The Perfunctory Nature of Dying
The Wisdom of Father Denis Green
The casual ordinariness of death
Hi there,
Thirty-three years ago, on 28 May 1991, my friend and former spiritual director, Father Denis Green, a Marist priest, wrote to me after he had nearly died. He said: ‘I was impressed, deeply, by the casual, perfunctory nature of dying, no great concluding scene to the travail and exultations of living.’
Ward Chronicles: ‘Our Lady’s’ Section
He wrote: ‘There were six of us in my section of the ward—“Our Lady’s” by the way—four died, the other is still in there. I alone have a first sunburn.’
Reflections on ‘Our Lady’s’ and Piety
His aside about ‘Our Lady’s’ was part piety, part consolation to a priest belonging to the Society of Mary, and, perhaps, partly a gentle dig at me, a former Marist, who had left my priestly path, and was discarding my faith and the purported protection of the Blessed Virgin.
Denis continued in his cherished letter to me: ‘One man died without any of us noticing; another went ashen, half an hour after I’d seen him chatting with a nun and eating black grapes; a third was surrounded all day by patient relatives—but then, even in terminal illness, there are so many days and nights coming and going, on which of them will I drift into final unconsciousness?’
Denis’s letter is included in the 35th episode of my second memoir, Saved by a Woman.
The Transience of Life: Apples and Lettuces!
People joked about a lettuce outlasting Liz Truss’s premiership in the UK.
Denis’s observation that a patient died half an hour after eating black grapes prompts the reflection that, on the day of our death, any piece of fruit or veg will outlive us.
Fragility of Existence: The Pink Lady
Our continued existence is as fragile and tentative as the Pink Lady I have just started to munch. Such is the casual and perfunctory nature of life and death, the apple I’m eating could survive me!
It’s red and fresh, pleasing to the eye, firm and satisfying to the touch in the hand and to bite with the teeth; tasty on the tongue, juicy in the mouth, unavoidably noisy to chew, before its descent to Hades in the stomach; where it’s transmogrified from fruit to chyme.
We didn’t exist nine months before our birth and the world turned merrily on its axis, as it shall do when we cease to be.
Live this Day to the Full
Live this day to the full. It really could be your last. The train of life won’t wait for you. Jump on and enjoy the ride!
I’ll end with an extract from #35 of Saved by a Woman:
Denis’s Recovery and Reflections
Father Denis Green wrote to me: ‘I am substantially recovered but the living dead are not the same. In a perverse way, I partly enjoyed my long stint of hospital and convalescence, in the constant care of medics and charming nurses, State and Church, innumerable visitors, unashamedly the centre of skilled or affectionate attention.
‘I was the centre of my own drama, willingly obedient to exhortations to look after myself. In the end, I returned to work because I felt I’d look after myself for the rest of my life, and never recover.
‘There were six of us in my section of the ward—“Our Lady’s” by the way—four died, the other is still in there. I alone have a first sunburn. But I was impressed, deeply, by the casual, perfunctory nature of dying, no great concluding scene to the travail and exultations of living.
‘One man died without any of us noticing; another went ashen, half an hour after I’d seen him chatting with a nun and eating black grapes; a third was surrounded all day by patient relatives—but then, even in terminal illness, there are so many days and nights coming and going, on which of them will I drift into final unconsciousness?
‘At my worst, drip in one hand, oxygen mask day and night, severe injunctions not to move, twist or turn, I had no sense of God, no ability to pray, no awareness that I was struggling against death, only anxious that there was no outlook from the window and that I was more and more constipated! You asked for it. Bless you, D.’
And finally…
I was very fond of Denis Green (1921—2015), who happily had many more sunburns after his close encounter with death in 1991. I hope this Substack and my memoirs can help keep his memory alive. Moreover, his beautiful speaking voice can be heard in the award-winning documentary I made for RTE with Nicolene Greer, From Belief to Unbelief.
Happy days,
Joe
