Considering human mortality

Early this past decade, I read, as is my custom, the Family Notices in the New Zealand Herald.

Passing over the deaths listed, my attention was drawn to two notices regarding two young women who were paying tribute to their recently deceased fathers.

In the first, a family paid tribute to a father, "head of the family, the leader, the organiser, always ready to help. Now at rest, Thanks Dad for all your love and support. You were loved more than you ever knew."

Was that last statement true? I wondered. Was the old man so autocratic, organising, directing and giving to his family that he hadn't learned to receive? If that were indeed, the case, he would have been so much the poorer. I do not mean that parents should expect anything from their offspring, who have to make their own way in life, for themselves and their families. But I do mean that life is for sharing, and the most vital part of that sharing is the consequence of being able to show love and to be open to receiving love in return. It would be a very real human tragedy if a father was ever loved "more than he ever knew", and was allowed to die, not knowing. Personally, my family has left me in no doubt. I rejoice in the love each member has shown me and I desperately hope that each knows how much each has been loved in turn.

But I am musing. I would like to think that the statement I have referred to is a simple device, a poetic way to reveal just how much that father had meant to them all.

The second notice took me into another realm entirely. It was a tribute by a daughter to her Dad.

To my darling Dad.

Dear God

Please take this message to my darling Dad above.

Tell him how much I miss him and give him all my love

Put your arms around him; tend him with loving care.

Make up for all he suffers, and all that seemed unfair.

It broke my heart to lose him, but one thing makes me glad,

God chose me for his daughter, and I had him for my Dad.

That kind of tribute really breaks me up. The girl comes across as transparent, and I hope that she was able to embrace him and convey to her father in life what she now says in her chosen words. Again I become personal, because I have experienced that love from my children.

But as I say that, I want to record how important it has been for me that I have known that in life, because, by the time of my death, I believe it would have been too late to say it, or to share it. For the truth is, I have no confidence in any personal experience to be enjoyed by me, following my death. I expect death to be a closing of a door, an absolute finality.

My wife and I have counted the number of times I have gone under anaesthetic. As of this date, it has been twelve times for surgery. I have got used to the experience as the drug is administered, and recognise the moment of injection, feeling the "blackness" travel up my arm and knowing the unconsciousness is about to hit. Accustomed to it, I report to the anaesthetist: "There it goes, goodnight!" After that there is nothing, and I might as well be not there, an oblivion which cannot, by definition, be experienced.

Awareness returns with consciousness, hearing the recovery nurse calling my name, and realising, with a sense of exhilaration, that I am in and of this world. It is not a feeling of relief in discovering I have survived, because I have learned not to be apprehensive. Rather, it is a sense of surprise, because in my anaesthetised state, I was unaware of life itself. The experience, in other words, is what I have had of time and of this world before I entered it: nothing!

I believe death will be like that: nothing!

We humans like to think our lives to be so important, our contribution to the earth's evolution and history so significant that we have imposed on ourselves, collectively, a myth of immortality. We have constructed various religious beliefs and institutions in order to convince ourselves to that end, and branded as heretical any who dispute that view. In a twist of irony, humans have actually been executed for pronouncing that there is no life beyond death.

In his 1976 book, The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins argued that the human being, like any other life form, was nothing more than the vehicle for human DNA to perpetuate itself, and evolve. To read Dawkins is to be mightily persuaded. And if we accept his theory, we may understand all of life's experiences, especially those we enjoy and exploit to our personal gratification, as our genes' way of strengthening its own position in the world. We need to enjoy life in order to pursue it. Our DNA is competing with that of other species for its own place on the earth.

Our human gene's need to survive depends, for example, on its reproducing itself. To succeed in that, humans need to copulate, and moreover, make the activity so enticing that it is virtually irresistible. It is our genes, male and female alike, that ensures that end.

Following this theory to its logical conclusion, it is the human gene that is immortal, discarding generation after generation of its human vehicles. It survives as it is passed on from one generation to the next. There is, in other words, no need for immortality. The human body is dispensable. And I believe our experience of death will reflect that.

What will remain, however, are the memories of the love that holds us together within families and fellowship, and across the immediate generations. Those experiences may well be part of our genetic potential, genetically desirable for the human animal’s survival. If that is the case, and why argue the point, it is indeed part of the essential mortar that holds society together. It certainly provides us with one of the truest and most rewarding of those factors that make it all worthwhile. It has made my life meaningful.