What I Learned From The Death Of Three People I Knew

I have already touched on my reaction to people close to me dying in an article about how to deal with grief and bereavement, so in this article, I want to talk more about the experience of death itself.

I have, as I mentioned in the above article, lost many relatives over the years, which is hardly surprising given that I am 60 as I write this, but there are three people in particular whose death was more personal to me, not necessarily because I knew them especially well (in two of the three cases, at least), but because I was around or with them at the time.

Nellie Wells

The first of the three I want to talk about was an old lady who lived in a caravan on my parents’ property.

When they moved out of town into the country some time around 1970, the couple they bought the bungalow from had relatives (their parents, probably), living in a static caravan on the land.

As part of the purchase contract, my parents agreed to let this couple, Jack and Nellie, continue to live in that caravan for as long as they wanted.

They were a lovely couple, but elderly even back then.

Jack died some time when I was away at boarding school, which left Nellie, who must have been in her 80s, all by herself.

By way of providing some company for Nellie, my parents would invite her over to the bungalow every so often to have dinner and play dominoes afterwards.

She was always escorted both to the bungalow and back again, not because it was very far, but because she was frail and doddery and the ground was a bit rough and uneven.

One night, I walked her back to her caravan, made sure she got inside OK, said “goodnight”, and waited until I heard the door lock behind me before I returned home.

The next morning, it turned out she’d died during the night, which was a surprise because she had no obvious health issues, other than being elderly.

And the realization hit me that I had been the last person to see her alive.

It was a bit of a freaky feeling, even for somebody as unemotional as me, and it was, I think, my first wake-up call (which is probably not a very appropriate term) that life can end suddenly and unexpectedly.

Mark Hinnells

The second occasion was when I was probably in my second year at senior school.

I had gone to bed about an hour after all (or most) of the other boys in my dormitory, either because I was in the next year to them or because I had gone to one of the teacher’s homes for extra tuition. (My memory is a bit hazy after all these years.)

My bed was in one corner, farthest away from the door, and as best as I can recall, because this is a long time ago now, the boy nearest the door suddenly started screaming.

It was clearly something serious, and he was soon taken away in an ambulance.

We were told the next day that the boy had died during the night, of a brain haemorrhage or clot (I can’t remember which).

Speaking to some of the others, there had been a bit of a rough and tumble involving him and another boy, but it was only a pillow fight – nothing close to a serious fist fight – and then they had gone to bed.

Whatever it was it had clearly triggered something that was already a problem.

It was later discovered that he had a congenital malformation of the skull which was paper thin at the forehead. Bearing that in mind, it was surprising that he had survived as long as he had, considering he played rugby and other contact sports.

In other words, what happened that night could have happened to him at any time.

I didn’t know this boy that well at all (maybe he was in the year below me), but once again, it was the suddenness of it all that hit home, and it made me wonder how many people are walking around with a ticking time bomb inside their body – me included.

Rae

As you may know from reading other articles on this site, Rae was my second wife, who died suddenly and unexpectedly on 19 December 2018. (For example, I recently wrote one about my first year as a widower.)

So, I’m not going to repeat what I have already discussed.

The reason I’m including Rae in this article is because she is, I think, the only dead person I have actually seen – the other two died in somewhat close proximity to me, but I never saw their bodies.

The hardest part, for me, was looking at Rae in her armchair, and suspecting something was wrong – but not wanting to touch her in case she was dead.

Eventually, I had no choice, and as I feared, she was stone cold.

I could find no pulse on her wrist or her neck, and then I noticed that on her chin, there was saliva that had dribbled out of her mouth at some stage during the day. I’m not sure why I had missed it earlier, but it was stuck there, like a miniature frozen waterfall of spittle.

For obvious reasons, this was the most difficult of these three people for me to deal with – she was, after all, my wife, friend, and business partner – but it was the suddenness of it all that first got to me.

We had gone to bed in the early hours of that morning, as usual, and there was no way of knowing that saying “goodnight” would be the last words we would ever say to each other.

Once I was sure she was dead and I was waiting for the relevant authorities to come, it was eerie having a dead body in the house, and it wasn’t something I could ignore because I had to walk past her chair many times.

Even covering her up didn’t help.

When they did come and confirmed that she had died, I then to wait a while longer for the police and the people from the mortuary to arrive, and that too was uncomfortable.

As I said elsewhere, I wasn’t upset or crying or grieving, because that’s just not how I react to things – but I did feel very strange, like part of me was missing.

And when they had to drag her body over the back of her chair on to a gurney, the only thing I thought was that it seemed like a clumsy and disrespectful way to treat somebody who had just died – but I also acknowledge that our house is really tight on space, and that she was overweight, and that this was the only option.

Every single day since then, I still walk past her empty chair and cannot help but recall seeing her lifeless body sitting there, and it’s tough, even for me.

If it weren’t for my dogs, I’m not sure I’d still be as sane as I am, or even here.

Conclusion

So, what is the point of recounting these three stories?

Well, I think the major lesson for me has always been that life, and death, are so unpredictable in many cases.

Yes, sometimes we know when somebody is about to die, because they are seriously ill (e.g. terminal cancer), and sometimes it actually becomes our decision (e.g. to take somebody off life support), but too often, life ends abruptly, with no warning signs.

Most accidents happen this way, and for most people, I suspect having somebody they know and/or care about snatched away like that may be the most difficult part because there is no time to prepare yourself for it.

And although being on the lower end of the autism spectrum has its issues, one thing I am grateful for is that I am somewhat unemotional.

There are those who would argue that being “cold” like that is not good for you, and they may be right, but it protects you from some of the pain that most people suffer when they lose somebody.

The counter to that would be that emotions and pain are what make us human, and I wouldn’t necessarily disagree with that.

We are all who we are because of a myriad of experiences that started the moment we were born (or maybe even before that), and most of us learn to cope with what life throws at us in ways that may not always make sense to others.

So, is there anything you can do about any of this?

Probably not – a life spent constantly worrying about things you largely have no control over is no life at all.

I mentioned in another article that I’m starting to become a little paranoid being here by myself, but that’s more because I care about my three dogs and what might happen to them should I die (because they could, at worst, be alone in the house for up to a week before anybody found me), than the fact I too may die suddenly.

I think all any of us can do is:

1. Don’t take unnecessary risks. Even if you’re an adrenaline junkie who enjoys extreme sports, it still makes sense to do everything you can to remain as safe as reasonably possible.
2. Treat people kindly – because how would you feel if the last words you’d said to somebody before they died were nasty and hateful? Rae and I never argued (although we did have differing views on what we should do with our businesses), but if we’d gone to sleep that night on bad terms, I’m pretty sure that even I would have felt awful about it and still be regretting it today.
3. Carpe diem, and live life to the fullest, whatever that might mean for you.
4. Don’t have regrets – they’re pointless because you cannot change the past. All you can do is learn from it.
5. And if you should lose somebody, which is more or less inevitable, then grieve in whatever way you deem appropriate for you (as I wrote about in the article referenced in the introduction, above).

Additional Resources

These are suggestions for those who wish to delve deeper into any of the above:

1. Find A Grief Counsellor (US only)
2. Grief Recovery Handbook