Wind down

Apologies, the blog post is almost two weeks late but we’ve been so busy. Thoughts this week from Therese.

Yesterday I pondered over the project’s run over the last year, from gestation to public airing. We met our deadline bang on time with a wonderful evening opening at the Crescent Arts Centre, shared with friends, family, supporters and contributors. And then, last Sunday’s reading, a quieter affair, served to remind us that this was not a journey we’d made alone, but in fact a process that had given many of the writers an opportunity to make some very personal journeys of their own. For Lucy and me, too, it has been a little overwhelming at times.

Installing, hosting and dismantling the exhibition allowed me to draw some comparisons with cultural traditions around death that are familiar to me. The installation felt like making arrangements, working quickly, in a considered way but having to be emotionally detached in order to get things done. The opening (with our whiskey shots), the reading and the nine day exhibition was like ‘wake-ing’ the poetry and prose. As was the care-taking, having someone man it for at least a few hours every day – this felt like a necessary way to honour and respect the work. When it came to dismantling it on Saturday, we did so with focus and determination, trying not to think too hard about it and pushing to one side our sadness at seeing it go.

Will it make another appearance? Perhaps, we’re exploring possibilities but for now, it’s in warm storage.

So now the blog is on the wind down too. Lucy and I must move on to other things but before we do here are a few more favourite items from our Death Box that we’d like to share with you.

The poem Annie by Michael Donaghy has been described as something close to perfection. Sadly Michael Donaghy died aged only 50 from a brain haemorrhage in 2004. He was born in America to Irish emigrants, his father was originally from Belfast.

Annie

Flicker, stranger. Flare and gutter out.
The life you fight for is the light you kept.
That task has passed this hour from wick to window.
Fade you among my dead my never-daughter.

Upriver in your mother’s blood and mine
it’s always night. Their kitchen windows burn
whom we can neither name nor say we loved.
Go to them and take this letter with you.

Go let them pick you up and dandle you
and sing you lullabies before the hob.

Don Paterson, poet and poetry editor for Picador and author of, Smith, A Reader’s Guide to the Poetry of Michael Donaghy describes Annie as “sadder than an elegy; at least the elegised got to exist.”

Technically this poem has a formal structure, achieved almost effortless by Donaghy. It is for the most part written in iambic pentameter and features consonantal chimes, flicker/flare; gutter/daughter; task/passed; fight/light. In Patterson’s Smith, he draws the reader’s attention to the varied vowels that often “arrive in assonantal pairs – stranger/flare; life/fight; mother’s/blood; never/daughter; name/say, so that one word never really feels alone, just as the child won’t.” There are variances of soft and hard sounds – soft fs – flicker, stranger, flare – and harsher t sounds – gutter, fight, kept, wick. There is heavy usage of ‘you’ for such a short poem, somehow emphasising the poet’s strong desire to communicate with his ‘never-daughter‘. Also unusual is the reference to both the mother’s and father’s blood, a nod to ancestry and reminding us that both parents are bereft. It is a truly beautiful yet heartbreaking poem.

 

And finally, a film that didn’t make it into our joint Death Box but is currently available on Netflix. Extremis is a documentary film about end-of-life care that is shot entirely in an Intensive Care Unit at Highland Hospital in Oakland, California. It premiered at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival and won “Best Documentary Short.” It takes its name from the Latin expression that means “at the point of death.”

The piece centers on Dr. Jessica Zitter, a palliative care specialist who leads a team helping terminal patients prepare to die. Dr Zitter treats or oversees patients who have no hope of recovery.
Extremis runs for just 24 minutes but manages to address several difficult questions about who ought to make key decisions about when it’s time to stop treatment: Can a patient who is severely ill make a clear decision about when and if to withdraw care? At what point should family members (or surrogates) take over decision-making from a patient? What is the role of a person’s faith even when the science seems irrefutable?

The film is uncomfortable viewing but also fascinating, as viewers will inevitably realise that they may face the same conversations themselves at some point. If Dr Zitter had her way, patients would be having conversations about their wishes far before extremis — “when we’re all healthy, sitting around the dinner table.”

Watching the movie reminded me of Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal, (featured in an earlier post). It’s about making plans for retirement, for old age, making important decisions when we are in good health and communicating our wishes to family or friends. It’s also about making the most of every good day we have – a sentiment worth sharing.