THE SPACES IN BETWEEN BIRTH AND DEATH

David Coppi - 14 Dec 14

“Life is beautiful and death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s the hard part”.

I felt like a dandelion flower blown apart by a fierce wind the day my grandmother died. I was hurting deeply, drifting on a breeze of shock and longing for one last kiss or one last chance to hold her soft hands or to tell her a joke. My grandmother would have loved my daughter Cherry so much. She would have called her a “dear little thing”, as I can vividly imagine her saying that. Cherry arrived four years after her great-grandmother passed but the two will forever be linked as we gave Cherry the middle name Jean, my grandmother’s name.

Since having a daughter I have begun to think about my own mortality. Up until this point I thought of myself as invincible, immune to ageing and the inevitability that comes with it. I am much more careful now with almost everything I do. I am more cautious on the roads, I always wear a hat and sunscreen if I am outside and if I happen to have Cherry with me, my need for safety triples. I’m not obsessive about it but it certainly plays on my mind more now that I am a dad. I’ve never been a huge risk taker anyway, aside from all the sky diving and auto-erotic asphyxiation, but never on a school night.

I have become more worried about my wife and her safety too. It’s as if some sort of evolutionary mechanism has kicked in, causing me to transition into protector-mode. I’m all for Cherry playing in the dirt and having fun but I am more alert to dangers and of anything that may seriously harm her. One could argue that this is what being a dad is about but I have surprised myself in that protecting Cherry from harm has made me take greater care of myself.

When I was five years old I remember waking up crying one night petrified that I was going to die. I was scared that I would die before I had the chance to hold hands with a girl or learn to roller skate. I remember getting up and pretending that I felt sick so that my mum would give me a cuddle and make it alright. Even as a five year old I understood that everybody would eventually die but I was too embarrassed to tell my mum the truth, so I pretended to feel sick instead. I went back to bed and from that point on I didn’t really give death another thought. Until now that is.

I’m sure Cherry will eventually have questions about death and my wife and I will need to decide how to answer them. I assume that honesty is the best policy and we’ll tell her that nobody knows what happens when we die. I distinctly remember my five year old self asking my mum if you could still say your ABC’s when you died. She said she didn’t know but reassured me it would be a very long time before I died so I didn’t have to worry about it.

There are two pieces of advice I heard growing up that still resonate with me today. The first was to marry a woman with small hands as it will make everything she holds look bigger. The second and perhaps more useful piece of advice was from author and magic mushroom enthusiast Hunter S. Thompson who in between handfuls of hallucinogens said that his life had become immeasurably better since he was forced to stop taking it so seriously. I think this is great advice as life is too short to be worried about the little things, especially those which we can’t control. Life should be about having fun and learning new things. I’d love to be able to go back and tell my five year old self to chill out and not worry about dying. I should probably also tell him that there’s no such thing as girl germs.

Cherry will have questions as all children do. I don’t think I’ll shy away from explaining the life cycle but I won’t dwell on the intricacies either. I want her to understand that life is there for living and to pack as much as she can into her years on this planet. However, if she tiptoes out to see me one night, pretending to be sick with tear-stained cheeks, I’ll hold her close and tell her that everything is alright. Maybe we can even practice our ABC’s.

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Photo: Retro Pop Planet

David Coppi

David Coppi is an author, chiropractor, bonsai enthusiast and punk-rock loving father to ten month old Cherry. He lives in Adelaide, South Australia. His book 'Think Act Grow: Success Principles for Young People and Parents' is available now through Amazon.

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