Ellen McAteer

“People in Kwahu-Tafo, a rural town in Southern Ghana, regard a peaceful death as a ‘good death’. ‘Peaceful’ refers to the dying person having finished all business and made peace with others before his/her death and implies being at peace with his/her own death. It further refers to the manner of dying: not by violence, an accident or a fearsome disease, not by foul means and without much pain. A good and peaceful death comes ‘naturally’ after a long and well-spent life. Such a death preferably takes place at home, which is the epitome of peacefulness, surrounded by children and grandchildren. Finally, a good death is a death which is accepted by the relatives.”

Dying peacefully: considering good death and bad death in Kwahu-Tafo, Ghana. van der Geest S.

Apart from the fact of the disease, which took him young, I think my Dad had all of this. And more, he had painting, even when the cancer took away his singing voice. I would add to this – die doing something you love. Keep painting, writing, singing, inventing. You’ll never think “that’s it, I’ve done it”, because there’s always more to do. But to die trying!

At Eighty

Push the boat out, compañeros,
push the boat out, whatever the sea.
Who says we cannot guide ourselves
through the boiling reefs, black as they are,
the enemy of us all makes sure of it!
Mariners, keep good watch always
for that last passage of blue water
we have heard of and long to reach
(no matter if we cannot, no matter!)
in our eighty-year-old timbers
leaky and patched as they are but sweet,
well seasoned with the scent of woods
long perished, serviceable still
in unarrested pungency
of salt and blistering sunlight. Out,
push it all out into the unknown!
Unknown is best, it beckons best,
like distant ships in mist, or bells
clanging ruthless from stormy buoys.

Edwin Morgan

It’s coming up for a year since my Dad died, and though sadness comes and goes, the happiness has multiplied, too. A measure of healing has begun, after the draft has been a long time mixing. Some of his last words to my sister, when she tried to tell him how much she loved him, were “Come on, let’s not be morbid”. So when my brother asked me if it was ok for him to head off to a songwriting retreat that weekend, I nearly laughed. I can’t think of anything Dad would have liked to hear more than that Jim is going to be forced to write songs, except perhaps that Susie is leaving Glasgow to run her own business, escaping from working for the man at last. Meanwhile, I’ve got a gig at the end of the month supporting two great blues guitarists, Sleepy Eyes Nelson and Craig Hughes. Very excited about that – mixed with regret that Dad can’t hear them, and play with us. There’s a whole community of blues musicians in Glasgow, growing into a scene I would have loved to see him join. It’s at a lovely teahouse in an old mews lane, very relaxed and cosy place down a lane with a bookshop, a record shop and an antique clock shop on the way, and lovely little flats above with a community terrace garden by the river. So of course developers are mad to tear it down and build a monolith instead – I’m going to a protest march Saturday (http://saveotagolane.co.uk/Meet.html).

Heigh ho, nothing gold can stay, as the poet said. But isn’t that why we pause to watch the sun rise?

A metal claw crumbles chunks of their grandfather’s Govan school as my boys begin nursery just yards away – I wonder, would he have been glad or angry that his grandsons will grow up where he did? After he ran away to London, and had me there? Are we a snake, eating our own tale? My Uncle Eddie likes the circularity, but my father preferred straight lines. Although two of his last paintings have a frame contained within them, as if he wanted to paint outside it. Perhaps that’s what I’m doing now. I hope so.

The tearing hand is a joy my kids, as it is to me. I tried to mourn the history and sandstone, but could only see the sick-green inner walls, the rotting wooden rafters, and remember how much he had hated them, the bitter men who told him he was nothing. On my walls hang a series of colour shouts against them; and in my pocket, on a silver stick, his songs, to tell them they were wrong.