Matt, forty-four years old
Cause of death: TBC
Cause of life: A funeral
When I first told people at dinner parties that my next book was about death and funerals, their reaction was like a social experiment. Some people changed the subject faster than you can say ‘eulogy’, while others leaned in, morbidly fascinated, eager to discuss the inevitable with a touch of humour and grace. One stranger suggested I was trying to put the ‘fun’ in funerals. Nothing breaks the ice like the inevitable.
In writing this book, I’ve observed that the best in humanity often emerges in the darkest times. Funerals, while sombre, bring out stories of love, resilience and the indomitable human spirit. It’s in these moments of collective grief that we see the true essence of community and compassion. We gather, we remember, and we find solace in shared memories, proving that even in the shadow of death, there is a light that binds us all.
I thought back to the last conversation I had with my Aunty Win, whose funeral started this book. I remember chatting in her house about a talk I was due to give to medical students about breaking bad news. I was pretty nervous about how to frame the talk, how to get over the importance of saving a death as well as a life in medicine. I wanted it to be positive despite the tough subject. Without much thought, she said to me, ‘Well, sometimes darkness can show you the light.’
Looking back now at the slides for that talk, I included my Aunty Win’s words on the final one. They accompanied an image taken in 1919, just five years after Win had been born. It is probably my favourite photograph of all time.
The photograph was taken by Sir Arthur Eddington on the remote West African island of Príncipe. Eddington tried to prove Einstein’s theory of general relativity that mass bends light. Without our modern instruments, this could only be done using a simple black and white photograph during a very rare event – a total solar eclipse that passed directly over the island.
During a total solar eclipse, the Moon’s disc passes in front of the Sun, obscuring its blindingly bright rays and allowing astronomers to study the dim light of background stars. By comparing photographs of these stars before and during the eclipse, Eddington could determine if the stars’ positions had shifted due to the Sun’s gravitational bending of space.
The conditions on Príncipe when Eddington arrived were terrible. They were working under mosquito nets, with monkeys stealing their equipment. As the day of the eclipse arrived so too did an almighty rainstorm. Luckily, the clouds slowly cleared by midday, leaving just scattered mist as the eclipse started.
Eddington took sixteen photographic plates but only two contained enough stars to determine whether the light had been bent. The image I used to finish my talk was one of those photographs – starlight curving around the Sun, confirming that gravity did warp space-time. Einstein was right. The world changed.
This monumental discovery emerged from the darkness of the eclipse against the odds, against adversity. Perhaps what Aunty Win was trying to say was profound truths can only be revealed in shadow. Just as the stars’ light bent around the Sun, sometimes in our own lives, moments of darkness can illuminate new paths and insights, showing us that even in the darkest times, we can find the light and the understanding we seek.
That is why I chose this topic. Not to be morbid, but because Aunty Win was right. Life consumes all that makes it precious – time, love and the lives of others. It can be dark, like war. I’m not sure any war can really be won. Everyone loses, just in different ways. Life is similar. But everyone wins, they just don’t know it.
It was Charlie Chaplin who said, ‘Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.’ I take my job seriously, but I don’t take myself too seriously. Perhaps we should do the same with life and with death. So why not put a little fun in funeral?
Of the main celebratory moments in life, it seems unfair not to experience or remember the two biggest – your birth and your funeral. And how many funerals have you been to where people say, ‘I wish we didn’t have to meet like this,’ or you regret not having told the departed how much they had meant to you? What if you didn’t need to meet like this and you could tell them? I couldn’t go back to the start, my 0th birthday, so that just left my end…
Aunty Win’s was the first funeral I had been to on my birthday. The second was my own. I hadn’t died. But there I was, surrounded by friends, listening to what my mum, my dad, my wife and children really thought of me in their eulogy. My favourite song, ‘Nightswimming’ by R.E.M., was played by my good friend on his acoustic guitar.
The idea to hold my own funeral emerged during a whirlwind trip home from Australia. During the eight days I was staying with my parents, I gave a lecture, recorded my last audiobook, visited work colleagues, walked up a mountain, signed my will with the family solicitor and got drunk with my friends. It was the last two of these that resulted in this book.
As a completely healthy 44-year-old, my last wishes had lingered on my to-do list for years. After reading that forty-four was the average peak of happiness and well-being, it seemed there was a downhill gradient ahead. After one particularly difficult intensive care night shift months before in Australia, where another healthy 44-year-old had suddenly, unexpectedly met their maker, I couldn’t sleep. Rather than wrestle with the sheets and remain trapped in my tumble dryer mind, I got out of bed in our rented house and wrote an email to our family solicitor in Wales. I asked if they could turn my ramblings into my last will and testament.
After the boring financial section came the part that really woke me up – what do you want for your funeral? After staring out of the window into the darkness, everything became clear, like a double espresso for my mind. I wanted a ceremony in the countryside, somewhere with mountains, green, a river, some birdsong. I’d love live music to be played – my favourite music. And home-cooked food. Definitely French wine for the guests, and good coffee. I hate bad coffee. Stretching my imaginary requests even further, I wrote, ‘An outdoor log fire would be terrific.’ In just ten minutes, I had fashioned my perfect day – one that I would never get to live.
A few days later, the bemused solicitor called. She had transformed my train-of-consciousness, post-night-shift ramble into equally confusing legal jargon.I But the document would need a wet signature. So this task was added to my already crammed home visit schedule, wedged between a train ride back from London and meeting friends for a sunset beer.
A few months later, arriving late and flustered, I met my friends Ben and James at a rural pub overlooking the sea just before sunset. Fumbling through my backpack to find their token gifts (a koala pen and Tim Tams), two items fell to the ground. Tangled up in my headphones was my little red book that I carried everywhere to jot down notes and writing ideas. It landed on the ground open to a page on which was scribbled, ‘Things that matter most… not things.’ It had been what Cody had told me when we met in clinic after he had survived his cardiac arrest. I had been collecting the words and thoughts of people like Cody, who had seen both sides of life and death for years without knowing why. And next to my little red notebook was a copy of my will. When my friends asked what they were, I half-jokingly said, ‘Oh nothing much, just the meaning of life and the best party that I will never be able to go to!’
I’m not sure who first suggested it and whether it was the jet lag or the beer, but by the time the Sun had set, the three of us had agreed to organise my living funeral. ‘See you at my death!’ were my parting words as I left the pub long after closing time.
I wasn’t the first to spot the irony in the timing of a modern funeral. Between 1856 and 1906, organisations for the poor in Ireland paid for more than 25,000 people to move to the United States and Canada. In 1882, the government passed laws to help pay for the travel of more than 54,000 additional people. With this mass relocation was born the so-called American Wake. This was Ireland’s heart-wrenching send-off for those crossing the ocean, where the only thing missing from the party was a corpse. It was a goodbye that felt like a funeral, except the guest of honour was very much alive. The goodbye bash was often as memorable as the life that had prompted it. But the Irish were not the first to this party.
It was like I had been transported back to my first school disco – awkwardly hugging the walls before settling into an empty seat for solace. An unusual twist of fate had led me to one of the world’s most prestigious theatres on London’s South Bank. In my first year of medical school, I lived with eight other students, a jumbled crew that inexplicably meshed. Among them was Tim, an English literature student from the Welsh valleys who never let his stammer define him. Twenty-five years later, Tim, now an accomplished playwright, reached out to me unexpectedly.
‘I’ve written a play about Aneurin Bevan – can you help with the medical details?’ Tim asked in his email. I eagerly replied, ‘Yes!’ My theatre experience had been minimal since playing a non-speaking human-sized Christmas calendar at school, but I was thrilled at the opportunity. Two years on, I realised how closely linked theatre and medical practice truly are. We slice up the arts and sciences, as if they are different parts of a body. But really, they are just two eyes, looking at a slightly different view that is life. Both are needed to find your way around obstacles.
Every great theatrical production is anchored by a compelling story – one that intertwines human emotions, history, resilience and the quest for meaning. Tim’s play, Nye – inspired by Bevan, the post-war health secretary and creator of the British NHS, and a fellow stammerer – captures these themes perfectly. Similarly, in my hospital, each patient carries a unique narrative. Even the rehearsal space sounded like echoes of the hospital – a blend of science, artistry and technical expertise, always grounded in the human experience. More purposeful engagement with the arts, be it theatre, music, poetry or dance, can be a transformative experience for us all. It certainly was for me. Serving as a medical adviser reignited my interest in public engagement by using movement, sounds and light rather than just my words. Drama can tell stories that go beyond mere facts, more real than non-fiction. Cross-disciplinary endeavours like this in your own life can enhance empathy, connections and open your mind. Of course there is a limit. You don’t want to be so open-minded that your brain falls out. It is unfortunate that the fields of healthcare and theatre are facing funding cuts, diminishing their value and vision. Perhaps it is time to integrate more theatre into medicine and more recognition of the power of healing into theatre.
When Tim asked me to do this role as the medical adviser, I didn’t realise that Michael Sheen would be playing the main character. I spent an hour chatting with the Hollywood star at the coffee shop in the National Theatre. I told him about the plans for my living funeral and we connected over our shared experiences of loss. Michael told me how he would love to go back to Greek times not only to see the birth of theatre, but to quench his fascination with the Eleusinian Mysteries. Still starstruck and acting ‘cool’, I nodded along, pretending I knew what he was talking about. It turned out that the Greeks, and Michael Sheen, knew a lot more than me about living funerals.
Carved deep in the limestone entrance arch of the Monastery of Agios Pavlos in Mount Athens, Greece, are the words, ‘If you die before you die you don’t die when you do.’ Picture these letters being scraped out a thousand years ago by hand in the then ancient city of Eleusis. This was a time and a place where secrets and mysteries held the power to transform those who dared to step into the inner sanctum. The Eleusinian Mysteries were a series of rituals and initiations shrouded in enigma, where participants grappled with the profound concept of death before they met their own demise. Much of it centred around the tale of Demeter and Persephone, a mother and daughter whose story outlines the cyclical nature of life, death and rebirth. Those who were lucky enough to be initiated into this clandestine world came to understand that death was not an end but a part of an eternal cycle.
The marble carving at Eleusis in Athens vividly depicts these sacred mysteries. At the centre of the relief, Demeter, the goddess of agriculture, offers a stalk of wheat to Triptolemus – the gift of food. Persephone, Demeter’s daughter, stands beside them holding a fire torch, representing her journey between the underworld and the earth. It shows people playing instruments, making art, supporting others, drinking wine, bathing naked.
Fast forward to the 1990s, when Takiko Mizunoe became a trailblazer in Japan’s entertainment industry. First, she shattered the glass ceiling of gender as a leading actress, then producer and director. But she also wanted to redefine the norms surrounding life’s final curtain-call. This culminated in her decision to hold a living funeral on live television in 1992 as a healthy 78-year-old.
In this orchestrated farewell watched by millions, Mizunoe used the moment not as a morbid farewell but as a grand, heartfelt thank you note to the world. Mizunoe’s parting message – ‘to express appreciation to all those who have been dear to me while I am still alive’ – wasn’t just a farewell. She wanted a call to action to recognise the value of the present, the importance of expressing gratitude, and the profound effect our lives have on others. She lived another sixteen years and died at the age of ninety-four.
And so, although seemingly opposite, life and death are as close as 11 is to 1 on a clock face. This has been known and celebrated for thousands of years. So often, humans have thought of dying not as losing someone but discovering them. Yet we cannot discover ourselves through the modern accepted ceremony because we are already dead. Life changes behind you, when you turn around, when you stop looking. And sometimes we forget to turn around until it is all over. I wanted to turn around while I still could.
After flying back to Australia, I thought a lot about what we had agreed to do. I wondered if it would belittle those who are terminally ill, trivialise those who die before they should. I worried it may upset my family or be seen as an ego trip rather than a way to move beyond the self. And so I made a promise to myself that I would only have a living funeral if it were accompanied by a book to help others. My living funeral would be a way to get a little closer to the patients you have met in this book; people who have medically died before having a second chance at life – what I call a second act. I envisioned it as a book to help people learn valuable lessons from the patients I cared for who had faced death and then lived to tell their stories. Holding my funeral before I actually died allowed me a sneak preview of what matters while I still had time to do something about it.
My initial plan was to hold a service in my local village church in Wales, close to the pub where we had conceived the idea. But the vicar said they only provided funerals for ‘Christians who had died’ – two very reasonable basic requirements that I couldn’t fulfil. It also felt narcissistic to centre the event just around me, especially given that friends of mine had terminal illnesses and their real funerals could come at any moment. So instead I took some advice from writer Helen Keller, the first deaf and blind person to earn a college degree, who said, ‘I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light.’ So instead I would organise a group event with my friends so we could walk towards the dark together.
Christmas that year soon passed in a blaze of ill-fitting gifts and as the January blues hit many at home, I baked in the Western Australian sun. Weeks had turned to months since the idea had been agreed and finding a mutually convenient date was tricky. I wondered if we would ever really go through with the scheme.
Then, in that weird post-Christmas television period just after New Year, I flicked on to the 1986 cult classic film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. During the opening sequence, after Ferris convinces his parents that he is too sick to go to school, he says a line repeated during the last reflective moment in the final scene. ‘Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.’
Hearing that for the second time made me physically stand up from the sofa and send a message to my friends. The only date most people had been able to make was very inconvenient for me. But hearing that movie line made me think, ‘So what!’ Vitam vive.
My message read:
Strange request alert!
To help me write a book, I am planning a ‘living funeral’ for a group of friends. You would need to choose:
- A song
- A course for a meal or a drink
- A reading that could be anything from a poem to a long joke
I have organised an independent celebrant to conduct the event where we take it in turn to read out each other’s choices below and a eulogy written by the people who love you.
The transport is pretty tight, so please only bring one small bag and there is a no-phones policy so we can only argue with each other rather than random strangers on the internet.
I’ve found a remote mountain cottage with a hot tub and a view of some green mountains. I’ll pay for all accommodation/food/drink/car hire because spending time with friends matters. Then a year later I’ll be visiting home from Australia again and it would be great to catch-up to see how your lives may have changed from the experience…
Oh, and the only date we can all do is 25 January – my birthday. I had originally thought this would be a problem. But thinking about it more, what better day is there to have my own funeral?
Can you come??
Love Matt x
I invited a varied group of friends who had all had different experiences of loss in their lives. Old friends from school, new dads I met at the school gate, strangers I first met over the dissection table at medical school who, through the extraordinary highs and lows at the coalface of medicine, I am bonded to for ever.
Those with the most personal connection with death were perhaps the most engaged with the experiences and also seemingly the most adapted. Even the happiest. Humans are remarkable at adapting to the situations in which they can be thrust. I wondered how difficult experiences may have impacted on the personalities of my friends gathered around me.
Humans are notoriously poor at predicting what will make them happy, a phenomenon known as affective forecasting. This is especially true when it comes to money. For instance, a shorter commute can make you as happy as a 40 per cent pay rise, a paid holiday from your boss can be more satisfying than receiving cash, and having more free time often brings greater happiness than having more money. Yet people frequently assume that more money is the key to happiness. We also adapt to radical change. The lottery win will make you happier for a period and the accident safer for a period. But we often regress to a norm. Humans are remarkably resilient.
But should I have travelled to my funeral with my family, my wife, my children and not my friends?
The poet Meghan O’Rourke in her book The Long Goodbye, written in the wake of her mum’s death, said, ‘The friends we most love do become a physical part of us, ingrained in our synapses, in the pathways where memories are created.’
She was right. Your friends are a part of you, you of them. And friendships reshape our brain and body in profound ways. Neuroscientist David Eagleman explains how people we love become a part of us physically: ‘People you love become part of you – not just metaphorically, but physically. Your brain refashions itself around the expectation of their presence.’
While the idea that we become the average of the five people we spend the most time with may be overly simplistic, this underscores the profound influence that social bonds have on our neurological framework, on our life. Our brains change their neuronal pathways around the expectation of good friends being in our lives.
Psychological studies consistently show that stable, healthy friendships are crucial for our well-being and longevity. Individuals with strong social networks are more satisfied with their lives and less likely to suffer from depression. They also have a lower risk of dying from heart problems and chronic diseases. A landmark study of more than 300,000 people found that poor social connections increase the risk of premature death more than smoking twenty cigarettes a day. Time to put down the lighter and pick up the phone.
Friendships offer more than just emotional support. They have tangible effects on our physical health. Lydia Denworth, author of a book on the science of friendship, highlights how social isolation affects the immune system, leading to increased inflammation and a weakened immune response. Friendships change our white blood cells. Conversely, socially integrated individuals tend to have lower blood pressure, better sleep quality and faster healing times. Strained friendships, on the other hand, are significant predictors of chronic illness.
The impact of friendships on our response to stress is particularly noteworthy. Studies reveal that blood pressure and heart rate reactivity are lower when individuals face stressful tasks with a supportive friend by their side. In one fascinating experiment, participants even perceived a hill as less steep when accompanied by a friend, underscoring the psychological and physical comfort that friendships provide.
But loneliness isn’t just an issue for older people. This protective effect of friendships extends across all age groups and while health interventions targeting loneliness often focus on older adults, younger individuals can also benefit. If life were a three-legged stool, we often let it lean to one side and become unstable. We focus our time on work and family, neglecting the third leg: ourselves. Yet spending time with good friends is likely to be more beneficial than any medication I could prescribe.
While books on rekindling romantic relationships are stuffed on to the shelves in the self-help section of libraries and bookshops, the quiet power of friendships deserves equal recognition, if not more. As we navigate life’s challenges, the support and presence of friends without benefits offer even more advantages than those with their clothes off.
To make the most from the retreat, I wanted to capture not only the plans I had made in my will but also the lessons I had been collecting from patients in my little red book. Flicking through the pages, I wrote down the lessons scribbled in different colour pens from patients who would make up this chapter.
From Chapter 7, Alex showed us that life is driven by chance, so I didn’t want to over-plan. But I did want us to overcome the spotlight effect, worrying about what others thought of us, by doing the weird things in life. Although there were just eight of us there, we also wanted to remember and name the dead who couldn’t join us.
Luca in Chapter 2 told us words have power, as do green spaces in nature. Our experience would include messages from those close to us, words from history, and that we should be surrounded by the great, green outdoors.
Cody’s meaning in Red Dust, Chapter 3, was found through moments, not physical things. I wanted to minimise the number of personal items people brought, especially those that distract rather than connect. Instead, we would focus on a few meaningful activities needing us to work together.
Summer helped us choose the right people to be surrounded by. We all have friends who are perfect for some occasions yet terrible for others. She also reminded us how life can change dramatically from just a single event. I hoped our funeral would be the start of a change, not the end. I also brought along three of my favourite games that we had never played together as a group of friends after thinking about how Tetris has transformed Summer’s life. Pass the Pigs is a silly game of rolling miniature rubber pigs for points perfect for the airport, while the magnet game Kluster was played as a drinking game over lunch, leaving Werewolf for the second sober evening after allegiances had formed, secrets exchanged and thoughtful espionage was needed.
After Mike drowned in Chapter 5, he realised that together we are stronger. Collaboration and shared efforts are crucial for survival with life’s greatest achievements coming from collective effort. So I would ask each of my friends to bring along a particular skill to the trip.
Jen’s heart taught us to enjoy what you have now, rather than waiting for that perfect time to come. There is never a good time for eight people with busy lives and demanding jobs to meet. But we would need to just go with one date even if it were not ideal. To Vitam vive – live life.
When Alex survived his severe allergy, he found that music was the operating system for his soul. He started to engage in activities he enjoyed despite not being great at them. Music was essential for the trip, and I had the perfect idea.
Kai’s change in pace led to his second act through more quit, less grit. We all need to live a life worth remembering so a memento would be needed to stop our funeral from quickly fading into the background clamour of life. And our experience may even lead to someone giving up what is not right for them. Rhys told us to leave our demons behind. This was the perfect space between the stimulus of busy lives to find the responses we want in our future selves, not the versions of us that we ruminate on at night. And finally, Roberto swept off the digital dust settled on old images, uncovering memories that should be reignited. I would travel with a clutch of old photos, keys to unlock good times and good people, passed but not to be forgotten.
Armed with this list of demands, I felt like a new breed of travel agent for the end of days. I typed ‘Rural cottage/green mountain/French wine/log fire/sleeps eight’ into my web browser and an idyllic cottage nestled in the French Pyrenees quickly flashed up. It even had a wood-fired hot tub with a strict ‘no clothes’ policy that could help us loosen our inhibitions. With the accommodation found, good home-cooked food was outsourced to my Sicilian amico, and my oldest school friend was the perfect choice for the live music, being a talented singer and guitarist. Other roles were constructed – someone to capture the event through a painting, and another as official photographer. We had a French speaker book a local restaurant with not a single review, leaving its quality entirely to chance, and the party animal would source the wine.
To make the experience more authentic, I asked a French-based British celebrant called Mark to conduct the service. Having worked as a teacher before running a café, Mark changed his own lifestyle radically a few years previously, moving to a remote part of France to set up his own business. He understood the power of reflection, was intrigued by the idea of a living funeral and agreed to help, on a few conditions. To make it an authentic experience, Mark wanted to speak with our families so he could write a fitting eulogy for each of us. We each needed to choose a reading, be it a poem or a short passage, that meant something to us. Everything, including the song we had each chosen to be played, needed to be kept secret until the big day. It perfectly matched the themes from my will and the messages from people’s second acts.
Asking your partner, mum, dad, brother or sister to write your eulogy is hard. It is fair to say that the reactions were very mixed. While I overheard my wife and daughters laughing with Mark as they retold notable events from my life, for others this wasn’t so. Simply imagining someone you love not being there was too difficult for some. They couldn’t do it, no matter how fictional the funeral. For others, it caused conflict and disagreement. Despite being the most certain thing in life, death is still too much for many to contemplate.
Of course, a living funeral is really just theatre. We weren’t really going to die. But neither did the people in this book. Their hearts did stop for minutes or hours, but death is not that. If it were, we would all die more than 100,000 times per day between the normal beats of our hearts. But perhaps we should consider each of the tiny pauses as a chance to live again; something more powerful than even death.
But even theatre can be profoundly moving. We knew we weren’t really dead, and we knew that tomorrow would come. Yet this dress rehearsal truly mattered. In fact, the use of candlelight and reminiscing about the past might actually mirror what happens just before the final curtain-call in our lives.
I soon received enthusiastic yet bemused replies from seven close friends made during different phases of my life, all willing to take on this experiment. With flights booked, songs chosen and eulogies written, we were ready to travel to a place we had never been before – geographically or spiritually.
Touching down at Toulouse airport, spirits were high for all of us. The two-hour drive into the mountains was stretched out to over five as French farmers protested against government reforms by digging up sections of the motorway. By nightfall, the eight-seat hire car that had presumably been designed for jockeys started to make the afterlife appealing. We counted down the miles one by one. Eventually, arriving to French onion soup homemade by Tom, who had arrived earlier in the day, a roaring fire and the promise of a special weekend was reward enough. The next day we had an amazing long lunch at the local restaurant that we took a chance on even if the vegetarian soup did come complete with a floating carcass from an unidentifiable mammal. We passed around old photos, each like a bookmark to shared pages, bringing long-forgotten moments back to life and rekindling emotions that have lingered in the background.
We arrived back at the cottage as the setting sun was framed by a mountain glacier on the right and lush green trees on the left. Ben took some amazing photos as good coffee was brewed, wine poured and homemade gnocchi, cooked the traditional Sicilian way by my Italian-speaking friend Corrado teaching native Welsh speaker Dave. The log fire burned under an outdoor hot tub that was gaining heat for later that night. There were no mobile phones to vibrate, no television showing tragic news that would distress but not directly affect us. We all wore scruffy jeans, T-shirts and had ruffled up hair apart from Corrado. Instead, he wore an old, long nightshirt gown, sown by an elderly lady for his best friend Paolo, a Capuchin monk living in Jerusalem. To complete the integration of cultures, Corrado took a leaf from my best man Jon’s Scottish heritage by forgetting to pack spare underwear, hence taking an oath not of celibacy but of commando contemplation. The spotlight effect clearly had never arrived in Sicily.
It was everything I had hoped for. This was our church. We spoke about the people who couldn’t be there, saying their names including friends, parents, brothers and sisters who had died. Soon a serious hush fell over our group. Mark the celebrant stepped outside, where we were gathered. We put down our glasses, took a deep breath and listened.
I have great pleasure to formally declare you all dead. That’s it. It’s all over. You can’t see any of your loved ones again. You can’t achieve anything again. You can’t touch, feel, smell, emote again. You are a blackness. You’ve gone. You do not exist. You’re dead. Your time is up. Your legacy begins.
What is your legacy? What and who have you left behind? How do you feel about your life so far? How do you feel about what you have done and said on this planet in the short time you have had here?
Because today is your funeral. Today is the day your loved ones unite in grief to say goodbye to you. What does it mean to hear the words of your loved ones in your eulogies? What does it mean to experience dying today? What does it mean to hear that today is the funeral of Matthew Philip Govier Morgan?’
What followed was hard to describe. Each of us in turn had a candle lit, we died, we listened to the words put together by those who love us, read aloud by friends old and new. We each had a reading, then our chosen song was played beautifully by Carlo. Dave served the Italian food he had been taught to make by Corrado. James painted the scene despite not being a painter. Ben captured moments using his camera, while Jon opened the wine and Tom tended the fire. There was great laughter and deep joy. And there were tears. Eight grown men, silent, listening, crying. An antidote to toxic masculinity. Much that was said was tough to hear, tough to say.
Life has a way of carving its stories into your face, hidden in expressions that only come out now and then. Each of us in our own time had faced moments that tested our resolve, that demanded more from us than we thought we could give. We have all known the sting of hardship, the weight of burdens seemingly too heavy to bear. Yet this was how we got here, how we were forged. Sometimes you don’t need clouds to have silver linings.
We had all felt loneliness and the pang of despair. And the scars we hide are not symbols of suffering, but emblems of resilience. Yet we keep them under wraps. We are all cracked, but not broken. Because in these shared struggles there is a silent camaraderie, a recognition that we are all bound by the threads of our trials. We’ve known the sleepless nights, the heart-wrenching decisions, the quiet moments of doubt. Quiet people often have the loudest minds. We’ve felt the suffocating pressure of expectations and the crushing weight of disappointment. And yet, despite it all, we have found ways to rise, to adapt, to continue moving forward.
I say this because our tough times as a group are not unique or even that bad when compared with the weight of the world. They are instead common ground upon which we all stand, today or tomorrow or yesterday. They remind us that while our journeys may differ, the essence of our struggles is universal. It defines our humanity.
I watched the sequence of crying take an interesting path. It was often not the person whose turn it was to die that would cry. It was instead their friends, hearing about the life of others and feeling what their loss would mean. My oldest friend Carlo, a logical maths-loving actuary geek and an amazing guitarist, struggled to play what should have been an easy song for him as I died. Jon, a GP who listened to tales of sadness daily in his clinic, had a tear in his eye as Corrado died, whom he had only just met. And even if it were the dying person who cried, it was not their own demise that got to them – but hearing the words written by their parents, their kids, their wives, their friends.
All men cry, but they do it alone, or drunk. We were together and almost sober. A lot of men struggle to open up to anyone, let alone other men. Our culture beats into us the understanding that ‘being a man’ means not showing any vulnerability. We fear being judged as feeble by other men, unattractive by those we desire, and unfit by society. It’s this fear that drives some men to ridicule one another when these emotions surface. But I didn’t cry because I was sad, or weak, but because I was grateful. Grateful that we get a second shot at life. Every day. Grateful that I can try again and again to reconcile the passions and the rage that is a life. But I didn’t expect how transformational this day would be.
We had done everything on the list, followed the advice of all the patients you have read about. We looked a lot like that marble carving of the Eleusinian Mysteries that Michael Sheen had told me about, although I’m not sure even the Greeks could fit eight men naked and crying into a hot tub. It was like the best ever birthday, with priceless gifts of words and time. After the crying had stopped, the gnocchi eaten and the songs had ended, Mark the celebrant stood up and licked his finger. One by one, he touched the flames of each of our candles that were lit as we died. As he did, he said:
As I extinguish these candles, I am pleased to announce that you are no longer dead. You are fully alive, ready to embrace the rest of your life to the fullest.
May you all recognise the profound impact your life has on those around you.
May you all cherish your loved ones and understand how your existence enriches theirs.
May you all be blessed with good health, joy and love, experiencing a long life filled with happiness.
And even when you face challenges with your health, experience less joy, or endure the loss of loved ones, remember life isn’t easy, but it’s the only one you’ve got.
In one hundred years, you will be dead. Someone else will live in the home you worked so hard to build. Someone else will own all of your things. Your car will be scrap metal, your wedding ring on someone else’s finger you have never met. Your descendants will hardly know who you were. You may be a portrait on a wall but your history, your photos and videos will be digital dust. You won’t even be in anyone’s memories.
And I say this not in the name of nihilism nor despair. I say this to scream at you for hope and freedom. Read this again and then think about the 95 per cent of things that you have worried about this week. They don’t matter.
Nothing is really yours. Nothing truly belongs to you. You borrow time, people, memories and joy, much like books from a library. Some pages will be stained with tears, others with coffee, and some might go missing. But your story will eventually end, your book will return to the shelf, and someone else will borrow it.
So make this book transform your story. Let it change your life now by listening to the whispers of those who have lived a second act. You don’t need to die to experience this transformation. Why not turn your ‘life 1.0’ into ‘life 2.0’ now?
Life gets easier once you realise life’s not getting any easier. If this is rock bottom, at least it is solid ground. The world is so beautiful and life so short. Don’t let your life be wasted on living; don’t let your funeral be wasted on your death.
‘I began to think that, you know, in reality, we often say that I hope to go to heaven when we die. In reality, we go to heaven when we’re born.’
– Astronaut James Lovell