I am perceived as a “vulnerable old person” is hideous. I would rather have an ASBO.
I do not begrudge the endless amusement it provides one or two of my friends. They call to say they are “going in to town anyway” and wonder if I am “alright for incontinence pads” as “it would be no trouble”.
They know who they are. Accounts will be settled. And revenge is a dish best served cold.
But I fear the insidious, invidious effect the label may have on me. As if it is some kind of voodoo undermining my self image as a mid lifer
So a when 99 year old who raises 28 million pounds for the NHS by walking circuits of his garden, then cuts a Number One single it feels like a victory: a blast in the face for those who do not get that age is just a number.
Apart from the odd carp that “The NHS is not a charity blah, blah!” Captain Tom has inspired a whole nation. Respect brother!
I am not sure about the award of Honorary Colonel though. Captains are battlefield tacticians, to be found in the thick of combat. Captain Tom has a ring to it! You want to leap up and buckle your swash. Colonel sounds fustier (Colonel Mustard in the Library with the lead pıpe). Not for nothing was Blackadder a Captain while Melchett was a Colonel.
Making the Cap an Honorary Colonel has the heavy clunk of the Establishment about it. Captain Tom is a man of the people.
If a Grateful Nation wants to mark the occasion, why not despatch a young and beautiful Philipino in full nurse’s outfit round to spend a few hours with him in whatever way he pleased.
He may like to take a few circuits of the now famous garden in her company. Or perhaps he would prefer a full lockdown, to emerge later with a cheery grin?
Perhaps he would not emerge! What a great way to go.
At the grand age of 100, his departure cannot be so far away after all. And a rock and roll death is infinitely preferable to dribbling away the last months in a care home.
When it comes to the Grim Reaper we have hardly progressed an inch since the dark ages. Oh we have certainly radically improved Life, how we spend it but not how we end it.
In that latter respect we are still much as Shakespeare put it in As You Like İt 500 years ago
…The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again towards childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything
Worse actually because this seventh age was once brief but now medical technology can prolong it well beyond its natural tenure. Saving us to be delivered in to the dark embrace of Alzheimer, the Grim Reaper’s most baleful Lieutenant; sans memory, sans wit, sans absolutely everything.
Perhaps one of the unlooked for benefits that can emerge from this virus is that a government will grasp the mettle of assisted dying. It is a big question of our age. I am for a Long Life but when the time comes, a quick release. And a release of our own choosing.
We vulnerable ones demand it.
Maybe Captain Tom will lead the charge. When he is good and ready of course.
Have a nice weekend.