Death (and Taxes)

I met with my accountant today to discuss tax returns. Actually, he called for the meeting (which is a generally not a good sign). But it all turned out okay, I guess. Apart from the obvious rancour that comes with being told how much of your hard-earned cash you’re going to have to part with and watch sink slowly into a bureaucratic bog. (Okay, let me also say that I do support giving to Caesar what is Caesar’s; I just wish it felt more like Caesar was spending it wisely. But that’s another story...)

Benjamin Franklin wrote “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes". Cheerful chap, Ol’ Ben F. This was possibly a revelation that came to him after his experiment in which he sought to show that lightning was an electrical phenomenon. According to the story, he decided to tie a key to a kite and fly it in a thunderstorm in the hopes of it getting struck by lightning thereby magnetising the key. Of course, if he actually did do this, he would have come within an inch of his life to have survived at all. (This may also account for the lack of hair on his cranium as depicted on the $100 bill.) But back to taxes.

Somehow Mr Franklin’s quote always comes to mind when submitting tax returns. And by implication then, the Receiver of Revenue carries out yet another useful public service: an annual reminder of Death.

Death is an uncomfortable subject for most people. In fact, people for whom death is NOT an uncomfortable subject are generally those who make the rest of us feel uncomfortable anyway (which pretty much amounts to the same thing). Even so-called ‘sophisticated’ western society gets edgy about uttering the word ‘death’, as though to do so would invite the Grim Reaper ahead of time. And so we turn to a colourful part of language to do the dirty work for us; euphemism. (No, not mercy-killing. That would be ‘euthanasia’.)

Euphemism; saying something without actually saying it. Beating around the bush. Such as the use of a phrase relating to the purchase of agricultural real estate to convey that uncomfortable news that so-and-so has ... well ... died. (It’s even uncomfortable typing it. It seems so cold, so factual, so ... final.)

But we do get colourful with it. We could say Benjamin Franklin is dead, or we could say he is pushing up daisies. Luciano Pavarotti has joined the choir invisible. The captain of the Titanic is sleeping with the fishes. (Or he is fish flakes.) Elvis has left the building. (I mean he has REALLY left the building!) Joseph Stalin is lying in state. Queen Victoria has popped off. Jules Verne bought a one-way ticket. King Henry VIII snuffed it. Marie Antoinette got wacked. Gandhi bought the tango uniform. Michelangelo went into the fertilizer business. Lawrence Olivier took the final bow/curtain/act. Adolf Hitler committed harikiri. Edmund Hillary climbed the mountain (okay, plus he actually climbed the mountain). Fred Astaire danced the last dance. Aristotle paid Charon’s fare. Plato crossed the River Styx. Julius Caesar is wandering the Elysian Fields. Abraham Lincoln kicked the bucket. Winston Churchill is bereft of life. Marilyn Monroe is six feet under. Greta Garbo is in repose. Kurt Cobain bought it. Mama Cass choked ... and croaked. Saddam Hussein has met his Maker. Paul the octopus has ceased to be. The flame of Mao Tse-tung’s mortal life is smothered in ... you know...  Ronald Reagan has shuffled off this mortal coil. Bob Marley is cadaverous. King Nebuchadnezzar is living-challenged. Martin Luther King is at room temperature. Vladimir Lenin is taking a dirt nap.

And as of Tuesday 2 November 2010, Andy Irons, three times surfing world champion, is dead.

He leaves behind a wife and their first child, as yet unborn. He was two years younger than me.

Personally, I think the reason why we use euphemisms and humour to somehow ‘handle’ death is to keep it at a safe and sanitary distance. For many people, death is not even an inconvenient fact of life; it’s a fantasy, stuck away in a mental cupboard somewhere, surfacing only now and again by accident when we lose someone close. Many people seem to only think about death in distant theoretical terms, like it’s some interesting conundrum, a conceptual Rubik’s Cube to pick up and fiddle with when we’re feeling ... wistful and ... in touch with some deep place ... or had too much to drink and decided to do some mental spring cleaning.

But consider this; today I am 34 years old. Assuming I live to the ripe old age of 85, say, I have 51 years left. More than enough? Perhaps. If all goes well. But nothing is certain. If I were Andy Irons, I would have been dead for two years already. Whatever happens after death would have been happening to me for two years.

For those who hold to the view that when we die, that’s it, that there is nothing, that we just stop being, I want to ask you to consider something. Please do it seriously. Consider the implications if you are wrong. If there is more than just nothing when a person dies, what you would have been experiencing for the past two years if you had died two years ago?

Now tell me: how sure are you of what you believe?