May 20th, 2008
Nuala O’Faolain and raging “against the dying of the light”
Since this brief post, I have been meaning to write something about Nuala O’Faolain’s recent passing. I’m a bit late, but here’s a recent column about her. Belfast- based writer June Caldwell, who knew the writer, wrote a very personal piece in the The Guardian last week, which is well worth reading.
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This day last week, the funeral of writer Nuala O’Faolain took place. The sun was splitting the trees, which seemed very fitting when I think of an expression my granny had about weather on the day of a funeral. “Happy the corpse it rains on”, she used to remark and I couldn’t help think how apt that was. There wasn’t a drop of rain, and given the way she had outlined her attitude to death in an interview with Marian Finucane, there was no way Nuala O’Faolain was happy about leaving this world.
In that memorable interview, the writer brought up something that applies to all of us, regardless of whether we are healthy or dying. “I think there’s a wonderful rule of life that means that we do not consider our own mortality. There is an absolute difference between knowing that you are likely to die within the next year, and not knowing when you are going to die - an absolute difference.” Once, I was told that I might die - and it was terrifying - but then there was also much hope in that situation. It’s unimaginable how O’Faolain felt being told her remaining time amounted to merely weeks. As it happened, her removal took place exactly a month after the interview.
Pondering death is not something you do between deadlines and running around Tesco, and yet it is the one insurmountable thing that unites every person on the planet. It’s the fundamental bookend to our lives, and it remains, devoid of contemplation, like some foggy cloud far away on the horizon. O’Faolain didn’t think about it until she received the news that time was slipping like sand through her fingers. Where she is to be utterly commended – and there are many reasons to do so - is particularly for her no-nonsense approach to her final weeks. Offered treatment, she flatly refused. “Even if I gained time through the chemotherapy it isn’t time I want. Because as soon as I knew I was going to die soon, the goodness went out of life.” Her fortitude in choosing not to buy time is overwhelming. Many people in a similar situation probably can’t relate to this. Our survival instinct urges us to grasp at every medical straw. Instead, O’Faolain went on a cultural tour of Europe, taking in Paris, going to the Opera in Berlin and seeing her favourite paintings in the Prado in Madrid. She raged “against the dying of the light”, spending time with family and friends, laughing, crying, and having experiences until the very end.
What a beautiful way to spend your last weeks as a dying woman. And how unbelievably brave. Rather than embracing the trappings of sickness – constant sympathy, sad-eyed visitors and bed confinement – she chose art, culture and beauty; the things that had given her great joy in her life. In spite of her initial feelings of “impotence and wretchedness and sourness with life”, in her dying weeks she chose life, not death. If only we all had the courage in life, that she had in death.
May 20th, 2008 at 11:13 am
Hi Sinead. Great post. I’d like to think I’d live my last few weeks in the exact same way. (btw you’re linking to the Guardian again rather than linking to your previous post about her.)
May 20th, 2008 at 11:18 am
John, thank you. Duly sorted. When is baba due? Must be soon?
I know I would want to live my last weeks that way. I’d imagine there’s almost a sense of greediness about your time in the face of such a timeline; of wanting to cram it full of things, people and experiences. If I still had any energy in me, there’s no way I would want hospitals, nurses, treatment etc. Christ, I’ve had enough of them to last me a lifetime.
May 20th, 2008 at 11:28 am
About a week away to until there’s another gal in the house but if she’s anything like her mum she’ll be a few weeks late!
May 20th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Bought Are You Somebody? to read on holidays. Read it before but that was a long time ago and think I lost it. Looking forward to re-reading.
May 20th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Excellent post Sinead. I think that’s what embodied O’Faolain - her no-nonsense approach to everything in life. It’s probably safe to say that most people would be overwhelmed by that sort of news and just give up. I was talking to someone recently who made a full recovery from Aspergers (or Non-Aspergers I can never remember) and they had the same attitude - get on with life or you’ll just be dragged down.
Lovely dedication to a phenomenal person.
May 20th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Hi Sinead, elegantly worded and so very true. I know in advance I’d be a cowardly shit. She barely had time to take in the information when she had to make the biggest most brawny awful decisions of her life. Leaving her writer’s room in New York was the big wrench though. J x
May 20th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
I wanted to birth bravely, and experience it, and avoided the hospital route so that I could. I wonder if I’ll be able to make the same decision about my death? I think Nuala was brave to choose life over death in her last weeks, to grab it and live rather than be sucked in by the pull of her approaching death, if you know what I mean?
The sudden onset of the last stage of my mother’s illness took her by surprise, so she spent her last week just trying to recouperate while slipping away, perhaps not realising enough what was happening.
She left suddenly, a little violently, not what I would have visualised for her, with peace, meditation, ritual even. But somebody suggested to me that that’s how people go when they’re frightened of it (even though she insisted she wasn’t, I know she was frightened of the hospital and loss of self being a cancer patient can involve). they jsut leave, fast, no time to be affected by it.
I hope this is true. Her sister just died suddenly in her sleep, only a few years older than her. I want to believe that there is some element of choice in their early deaths, some vage unconscious preference.
But I wish for both of them that they had had Nuala’s presence of mind and strength, to have a swansong, a last hurrah.
May 22nd, 2008 at 1:00 pm
What a lovely tribute.
May 24th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
This is an eloquent and moving memorial to her, Sinead.
June 6th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
Thanks again Sinead. Though it is hard to feel consoled no matter what. I just wish she was still here with us. Why did she have to go so soon… While living in the US, I bought Nuala’s books for two of my best friends there (My dream of you and Chicago May) - told them about her, how interesting she was, smart, engaging, I couldn’t do her justice but anyway… then when I moved to France two years ago, I was so chuffed one day as I walked along listening to a Marian Finucane show and an interview with Nuala after she’d won the French literature prise, Prix Femina, for Chicago May. She moved me so much I was almost ready to burst with energy as I walked along. Thinking to myself ‘there’s Nuala, winning the Prix Femina, good on ya’. I loved listening to her, let alone reading anything she had to write. I was so thrilled to hear that she was writing another book, even more straight up. But sadly now I suppose now I’ll never get to read that book. I am looking forward to reading Nell McCaffery’s autobiog that my sister has waiting for me at home. All will be well, but still sad for a while yet.