station at the right exit.
I’ve never lost my wonderment at Japan. I’ve travelled around the country many times
since that first trip and I still thrill at the sights and sounds and smells: the
sugary cloud of charcoal smoke billowing from the grilled eel shop, the soupy vapour
you inhale with your ramen, the cut-straw sweetness of new tatami mats.
My point is that I’ve travelled enough, collected enough treasured memories to be
satisfied. You can never go everywhere and see everything. Even if you did, I suspect
there would be a point where you grew satiated with travel and longed to be home.
Because the pleasures of home can be just as great as the pleasures of travel, and
there is a price to be paid for wanting to be everywhere and nowhere, like my father.
When he couldn’t fly anymore Dad was lost. He had no other interests, nothing to
ground him. I’m told that during his last confused days he fretted about his long-lost
flight log books. At times he became soanxious about their whereabouts he had to
be sedated.
A bucket list implies a lack, a store of unfulfilled desires or aspirations, a worry
that you haven’t done enough with your life. It suggests that more experience is
better, whereas the opposite might equally be true. I don’t have a bucket list because
it comforts me to remember the things I have done, rather than hanker after the things
I haven’t done. Whatever they are, I figure they weren’t for me, and that gives me
a sense of contentment, a sort of ballast as I set out on my very last trip.
Yes, I have considered suicide, and it remains, for the reasons I have detailed,
a constant temptation. If the law in Australia permitted assisted dying I would be
putting plans into place right now to take my own life. Once the day came, I’d invite
my family and closest friends to come over and we’d have a farewell drink. I’d thank
them all for everything they’ve done for me. I’d tell them how much I love them.
I imagine there would be copious tears. I’d hope there would be some laughter. There
would be music playing in the background, something from the soundtrack of my youth.
And then, when the time was right, I’d say goodbye and take my medicine, knowing
that the party would go on without me, that everyone would stay a while, talk some
more, be there for each other for as long as they wished. As someone who knows myend is coming, I can’t think of a better way to go out. Nor can I fathom why this
kind of humane and dignified death is outlawed.
No, it would not be breaking the law to go out on my own. The newspapers are full
of options: hanging, falling from a great height, leaping in front of a speeding
train, drowning, blowing myself up, setting myself on fire, but none of them really
appeals to me. Again I’m constrained by the thought of collateral damage, of the
shock to my family, of the trauma to whoever was charged with putting out the flames,
fishing out the body, scraping the brains off the pavement. When you analyse all
the possible scenarios for suicide, none of them is pretty. Which is the reason I
support the arguments in favour of assisted dying, because, to misquote Churchill,
it is the worst method of dying, except for all the others.
No, I haven’t become religious; that is, I haven’t experienced a late conversion
to a particular faith. If that means I’m going straight to hell when I die then so
be it. One of my problems with religion has always been the idea that the righteous
are saved and the rest are condemned. Isn’t that the ultimate logic of religion’s
‘us’ and ‘them’ paradigm?
Perhaps it’s a case of not missing what you have never had. I had no religious instruction
growing up. I knew afew Bible stories from a brief period of attendance at Sunday
school, but these seemed on a level with fairy tales, if less interesting. Their
sanctimoniousness put me off. I preferred the darker tones of the Brothers Grimm,
who presented a world where there
I’ve never lost my wonderment at Japan. I’ve travelled around the country many times
since that first trip and I still thrill at the sights and sounds and smells: the
sugary cloud of charcoal smoke billowing from the grilled eel shop, the soupy vapour
you inhale with your ramen, the cut-straw sweetness of new tatami mats.
My point is that I’ve travelled enough, collected enough treasured memories to be
satisfied. You can never go everywhere and see everything. Even if you did, I suspect
there would be a point where you grew satiated with travel and longed to be home.
Because the pleasures of home can be just as great as the pleasures of travel, and
there is a price to be paid for wanting to be everywhere and nowhere, like my father.
When he couldn’t fly anymore Dad was lost. He had no other interests, nothing to
ground him. I’m told that during his last confused days he fretted about his long-lost
flight log books. At times he became soanxious about their whereabouts he had to
be sedated.
A bucket list implies a lack, a store of unfulfilled desires or aspirations, a worry
that you haven’t done enough with your life. It suggests that more experience is
better, whereas the opposite might equally be true. I don’t have a bucket list because
it comforts me to remember the things I have done, rather than hanker after the things
I haven’t done. Whatever they are, I figure they weren’t for me, and that gives me
a sense of contentment, a sort of ballast as I set out on my very last trip.
Yes, I have considered suicide, and it remains, for the reasons I have detailed,
a constant temptation. If the law in Australia permitted assisted dying I would be
putting plans into place right now to take my own life. Once the day came, I’d invite
my family and closest friends to come over and we’d have a farewell drink. I’d thank
them all for everything they’ve done for me. I’d tell them how much I love them.
I imagine there would be copious tears. I’d hope there would be some laughter. There
would be music playing in the background, something from the soundtrack of my youth.
And then, when the time was right, I’d say goodbye and take my medicine, knowing
that the party would go on without me, that everyone would stay a while, talk some
more, be there for each other for as long as they wished. As someone who knows myend is coming, I can’t think of a better way to go out. Nor can I fathom why this
kind of humane and dignified death is outlawed.
No, it would not be breaking the law to go out on my own. The newspapers are full
of options: hanging, falling from a great height, leaping in front of a speeding
train, drowning, blowing myself up, setting myself on fire, but none of them really
appeals to me. Again I’m constrained by the thought of collateral damage, of the
shock to my family, of the trauma to whoever was charged with putting out the flames,
fishing out the body, scraping the brains off the pavement. When you analyse all
the possible scenarios for suicide, none of them is pretty. Which is the reason I
support the arguments in favour of assisted dying, because, to misquote Churchill,
it is the worst method of dying, except for all the others.
No, I haven’t become religious; that is, I haven’t experienced a late conversion
to a particular faith. If that means I’m going straight to hell when I die then so
be it. One of my problems with religion has always been the idea that the righteous
are saved and the rest are condemned. Isn’t that the ultimate logic of religion’s
‘us’ and ‘them’ paradigm?
Perhaps it’s a case of not missing what you have never had. I had no religious instruction
growing up. I knew afew Bible stories from a brief period of attendance at Sunday
school, but these seemed on a level with fairy tales, if less interesting. Their
sanctimoniousness put me off. I preferred the darker tones of the Brothers Grimm,
who presented a world where there