It’s odd, but we mostly go about as if death were optional, something we could get out of, like games at school. Philip Gould, in When I Die, admits that he never gave it much thought. Then he got oesophageal cancer. He had a horrible operation, got a bit better. Then the cancer came back. He had chemotherapy, more surgery, a lot of pain. And it came back again: ‘I knew then that the game was up.’
Having worked as Tony Blair’s strategist, Gould at first imagined his illness as another kind of campaign. But once his death became certain, he underwent a remarkable change:
The unvarnished certainty that you are going to die within a certain period of time is an immensely powerful thing. It provides an opportunity for fulfilment and the experience of extraordinary depths of feeling and the chance of reconciliation . . . Death is not frightening if you accept it.
For a man whose career — whose life, by all accounts — had been dedicated to fighting, to winning, such acceptance was a revelation. Politics didn’t seem important any more. The natural world became radiant, love the only essential:
I have had more moments of happiness in the last five months than in the last five years. I have had more moments of private ecstasy than for a very long time. I feel at peace with the world.
His final days, hours and minutes are described in his own words, as well as those of his widow and children.
That Gould should have conceived of writing such a book at all, and that he did so with such honesty, shows a profound generosity. He faced death with tremendous courage, and the moment of his dying was clearly beautiful.
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