I often speculate on mortality - it might be a writer's curse, or just 'my thing', but I can't walk through a graveyard without thinking about the people beneath the ground, the lives reduced to dates and a "Beloved".
The grave that inspired a scene in King of Thorns.
(photo: Chris Meadows)
It's a subject that people come to dwell upon as they grow old, but it's one that I've always thought about. I have no spiritual or religious beliefs. The idea that the rest of existence will proceed without me, just as the many billions of years that preceeded me did, with no impact, is not intellectually difficult - but emotionally, it's a poser that calls into question issues of what, if anything, matters.
It's an idea that I have touched on in my books, none more so than Daughter of Crows, which features a main character in her sixties, only a little older than me, and has her consider (though not dwell upon) what has passed, what's to come, the significance of it, and both the indignities and benefits of age.
(photo: Mitriel Faywood)
Today was the memorial service for an old friend of mine who I'd not seen for many years. Jean-Claude Lebon was 62. His 21st birthday party, which fell very close to my own birthday and which I attended at age 18, was the first "proper" party I ever went to.
We called him John (it was how he introduced himself) - though he would lean into the Jean-Claude when wanting parallels with Jean-Claude Van Damme (it was the 80s after all) and the Lebon when Duran Duran (lead singer Simon Lebon) came up.
He was, like almost all my friends, a great extrovert. Generally speaking, it takes a gregarious, relentlessly cheerful person to batter their way though my innate reserve and make a connection. He was a cool cat, he knew dancers (through Jean-Marc, one of his three brothers), he was a black belt in karate, he was funny, friendly, welcoming, generous, and (this is important) slightly geeky.
a power nap during partying
Back then he worked on the computer games counter in WH Smiths and he'd carved a figure of a spear wielding Greek-style warrior a good 18 inches tall. If he'd been a little less popular and had slightly fewer calls on his time, I feel that he might even have played D&D with us. An idea that I fictionalised in the Impossible Times trilogy where I called on aspects of all four brothers to make one character.
Under different circumstances I would have gone to his (packed) memorial and cried along with old friends - grey beards and gray hair now (where any remains). But I'm in hospital with my youngest (by some margin) child, who is, at 21, the same age that I first met John at.
Today, the doctor gave us the grim 'talk' about Celyn's prospects over the next week. We've had that talk before and she's still here, but it's always sobering. So, yes, mortality is coming at me from all directions.
If I could have told John when he turned 21 that he would make it to 62, both of us would probably have considered it a fine innings. He might have said that even his father (in whose home we were partying) was still 21 years or so from that grand old age. But at the other end of that tunnel, I can say that John deserved more, had more to give, and that like his brother, my friend George, he was taken far too soon.
I walked around the catacombs in Paris a few months ago. Above the entrance it says "Stop. This is the empire of the dead." The bones of literally millions of people are stored there, banked against walls of skulls.
It's strangely overwhelming and underwhelming at the same time. As if the raw quantity of it somehow trivalises death - or certainly provides a new perspective, reminding us that it comes to all. The remains are totally annonymous. Famous people lie intermingled with the masses, good men with bad, women of genius with others you might have run a mile from. It presents death as the great leveller. And again, it prompts many questions to which I have no answers.
I mourn the passing of my friend. I fear the passing of my loved ones. And for myself I am scared of the process, and filled with a great wondering 'why?' about the whole business of being alive. However, until such time as I can no longer do it, I will continue to enjoy my life as much as I can, and give thanks for Jean-Claude Lebon, the man who taught this younger, far more geeky, much less cool teen to party.
