First published in Great Britain in 2020 by Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
This digital edition first published in 2020 by Canongate Books
Copyright © Janie Brown, 2020
The right of Janie Brown to be identified as the
author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Excerpt from The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness and Peace by Jack Kornfield, copyright © 2002, 2008 by Jack Kornfield. Reprinted by permission of Bantam Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
Excerpt by Audre Lorde, from ‘Audre Lorde’ in Interview with the Muse, by Nina Winter (Berkeley, California: Moon Books, 1978), 72-81. Copyright © 1976, 1978. Reprinted with permission.
Excerpt by Joanna Macy, copyright © by Joanna Macy. Reprinted with permission.
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints of editions of this book.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library ISBN 978 1 78689 902 6 eISBN 978 1 78689 905 7
FOR KIRSTEN,
WHO INSPIRED ME TO WRITE
AND FOR ALL THE OTHER PEOPLE IN THIS BOOK
WHO ALSO GRACED ME WITH THEIR LIVES
‘If you would indeed behold the spirit of death,
open your heart wide unto the body of life.’
— ‘DEATH POEM XXVII’ BY KHALIL GIBRAN
‘He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.’
— ‘EASTER, 1916’ BY W.B. YEATS
Contents
II. ACCEPTING THE UNRESOLVED HEART
III. HEALING THE TROUBLED HEART
12 KIRSTEN: Writing on Purpose
13 LOUISE: The Possibility of Forgiveness
IV. SURRENDERING TO THE SPACIOUS HEART
14 PHILIP: The Rightness of Everything
15 RONALD AND MARCO: Growing the Heart
Preface
Gran was the first person I saw die. I was nineteen years old and she was eighty-one. She was my father’s mother and she lived with our family for the last couple of years of her life, in a small cottage attached to the old sandstone house my three siblings and I were raised in, just outside Glasgow. Gran died of oesophageal cancer, more common in those days because of the heavy cigarette-smoking combined with her daily tipples of whisky. I remember following Mum into Gran’s bright white bedroom and watching over her shoulder as she washed my grandmother and changed the soiled sheets. I wanted to help her care for Gran but I felt frozen, unsure what to do, even though I had worked in hospitals for two summers by that time. Gran was my kin, not a patient. That made a difference then.
I don’t remember being afraid of death, rather just curious about the unusual smells in the room and the fact that she coughed a lot and didn’t talk much. Mum made it okay. She didn’t seem afraid either, just busy. She had been a nurse too, which must have helped her know what to do. There were no long heartfelt conversations at Gran’s bedside, nor long bucket lists of activities to be accomplished. There was just the work of dying – for my gran, the patient, and for my mum, the caregiver.
I learned then that most deaths are natural. Not easy, but not necessarily scary; nor traumatic or over-medicalised; not romantic nor glorified. Death is most often ordinary and manageable, acceptable but deeply sad. The majority of old people, like my grandmother, died at home in those days before it was commonplace to be admitted to a hospital, or hospice, for the last days or weeks of life.