Birth and Death of the Trivial Kind

There is magic in birth and death. In birth, the magic is in the enormous potential of the unknown. When you look at your newly born child, there is no way you can know what he or she will become. Later on, you might have some glimpses of their future selves, but in that very first moment, all that there is, is hope, the potential for greatness.

It is very similar, and yet very different at the same time, when we look at death. On one side, it is the end; on the other it is the beginning for something new. But above all, it is an opportunity for closure. Even in the very last moment of a life, the dying person can say or do something that could change the lives of the ones present. A simple look sometimes can make us see things in a different light.

I will never forget my dad’s last days. We took him to a terribly expensive and a terrible private hospital in Bulgaria. I had the feeling that the staff there only wanted to extract the maximum amount of money from us without giving much back. One of the young doctors told me that my dad had a stomach cancer, but there was no need for treatment because he was old and useless. The way she said it was so cynical and unconcerned that I wonder if she had ever heard of the Hippocratic oath. She must have been asleep while reciting it. (By the way, those were the times when physicians were still bound under it.) Then one of the nurses asked me with pity why I had brought my 4-year-old daughter to the hospital just to see an old man, which virtually left me speechless.

And then, there was that short moment of me and my daughter sitting by my dad’s hospital bed. My dad looked at me and said with the most loving voice I have ever heard him speaking: ‘You don’t need to stay here, my daughter. I am OK. Don’t worry about me.’

My dad and I were of the same ilk, so we always butted heads through our lives. If he died before that moment, I would have remembered him like that: a proud, rather harsh man, with an occasional flurry of sense of humour who loved good food and drink. He was good with his hands and could repair anything from an electric plug to an aeroplane if he put his mind to it. That new side of him though I have never seen before — he was on his dying bed but was more concerned about me and his granddaughter, than about himself. His love and compassion were there, breaking the hard shell of his being.

So now when I think of my dad, it is always that particular moment which comes to mind. That moment defines him as a human being for me, rather than the 90 something years of his whole life. How strange and magical that is? And I know that it can happen.

When I look at the news today, carefully tailored out of personal experiences, designed to make us feel softhearted and very compassionate, I think of those last moments of my dad.

The pain and loneliness of old and suffering people must be really great and should not be underestimated, but we never know when the magic of life and death will intertwine their shadows and will create the perfect moment for connection, for redemption or for regret. Who are we to know the future? Who are we to deem a life (even our own) useless? Who are we to say that it should end now?

Those are the questions on my mind.

Let us keep our birth and death magical; let’s not turn them into those of the trivial kind.