The tag line for this Blog is ‘Give me some truth – make me feel human’. The series of photographs by German photographer Walter Schels for the Wellcome Trust’s Life Before Death exhibition in London fulfill this criteria. The portraits are sobering and very moving. It reminded me of the last time I saw my Dad when he was in hospital dying from cancer. When I asked him how he was he replied “how do you expect me to be” – he knew he was near the end even if I and the rest of my family didn’t want to acknowledge this.
Schels and journalist Beate Lakottasay, who collaborated on this project, say how they were struck by how alone his subjects were. Even when they had visitors, no-one wanted to face the reality of their situation, they preferred to chat as if they’d soon be up and about again. It’s interesting too that Schels saw nothing to change his agnosticism.
It brought to mind some lines from , what remains for me the most powerful poem about death I have read, in Philip Larkin’s ‘Aubade’:
This is a special way of being afraid,
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear – no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.
Such reflections may not be upbeat or comfortable but they give an urgency to our being alive now and to cut out the crap that leaves us feeling less vital.
