Nightingale Hospital, Marylebone, London
Mrs Death:
I’m feeling fine.
No, that’s not strictly true . . .
Doctor Delano:
How are you feeling?
Mrs Death:
I’ve been feeling anxious . . .
Doctor Delano:
OK, do you want to explore this?
Mrs Death:
I want to . . . but I am worrying . . . I feel anxious.
This. It isn’t normal and it isn’t safe.
Doctor Delano:
OK, take a deep breath and exhale and inhale and that’s it . . . breathe . . . breathe . . . Now let’s unpack this slowly.
Mrs Death:
Look, I don’t know why I am here. I am normal. I mean fine. The other doctor told me I am developing bipolar disorder, but I just have mood swings. I think bipolar means much more than just mood swings. I am not bipolar. My mood swings are probably just exhaustion, a hormone imbalance, anxiety, low energy, low iron, I mean, no wonder I have some depression, I admit I am Death and I am depressed and exhausted . . . After all I have seen, it is insanity that I am the sane and normal voice in here.
Doctor Delano:
You sound agitated today. Please remember, we try not to use the term normal in these sessions. I mean, what is normal? I am not normal, you are not normal, nobody is normal, not really, and as for safe, well, what harm can come from talking? Talk to me. Can you tell me more about Mrs Death, can you talk about these voices . . .
Mrs Death:
It’s not voices, Doctor, it’s real, real, real conversations, real and vivid conversations, enlightening conversations, inspirational and lengthy conversations, poems, stories, songs, connections. I really haven’t talked to anyone like this ever before.
Doctor Delano:
Of course. Conversations. OK. So tell me about these conversations you’ve been having? Who are you talking to, are you able to ask questions?
Mrs Death:
I have made friends with a human called Wolf. I’ve crossed a line . . . I speak with a mortal. Am I able to ask questions? Yes. I can ask Wolf anything, I don’t always get a straight answer but I can ask anything and . . .
Doctor Delano:
And . . . go on . . . How do these conversations make you feel? Does Wolf respond? How does Wolf respond?
Mrs Death:
Wolf listens. I know it sounds strange, I know it does, but I . . . I don’t know . . .
I don’t know where to begin . . .
Doctor Delano:
Begin at the beginning. Take a deep breath. When did this start?
At the beginning? Seriously?
Doctor Delano:
Yes, start at the beginning, the very beginning.
Mrs Death:
Well, you should know . . .
Doctor Delano:
Take your time and tell me your version of events, tell me how this began . . .
Mrs Death:
From the beginning . . .
For thousands of years I listened. A huge part of the work of being Mrs Death is all the listening that I do. Since this world began, I have heard it all: I listen to the ending, I am there for their last words and last prayers. As they let go they tell me their life stories, regrets and fears and loves. My head is filled constantly with stories of great sacrifice and great stupidity, stories of great courage and great evil, stories of bravery and kindness, greed and fury, grief and tragedy, joy and love. I alone hear all of this and I process it and keep it locked inside me and I continue my work. I am Death. In a way I am just a glorified rubbish collector. I am a cleaner. I clean. I collect the spirits up and carry all those burdens away. And lately I’ve been feeling like it is never-ending and all-consuming and all too much. I feel like we are spilling over. I’m exhausted. I’ve been feeling emotional. I know it’s just life, or rather death, but I’ve been . . . crying?
Doctor Delano:
There is nothing wrong with crying and no such thing as just life. Life can be all those things: exhausting and emotional. You are allowed to feel that strain. You really are too hard on yourself. You put yourself under so much pressure. Can you give me any examples, is there something that triggers these thoughts, is there something making you cry?
Mrs Death:
The other day – just one example – the other day, there I am sweeping through a town in Syria and I find I am in floods of tears. I stop and stand there in the rubble and debris and I wonder why, why? What the fuck am I doing here again, so soon, again? Twice in one week? And that same day I am in America, in a school for yet another mass shooting, and I am there, roaring my eyes out, clearing through, collecting all these souls of terrified dead teenagers. Then I am out in the channel, off the coast of France, collecting the murdered souls of another sunk dinghy, a make-do refugee raft filled with desperate people escaping war but being left to drown on purpose. My work has been overwhelming. So much death and war and destruction, famine and murder.
And suicide is on the rise. And deaths caused by malnutrition, poverty and austerity, poor housing and poor healthcare. We thought things would change! I remember Time and Life, the sun and moon and all the universe, well, we all laughed and thought that the twenty-first century would be an easier century. The human has evolved at an alarming rate. Can you all just stop laying eggs for five fucking minutes? Stop consuming everything? Just stop it, stop it, Life, can Life give us all some rest? Can we hit the pause button and take a piss and have a cup of tea and a nap, please?
Humans have found ways to access world communication and share intelligence, they can send medicine and ideas and solutions, they can share art and beauty, they can communicate their resolutions and solutions all with the click of a button. Yet I am as busy now as I was in 1066. I am as busy as I was with Attila the Hun. There was once a time of language barriers and the unknown: the size of the planet was a mystery, it was tribal; the humans didn’t know how small the earth was and how connected and similar the human condition. Human tribes fought for territories, for land grabs and gold and power. And now it is the same thing, but there is the internet and Google Translate. Why aren’t they looking up the millions of words for peace and love and using this phenomenal intelligence to find cures and share solutions? I’m joking a little, and maybe I am not joking at all . . . It seems the more information and communication humans have, the more stupid they are, the more facts and tools they have, the more they get distrustful, spreading fake facts and lies and ignorance and fear until they become stupefied and closed off from their hearts. When did caring become so unfashionable?
Believe me, I love my job, don’t get me wrong: Death is the greatest honour. I am here to work with you, I am there for rebirth and for the ritual of soul and spirit crossing into my realm of Death, but I am ploughing through a flood of untimely and unnecessary and sudden and violent deaths, genocide, natural disasters, all caused by greed and destruction. And that’s just the human souls. Do you know how many miles and miles of ocean life are being killed by plastic and pollution every second? The ice caps are melting and sea levels are rising. The depleting ozone. The climate crisis. Flood and fire! I mean, I am Death but this isn’t what I signed up for! I am not here for this . . .
I am not here to destroy myself. I am not going to support the death of Death.
And don’t get me started on the idiot people accidentally dying by taking selfies. Do you know how many people die because of selfies? People are dying taking photos of their own faces and falling off the Great Wall of China or tripping over into the Grand Canyon. I am doing the work of a dozen women here . . . Sorry.
Never apologise, I am here for this, thank you for sharing. So tell me, how does Wolf fit into all of this?
Mrs Death:
When I am with Wolf we explore and dream. Wolf sits at my desk and I tell my secrets. I have grown to trust Wolf. I have made a human friend. Wolf has been talking to me every day this winter. Wolf and me write together, we write stories and poems together. Wolf says, Hey Mrs Death, how are you today, are you alright? Who died today, do you want to talk about it? Do you want to get these feelings down on paper? Wolf says, Hey Mrs Death, do you want to talk about your experiences? Shall we write about the cigarette industry? Or the arms trade? Or fracking? Or the pharmaceutical companies? Or the oil companies? Or the manufacturers of guns? Wanna have a chat about the real monsters, the toxic greed and big corporate industries that are killing us all?
When I am writing with Wolf I feel seen and heard, actually listened to for once; for the first time ever I am not just an invisible cleaner, clearing the dead bodies. Wolf writes with me. We write about my memories and my dreams for the future and what my legacy will be, at least what I would like it to be. Wolf asks me, Will there ever be a day when Mrs Death will rest? I don’t have an answer for that. Wolf asks, What happens if the earth is annihilated, what happens when all is flood and fire? I say, It will be messy, I know that much and that little.
Doctor Delano, all I know for sure is unless the humans change the way they are living, they cannot change the way they are dying.
Doctor Delano:
We can change the way we are dying if we change the way we are living.
You have so much on your plate. You really are taking everything on your shoulders here. It sounds like you have a lot to process. Losing people – loss – it’s a big parcel to unwrap and comprehend. I think the best possible way to deal with loss and trauma would be to write about it. This writing, it sounds very healthy to me. Use your creativity to process it. Grief is a big job. It is a big job you do and a lot of work and it sounds to me like you have reached a pinnacle, or perhaps a turning point . . . Do you feel like that? Do you feel comfortable enough to tell me any more? When did this friendship with Wolf begin? What draws you two together: did you choose Wolf or did Wolf choose you?
Mrs Death:
We found each other on Christmas Eve. It began with The Desk. Wolf acquired my old desk from a junk shop and it started then, a couple of months ago. I use The Desk as a vessel, a conduit, to speak to Wolf. When Wolf sits at The Desk and listens we can communicate through the veil. All my poems and songs, my private thoughts, seep through Wolf’s hands and fingers and out onto the pages.
But we go back much further than that. I met Wolf as a child. There was a horrible fire. Wolf was only nine back then and Wolf’s mother died that night. Wolf howled a note so loud and so sad and so pure that I never forgot it. I never forgot that kid, that curly-haired kid standing barefoot in the road in pyjamas, an angel in all that black smoke and chaos. Lots of people died in that fire, it was a catastrophe, cheap housing, no fire alarms or sprinklers. Of all deaths, I don’t know why but I never forgot that night or Wolf.
Doctor Delano:
Earlier you talked about safety: may I ask, are you safe? Is Wolf safe with you? Are you safe with Wolf? Do you feel safe?
Mrs Death:
What do you mean by safe?
Doctor Delano:
I mean is Wolf safe? Is Wolf safe talking to Mrs Death?
Is Mrs Death safe with Wolf?
Mrs Death:
Death isn’t catching! Hahaha, that is what Wolf keeps saying, death isn’t catching.
Well, I don’t know, what harm can come from talking about death? That’s what you said. Talking is healthy. Writing is cathartic. We’re talking now, you and me, and you’re alive and fine, aren’t you? . . . I mean, you haven’t dropped dead by talking to me, have you?
Doctor Delano:
That’s true. Writing can be cathartic.
Would you be interested in going to a writing retreat? I have friends in Ireland, they have a place, a tower, it is a place where poets and artists like you can go to retreat and write, it would be perfect for you . . .
Mrs Death:
That sounds amazing. Thank you. It’s good to talk to you today, Doctor . . .
Doctor Delano:
I’ll give you a letter to send to them in Ireland. I think it would be perfect for you to have a break. Talking is healthy. Talking and listening, talking and listening, that is what we do here, we’re here to listen. And writing seems to be helping you too.
Mrs Death:
I have never spoken about this with anyone before. I just want to say thank you. That sounds wonderful. Doctor Delano, it is such a relief to talk. You used the word cathartic. It has been cathartic to write and to talk. We need to give ourselves space to grieve, to be open and vulnerable and to tell someone about the business of Death. Lately it’s been horrendous, every day another trauma, another battle, another bomb, another catastrophe, another tragedy. Death has been working hard; I have been working hard. Thank you, I would love to go to Ireland to write.
Doctor Delano:
You’re welcome. I’ll write you a letter of recommendation. I can tell you have been working hard . . . You’re doing some great work here.
Mrs Death:
Thank you.
Doctor Delano:
Please don’t think me rude, but you’ve never been gender specific in any of our sessions before this. I’ve never imagined death as a person, let alone as a woman. Death is a woman, you say, you identify as a woman. How does that feel, how does she feel, how does that manifest?
Mrs Death:
You’re not alone. Nobody sees me. The world sees death as male. This is how it has always been. The artists, the writers, the poets and storytellers, they’ve all imagined me, they have fictionalised death, but always as a male energy. They will tell us stories of a woman causing death but not being death herself. When we think of the female role in death, we might picture Greek or Roman mythology, the Medusa, Atropos, the vengeful Goddess or the siren luring sailors to their death. There is a female guardian of hell in Viking tradition and Nordic folk stories. You will find Kali Ma, the female incarnation of Shiva, as the powerful Goddess of destruction. We find women here as Goddesses and powerful deities in Asian cultures and African cultures and Caribbean folk songs and stories too. In Islamic and Middle Eastern folklore we have powerful queens and Goddesses: often depicted as an outcast woman or a witch, a hag, she is often destructive or motivated by malice. She is a vengeful crone, a woman of ‘hysteria’. And often she is childless or barren, as though having a child is the natural and only thing that makes a woman a sensible woman, a real woman. Often even when a Goddess is powerful, she is enslaved by a curse to a male figure, to a devil or Satan character.
Then there are horror movies, with repeated themes of enslavement and submission, the Devil’s concubine, a female vampire or pagan witch. We see cinematic images of the Devil’s whores, naked women possessed by evil. Mystical witches in a circle dancing naked in some woods by firelight in a bloody ritual. There are women of magick, white magic or black magic and Voodoo spell-makers, African witch doctors and Caribbean Obeah priestesses.
None of these are me. They are not DEATH – Mrs Death – they are not Death itself: they do not do my work.
In the media, in the newspapers, there are horror stories of evil women capable of taking life – for example the Moors murderer Myra Hindley. But we don’t hear of many famous serial killer women or female repeat offenders who act alone. Most female serial killers we hear of appear to work in a team, a pair, a deadly couple that kill, have you noticed that?
Only three women have ever been given whole-life sentences in the UK: Rose West, Myra Hindley and most recently Joanne Dennahy. Joanne Dennahy was a thirty-year-old mother of two and a triple murderer. These were the Peterborough ditch murders. She pleaded guilty on all charges in 2013. She hunted and killed men as though for fun, and allegedly wanted to be famous for her crimes. She appeared to enjoy frightening people. She threatened to kill Rose West within minutes of arriving in the same jail and they had to move her to another prison. I digress, but it is fascinating, don’t you think?
We are programmed to believe that the female is here for birth, that she is a she, she is mother, she is here to nurture a soul inside her body and to feed the infant at her breast. That the woman may house the new life and soul, and feed and care for a soul, but she may not be the power that takes a soul. I am here. Death is a woman. I am a woman. Surely by erasing me we have erased this power? By never portraying a woman as the representative of Death, the boss of Death, the figure of Death itself, one could debate that an important and fundamental disempowerment takes place. Perhaps this is what erasure looks like.
All over the planet women are portrayed as nurturers, life-givers, life-providers, nurse and mother and carer. Women are here to respond, nurture and feed us, but not to have the final say, not to pull the trigger, close the curtains and press the exit button. We are told that God is a man in the sky and that the Devil is a man down below. The Christian Church is ruled by a pope, who is a human man and judge and jury. And our policemen and our laws are made and amplified by men. Time is also a male; we have been told there is a Father Time. And then the time of our death and our mortality – the Grim Reaper – is also depicted by a male figure in a black hood with a scythe.
It is exhausting how much space men want and how much credit and control man wants to take for mankind. Male is the God and creator, male is in the centre of the story, male is the narrator, the source of the fire; male as the light, male as the night and the dark and the war and destruction. Man holds all the cards. Think of the Sun and the Moon, the sky and the sea, the water and the flame, the air and the earth, the yin and the yang, the birth and the death, which is female to you and which is male? Think of the colours of the rainbow, red and yellow and pink and blue and purple and orange and green, which colours are female and which are male? Think of each and every star in the galaxy and tell me which is male and female? These spirits and energies, the gender of the world and our universe, how ridiculous it all is to me. Is oxygen male? Is air a boy too?
I have come here to walk the earth as human. I choose to be disguised and camouflaged. I live in the faces of the most betrayed and ignored of all humans. I live in silence. I am the words trapped on the bitten tongue. I am more than a statistic. I am more than another hashtag. I live in the heart of the poor woman, the black woman, the elderly woman, the sick woman, the healer, the teacher, the priestess, the witch, the wife, the mother and the girl. I am Death and I am quick. I am a rabbit and I can vanish. I can be anything I want to be. I choose the unheard and unspoken. I live in the silent scream and I will be silent no more and I have so much work to do . . .
Wow . . . I’ve never said all that before. I trust you, Doctor Delano . . . I trust you . . .
Thank you for trusting me. You’re doing some great work here . . .
Mrs Death:
I feel like you believe me. I am real. I think you believe in me.
Doctor Delano:
I do believe in you . . . I do.
Yes. You are real, of course.
Mrs Death:
REALLY REALLY REAL
breathing am I breathing?
Doctor Delano:
Yes . . . really.
Mrs Death:
I mean, put it this way, people will read your notes on this page and erase you, they’ll presume Doctor Delano is a man, just because I have used Doctor, Doctor, won’t they, Doctor? They will read Doctor Delano on a page and assume you are a male doctor and that it’s a man, a male doctor talking to Mrs Death here today. But you are real, a real woman, and a real female person who is a doctor doctor in a real hospital trying to help me . . .
Doctor, you are real, and I am real, and it is all really real, it is an erasure, isn’t it, breathing am I breathing wait I think I have forgotten to breathe . . .
Doctor Delano:
Real. Yes. You look pale. Do you need a break? Do you need some water?
Mrs Death:
You are real though . . . I am real . . . this is real.
MRS DEATH IS REALLY REALLY REAL
but what if I stop breathing am I breathing? I sometimes forget to breathe . . .
Doctor Delano:
Yes, real. I am real. You are real. Here, have some water?
Would you like to rest? Wolf?
Wolf? Wolf? Wolf?
Wolf:
I’M NOT BREATHING . . . I CANNOT BREATHE . . . I CANNOT . . .
WOLF! WOLF?
WOLF? BREATHE!
WOLF, WOLF!
WOLF?