I don't know really, but there's an awful lot of it going on. Just to take an example close to home: my grandparents, my parents and one of my sisters are all - how can I put this - dead. Up until quite recently I was prepared to put this down to a "mistake". Seriously, in the case of my mother in particular, for a very long time I really did half think that her death was due to a sort of clerical error. I can't think of another way of putting it. It's only fairly recently that I've come round to the idea that neither she nor anyone else is ever going to come back, and indeed that what has happened to them might even happen to me!
It's just as well of course that we don't spend much of our waking hours wrestling with the question of death. One thing at a time! Indeed, there's something rather admirable in the way grown-ups shield children from this vexed subject, even as they are approaching it at what sometimes seems like breakneck speed themselves.
But there's something rather strange that, in a world his members are dying off or killing each other at an alarming rate, the subject of death is a taboo (see my book The Last Taboo).
No comments:
Post a Comment