He is kind; after all, he is an angel. And he is fascinated with us, with the way in which we make our little lives so complicated, and our strivings. So am I.
Within a year or two, I started to get letters about Death. They came from people in hospices, and from their relatives and from bereaved individuals, and from young children in leukaemia wards, and the parents of boys who had crashed their motorbikes.
I recall one letter where the writer said the books were of great help to his mother when she was in a hospice. Frequently, the bereaved asked to be allowed to quote some part of the Discworld books in a memorial service.
They all tried to say, in some way, “thank you,” and until I got used to it, the arrival of one of these letters would move me sufficiently to give up writing for the day.
The bravest person I’ve ever met was a young boy going through massive amounts of treatment for a very rare, complex and unpleasant disease. I last saw him at a Discworld convention, where he chose to take part in a game as an assassin. He died not long afterwards, and I wish I had his fortitude and sense of style.
I would like to think my refusal to go into care towards the end of my life might free up the resources for people such as him.
Let me make this very clear: I do not believe there is any such thing as a “duty to die”; we should treasure great age as the tangible presence of the past, and honour it as such.
I know that last September Baroness Warnock was quoted, or possibly misquoted, as saying the very elderly sick had a “duty to die,” and I have seen people profess to fear that the existence of a formalized approach to assisted dying could lead to it somehow becoming part of national health policy.
I very much doubt this could be the case. We are a democracy and no democratic government is going to get anywhere with a policy of compulsory or even recommended euthanasia. If we were ever to end up with such a government, we would be in so much trouble that the problem would become the least of our worries.
But neither do I believe in a duty to suffer the worst ravages of terminal illness.
As an author, I’ve always tended to be known only to a circle of people—quite a large one, I must admit—who read books. I was not prepared for what happened after I “came out” about having Alzheimer’s in December 2007, and appeared on television.
People would stop me in the street to tell me their mother had it, or their father had it. Sometimes, it’s both parents, and I look into their eyes and I see a flash of fear.
In London the other day, a beefy man grabbed my arm, smiled at me, and said, “Thanks a lot for what you’re doing, my mum died from it,” and disappeared into the crowd.
And, of course, there have been the vast numbers of letters and e-mails, some of which, I’m ashamed to say, will perhaps never be answered.
People do fear, and not because fear is whipped up, but because they’ve recalled an unpleasant death in their family history.
Sometimes I find myself involved in strange conversations, because I am an amiable-looking person who people think they know and, importantly, I am not an authority figure—quite the reverse.
I have met Alzheimer’s sufferers who are hoping that another illness takes them away first. Little old ladies confide in me, saying: “I’ve been saving up my pills for the end, dear.”
What they are doing, in fact, is buying themselves a feeling of control. I have met retired nurses who have made their own provisions for the future with rather more knowledgeable deliberation.
From personal experience, I believe the recent poll reflects the views of the people in this country. They don’t dread death; it’s what happens beforehand that worries them.
Life is easy and cheap to make. But the things we add to it, such as pride, self-respect, and human dignity, are worthy of preservation, too, and these can be lost in a fetish for life at any cost.
I believe that if the burden gets too great, those who wish to should be allowed to be shown the door.
In my case, in the fullness of time, I hope it will be the one to the garden under an English sky. Or, if wet, the library.
THE RICHARD DIMBLEBY LECTURE: SHAKING HANDS WITH DEATH
Royal Society of Medicine, 1 February 2010 Broadcast on BBC1, with revisions to indicate that Tony Robinson would be reading the main text.
Firstly I must express my gratitude and grateful thanks to the Dimbleby family for asking me to give this lecture today.
I cherish what I suspect is at least part of their reason for inviting me. I was a young newspaper journalist, still learning his trade, when Richard Dimbleby died of cancer in late December 1965. Two pieces of information shook the nation: one was that he had died and the other was that his family said that he had died of cancer. At that time it was the disease whose name was unspoken. People died of “a long illness” and as journalists we accepted and connived at this furtive terminology. However, we all knew what it meant, yet nobody used the forbidden word. But overnight, people were talking about this, and as a result it seemed to me the war on cancer began in earnest. Before you can kill the monster you have to say its name.
It was the distant echo of that example that prompted me to stand up two years ago and reveal that I had a form of Alzheimer’s disease. I remembered the shameful despairing way cancer had been hidden in darkness. That and the Dimbleby family’s decision to be open about Richard’s death were at the soul and centre of my own decision, which I made because of the sheer impossibility of not doing so. It was not a decision in fact. It was a determination and a reckoning.
My name is Terry Pratchett and I am the author of a very large number of inexplicably popular fantasy novels.
Contrary to popular belief, fantasy is not about making things up. The world is stuffed full of things. It is almost impossible to invent any more. No, the role of fantasy as defined by G. K. Chesterton is to take what is normal and everyday and usual and unregarded, and turn it around and show it to the audience from a different direction, so that they look at it once again with new eyes.
I intend tonight to talk about Alzheimer’s disease, which I am glad to say is no longer in the twilight, but also about another once taboo subject, the nature of our relationship with death.
I have regrettably to point out that the nature of my disease may not allow me to read all the way through this lecture. If this is the case, we have arranged for my friend Tony Robinson, who made a very moving programme about his own mother’s struggle with dementia, to step in and be your stunt Terry Pratchett for the evening.