Â鶹Éç

Canon Ann Easter, Chief Executive of a Charity and Chaplain to the Queen:

My Dad had been ill for nearly a year when his condition deteriorated and he was admitted to hospital; next morning, the 18th of August, 17 years ago today, the phone rang and a nurse said to me ‘Your father is significantly unresponsive’

I said I’d go to the hospital immediately, but, as I put the phone down I said to my husband and children ‘It was the nurse at the hospital. She says Dad’s significantly unresponsive……. I think she means he’s died’, and with that, my family and I started to laugh in that hysterical way that sometimes happens at times of extreme stress; we were hooting with laughter at ‘Significantly unresponsive!’  because my Dad, who loved words and the way people use them, would have been laughing like a drain at such a coy euphemism.

And we started thinking of all the other things she might have said, becoming more and more hilarious; Fallen off his perch, Given up the ghost, Popped his clogs, Kicked the bucket, Been called to higher service, Copped it,  Brown bread! Obiit, if you’re into Latin. At least she didn’t say that my Dad had ‘failed to fulfil his wellness potential’, a phrase that was suggested in a recent medical manual!

We know, of course, why the nurse cloaked that news, probably the worst we can hear of a loved one, in an expression which she hoped might somehow ease the pain a little; I think she was afraid that the bald facts would be too shocking and also because, if you’re the one who has to break bad news, it’s difficult, whichever words you use.

But I always feel that people of faith can afford to be bold when we talk about death. We still miss my Dad, of course we do, every day, but, as Christians, we believe that his death was the gateway to a new and golden life in Heaven where he’s well, whole and free, reunited with our Mum and all those friends who went on before him – and there’s another euphemism!

Dress it up or tell it plain, we all have to come to terms with death one way or another, and the hope of a life hereafter and the joy of lots of happy memories don’t obscure death but put it into perspective so that it doesn’t need to be hidden.