Throughout my childhood and up to early adulthood, when I was still religious, I found a special solace in reading about the Happy Death, when the dying person, despite excruciating pain and the approaching end, remained calm and composed, finally bidding a gentle farewell to those gathered around the deathbed. The last words were usually those of tenderest love for those left behind, the last look one of great joy at seeing God at last and being received by Him in Heaven.

I remember when I was thirteen shedding tears over a description of a child dying from leukemia, at the very last moment suddenly sitting upright with a look of ineffable radiance on his face, extending his arms heavenwards and crying out, ‘I’m going home!’

Other uplifting three last words in the stories and reports that I read with solemn piety, included ‘I love you’, sometimes unspoken, but hovering on the wasted, parched lips, as the dying eyes rested on a much loved face; ‘We’ll meet again,’ to reassure those left behind that death is not the end; and ‘God bless you’, the ultimate ‘Thank you’ to all who had shown so much love and care. A specially poignant three-word farewell was ‘I forgive you,’ a brave show of benevolence at one’s death towards another who had caused nothing but untold suffering to one’s life.

This fascination with the edifying deathbed scene has long since gone, together with the entire Victorian corpus of heroic, selfless lives that had been my reading diet for years. One day I read about the last utterance, also comprising three words, of certain persons on their deathbed, including two world celebrities, and became almost convinced that they are the inevitable three last words.

Frank Sinatra, Mother Teresa and a certain young doctor in Singapore who had died of Sars some years back, had all gasped out, just before they died, ‘I can’t breathe.’ Three last words that remind us of the harsh reality that life is, ultimately, a process of oxidation, and its last moments are claimed by the brute demands of the body.

Ars vivendi, ars moriendi—the art of a good life, the art of a good death. But it is science, ever the deliverer of not-so-pretty truths, that explains the poignancy of the last words.

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About Vignettes...

A continuing flow of little, readable pieces that will constitute what I feel is an important 'legacy of values' to leave behind. Read more about Vignettes...