Death of an Ordinary Man

Novelist Sarah Perry's first non-fiction book, Death of an Ordinary Man, was recommended by Susan Green a few weeks ago. Looking back at Sue's review, I see that she used the exact words I was planning to write here: almost unbearably moving. Perry's father-in-law was diagnosed with advanced oesophageal cancer, worsened rapidly and died at home just nine days later. How well I could relate to Perry's panic and bewilderment, her pleas for help, for someone to come round now, now, now, we don't know what to do. And yet surprisingly quickly, caring for David becomes routine and manageable and not scary at all; Perry describes a sensation of a woman's hand on her shoulder and feels the reassurance of generations of carers behind her who have faced this challenge and met it, as she and her husband do, too, folding the process death into part of life.

I was amazed at the speed and compassion (mostly) of the health workers who rolled swiftly into action, delivering a hospital bed, nursing care, morphine, special sheets to David's home with a minimum of fuss. I have no idea if similar systems are in place here; I guess I might find out one day. It might not have been the best time for me to read this book, as I'm currently caring for my ninety-year old mother who was recently in hospital with an infection and is taking a while to recover. But I was also able to recognise myself as one of that long line of carers who find themselves able to deal with incontinence, dirty sheets, coaxing tiny spoonfuls of ice cream into a reluctant mouth, organising medication and all the rest of the work of caring. 

The very last image of the book was so incredibly beautiful, it made me cry.

Sometimes I stand at an upstairs window after dark when the city is getting ready for bed, and watch the lights go out one by one in rooms where strangers live. And if I stand there long enough I find, in compensation for the gathering dark, other lights arriving out of nothing -- the passage of a car turning for home, lamps switched on in bathrooms and bedrooms on the outskirts of town, streetlights marking roads I know quite well. Then I imagine I've walked out of the city and up what passes in Norfolk for a hill, and that I can see spread all around me  this same pattern going on over and over: lights, everywhere, coming on where there was no light, then shining for a moment or an hour before fading slowly to an ember, or being suddenly extinguished. On and on it goes, far ahead and behind me, over borders, horizons, seas, summoned up and going out in their own time -- illuminating barely half an inch or fully half a mile, and each light particular, never to be repeated or replaced: all those other lights. All those other towns.