Waiting for the Last Bus by Richard Holloway

Author:Richard Holloway
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canongate Books

What is it that prompts what Barnes calls the ‘old, visceral, rational fear’ of death? What is he afraid of ? If what awaits us after death is not samsara and its endless wandering through other lives; if it is not hell and its endless torment; if it is not even heaven and its endless joy; if it is no-thing, no-where, no-anything, why fear it? Sadness at leaving: of course. Wistfulness at missing the future, particularly the future of those we love: of course. But fear – of nothing?

If we are fortunate enough not to have that fear, maybe we should listen to Julian Barnes again. For him the fear of death is just there. It is intrinsic to death. Death carries it, comes with it. Timor mortis conturbat me, as an old litany has it. The fear of death disturbs me, deranges me. Even though there’s nothing on the other side of it; even though death is the end, the full stop, the absolute cessation; the very thought of it scares us. It is as if because being and the matter that clothed it once exploded into existence out of nothing, it now carries within itself the dread of returning to the void from which it escaped. Being dreads Un-being. It is the instinctive reflex of the little blind puppy again.

But why doesn’t it scare all of us? Is our hold on life less strong? I belong to one of the two categories Julian Barnes accuses of feeling superior because they do not fear death. The prospect of death saddens but does not frighten me, though I neither desire nor expect life after death. But it doesn’t make me feel superior. People play the hand they are dealt in life. I was dealt several cards marked THINGS TO BE AFRAID OF, but NOTHINGNESS was not one of them. Of course, I cannot be certain that as I feel it approaching I won’t experience the ‘old, visceral, rational fear’ of death Barnes describes. After all, I have seen it happen to others. But if it does hit me, I hope I’ll be brave enough to endure it. If I lie in fear on my deathbed, I hope someone will say to me: Courage! There are times when we just have to summon the courage to take what’s coming. As Shakespeare put it in King Lear, we have to endure our going hence even as our coming hither.59

If courage is the wise person’s response to the fear of going, what is the wise person’s answer to those who insist on staying and lust for yet more life, either here on earth in a secular eternity or there in heaven in the supernatural version? In a word, it is gratitude. The opposite of gratitude for life is greed for more of it. It is the inability to enjoy what we have now because we are already lusting after the next edition. The Buddha was right: craving is our curse, the desire for more our scourge.

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