About 15 years ago a good friend of mine died, he was 45 years old. He had cancer. Although we didn’t meet often, I lived on one side of Australia and he on the other, but when we did there was no stopping us. We used to laugh a lot and talked for hours on end.
He had a loving family, his own business, he was a happy, successful man in every way. We all knew he was going to die, yet strangely, there was no sadness in his eyes and none of us felt uncomfortable about being around him or even talking about the inevitable. There was this strange peace, calm about him. No rush, no bitterness, do dramas. When I asked him how he felt about life and dying, this was what he said:
“When I was a child we had two dogs in the yard, in those days you didn’t think twice about tying them up, not like today. So they were both tied up, heavy gage stuff you know, just to be on the safe side. One of the dogs was just lying around all day. Nothing seemed to stir it. Had his drinks, feeds at the same time, day in, day out, lying or sleeping all day. If people walked past, he would just look at them from the corner of his eyes without much bother and then go back to...