A couple of weeks ago I was 74. Yes, 74! I can scarcely believe it, because I still don’t feel like a mature grownup. But I have to accept it. The physical signs are there. Bruises appear, I can’t remember how I got them, they grow enormous and take ages to go away. I currently have a purple, green and yellow lower leg and upper arm. Every sprain lasts for months, I fall asleep in the afternoons and need subtitles on the telly. Fielding is sure every ailment is his last: it’s not a cold, it’s terminal pneumonia; any mystery pain is a cancer come to finish him off.
Since his stroke, death is on his mind, and on mine, because a birthday means one year closer to the grave. And then what? Nothing. That will be the end of us. I wish I thought otherwise and that there was a heavenly afterlife into which one drifted and where all our old chums, parents, favourite relatives and all the dogs I’d ever had would be waiting – bunting out, favourite snacks ready. But then I can’t help but think of the flaws in this vision.
How do we find our friends? It’s such a vast area. Infinity. Nothing for ever and ever – another idea that I can’t get to grips with. And if food was your idea of bliss, will there even be any snacks? How is food produced up there? Is the climate temperate? Do we float around? And in what form do we arrive? In the same state that we left here? Decrepit, with our horrid terminal illnesses, or younger? And if so, at what age, exactly?
“Don’t be ridiculous,” says Mavis. “It’s just your soul that lives on.” But what is that? I’m fairly sure I don’t have one and that there are no rewards for good behaviour. So it will just be ashes for me, sprinkled illegally along with the ex-dogs on the trail of a favourite walkie. A fertiliser, which means a few more grass seeds, bird food, more birds, reincarnation of a sort. That’s as soppy as I intend to get.
