Stone

Saturday 1st July 2006

I was supposed to be going to the launch of a stone sculpture exhibition this morning ' a celebration of the work of a friend, Michael, who died suddenly last autumn. The opening was being attended by his wife (I still find it hard to think of her as his widow) and daughters. In the end, though, I just missed the bus. I'm sorry, because it would have been nice to see them all again and catch up. In some ways, though, I feel it might be better for me to go on another day, when there are fewer people around and I can have more time and space to look at his work. I phoned, anyway, and left a message of apology.

I hadn't known him that long ' just over a year ' and had only really seen him for the occasional coffee or beer, or at an exhibition. He was a very quiet, gentle, self-effacing man, who wanted more than anything to be able to dedicate the major part of his life and time to his art. But although he was hugely talented and had had some large exhibitions and several commissions, he was ' like many artists ' unable to make a living out of it, and had to spend the majority of his hours working at something else less fulfilling in order to pay the bills. I definitely identified with him there.

He was also, like me, a depressive. In fact, we first met at a Cognitive Therapy course we'd been recommended for by our GPs. So we had that understanding in common, too. Things are improving, but society still attaches a stigma to mental illness (though every one of us, to a greater or lesser degree, suffers from some form of psychological disorder), so it's reassuring to be with a group of other people who suffer from the same affliction. It creates an automatic bond which transcends matters of politics, creed, race, class, colour, sexual orientation or gender ' just as any other illness does, I suppose. It makes me wonder whether illness might, ironically, heal all sorts of other wounds: 'Yes, you're a Protestant/Arab/Pakistani and I'm a Catholic/Israeli/Indian ' but we're both together in this awful suffering. We have a common connection that outweighs our differences.

His death was a great shock. Very sudden and unexpected. He'd gone out to trim his garden hedge on this particular Sunday afternoon. He'd been outside for about 40 minutes when a phone call came for him and his wife went out to tell him. She found him lying on the grass, the trimmer at his side. She administered CPR, but it was already too late. If that call had come earlier¦ well, we'll never know. A heart attack or a stroke were the immediate suspects ' though he was physically fit, in the prime of life, didn't smoke and had never before had any serious physical illnesses. The coroner, however, found a perfectly healthy heart and no evidence of stroke. The final verdict was, I believe, SDS ' sudden death syndrome. A connection broke down somewhere, and a vital message failed to get from his brain to his heart. So it stopped beating. In the midst of life, he literally stopped living.

The strange thing about it is that, at approximately the time it happened, I remember exactly what I was doing. And I remember it for a good reason. Having deliberated for some few months, I'd finally decided that afternoon to attend a meeting of the local Humanist group: I wanted to test the water to see how I felt about going in further. The meeting was being held in a seminar room at the university ' a south-facing room that was bathed in the gorgeous light of what had been a particularly fine, cloud-free day. A speaker was going to be talking that afternoon about the ethics of 'assisted dying', or 'voluntary euthanasia', or 'legalised murder' depending on your point of view. He rang, though, to say he was stuck in traffic and was going to be very late. So, in his absence, we started our own discussion on the subject.

Being a 'newbie' and not really knowing anyone else there, I tended to do more listening than talking: I wanted to gauge the general tenor of the other's thoughts before adding my own. On a couple of occasions, though ' as, I'm afraid, is my wont in such circumstances ' my mind wandered a bit. One moment, I would be looking at the face of the person who was currently speaking, nodding my head, taking it in¦. the next, I'd find myself staring up and out at that beautiful, flawless aquamarine sky.

More than once, the thought passed through my head that it seemed an inappropriate subject to be talking about on such a day ' a day really meant for celebrating life and nature in all its glory and colours and textures. Which is, of course, one of the central ideas in humanist thinking: that life is for living and celebrating. That we should make the most of every moment of it ' because it's the only one we're ever going to get. Because when we die, that's it. There's nothing to come. The only way that we live on is in the legacy we leave behind us ' through our life's work, our actions, our families, the difference we have made to the lives of others. That all sounds rather final ' which, of course, it is ' but I feel in some ways that it's more hopeful and optimistic than the teachings of most of the major religions. The motivation is to live a good life for it's own sake ' not as a way of trying to guarantee a place for yourself in Heaven, Paradise, or wherever else you might be considering as an after-life destination (something that's always struck me, rightly or wrongly, as an essentially selfish motivation). In humanist thought, 'living a good life' has nothing to do with selfishness or self-indulgence. It means living it for the good of yourself and the good of others, too ' the pay-off being the satisfaction that it brings to you: essentially, the life-enhancement.

Unlike with the major religions, too, this central idea is not a tenet. It is not preached as doctrine. Humanism, as the group's organiser had previously informed me, embraces shades of opinion and encourages discussion. Which was something I had been stuck on ' because, rationalist though I am in many ways, I nevertheless keep an open mind on certain spiritual matters. I do, for instance, believe that there is 'something else'. By that, I don't mean 'God' or any other form of omniscient, creative power. I mean another plane of existence that we cannot comprehend. A spirit realm, if you like. All I can say is that I've attended many clairvoyant evenings over the years at my local spiritualist church, and I've received messages that I find it difficult to doubt the tenability of. Messages about things that only I could know. I don't say that I believe in life after death necessarily. But there's something.

All of which is by the by ' but all of which was also running through my head at that meeting. I was also thinking about my dad, who'd died some eighteen months earlier. The discussion reached a point at which people were offering up their own experiences to justify their arguments one way or the other about euthanasia. And it was here that I found words coming into my mouth. Here that I found the need, for the first time, to share something I'd been living with. I told them how, on the last night of my dad's life, I'd gone to visit him in hospital. Due to the deterioration in his condition, he'd been moved off the main ward into a side room. He was lying there, alone, masked up to an oxygen cylinder. He was breathing like someone who'd just run up ten flights of stairs. His eyes were flickering. It was clear to me that the life-spark was waning fast. He'd initially been brought into hospital some three weeks earlier, following a bad fall he'd had at the residential home where he'd been living. It was nothing serious ' severe bruising, mainly ' but from the first day, he appeared to have made up his mind that he wasn't going back. He felt that his life had run its course. He was losing his sight, and his faculties ' always so sharp ' were beginning to fade. In short, his quality of life had diminished to the point where he didn't want to go on. So¦ he started refusing food. They put him on a drip ' but he continually pulled it out. Eventually, his potassium levels fell so low that his vital organs began to shut down. On that final evening, seeing him there, his breathing racking his body, I wanted his suffering to end. But at the same time, I wanted him to go on. I clung onto the belief that all the while he was alive, there was the chance he might get better. I should have stayed with him, and it's one of my great regrets that I didn't. But ' I didn't. As I left, I told him I'd come up to see him again in the morning. His final words to me were "I'm wishing my life away, boy. Three hours later, just after dinner, the call came.

So, there it was. Out. I'd spoken about it to a room full of strangers. Afterwards, they stayed silent for a few moments. The import of what I'd said was clear. Yes, I'd have preferred it if he hadn't had to go through those final agonies. Yes, he'd have preferred it, too. And yet¦ I didn't want him to go; I behaved as if he wouldn't. If I'd had the power to end his suffering, and he'd been urging me to do it ' could I have done it?

It was a short while after that ' when the discussion had resumed in the light of what I and others had said ' that something odd happened. Slowly, a darkness began to creep into the room. The faces that I'd been seeing so clearly, sitting around in a circle, began to retreat into the gathering gloom as the sun ' which, from where I was sitting, had descended from view behind the edge of the window frame ' slipped gradually behind either a cloud or the top of a tree further over on the campus. Such, at least, was my only explanation ' although the sky was still bright outside. Within a couple of minutes, it reached the stage where the room became so gloomy that the people farthest away from me were only discernable as dark shapes against the whiteness of the wall, or as glints where the sky light caught on the frames and lenses of their spectacles. What was particularly strange about it, though, was that the members of the group simply carried on talking, exchanging points, illustrating perspectives, without making a single comment about this mini-eclipse. We were all experiencing it, yet it was as if it was something perfectly natural and unremarkable, and that it would soon pass if you ignored it.

Which it did. After another couple of minutes, the sun, or the cloud, had moved on and the room became light again. I glanced at my watch. It was, as I remember, just after half-past three.

Roughly the same time, as I later discovered, when another special light passed out of the world.

Looking back on things now, I can see a weird sort of unity in all this. My dad's death, coupled with several other difficulties in my life at the time, precipitated me into a deep hole of depression ' the treatment of which had led to my friendship with Michael. My dad had had a humanist funeral ' the type we, as a family, felt best befitted and respected his own beliefs. This had led to my increased interest in humanism as a way of life ' thence to my decision to attend that meeting. I remember coming away from that meeting feeling like something had shifted inside me: a burden had been lightened, a weight lifted. And I remember feeling, as I cycled home, that life was good and was worth the candle. And that I had to do something with it, in case it got snatched away before I even had the chance to grasp at it with both hands.

Now, I feel that even more than ever.

It's carved in stone within me.