Life in the sick-room

by Harriet Martineau

But how does death appear to those who rest half-way between it and life, or are very gradually passing over from the one to the other?

Much depends, of course, on how far the vital forces are impaired—on whether the condition be such as to obscure or to purify the spiritual vision. If we want to know the effect of nearness and realisation, and not the pathology of the case, we must suppose the vital powers to remain faithful, however they may be weakened.

In such cases, I imagine the views of death remain much what they were before, though they must necessarily become more interesting, and the conception of them more clear. I know of no case of any one who before believed, or took for granted, a future life, who began to disbelieve or doubt it through sickness. I have known cases of those who disbelieved it in health, seeing no reason to change their opinion on the approach of death,—being content to have lived—satisfied to leave life when its usefulness and pleasantness are gone—not desiring a renewal of it, but ready to awake again at the word of their Creator, if indeed a further existence be in reserve for them. Such cases I have known: but none of a material change of views in the prospect of death.

To me, the presumption of the inextinguishable vitality of the spirit afforded by the experience of material decay, is the strongest I am acquainted with. No amount of evidence of any fact before the reason, no demonstration of any truth to the understanding, affords to me such a sense of certainty as the action of the spirit yields, with regard to its own immortality, at times when there can be no deception from animal spirits, or from immediate sympathy with other minds, or from what is called the natural desire for life. It is a mistake to say, as is frequently said, that, with regard to a future life, “the wish is father to the thought,” always or generally. Long-suffering invalids can tell that there are seasons, neither few nor short, when the wishes are all the other way,—when life is so oppressive to the frame that the happiest news would be that we should soon be non-existent,—when, thankful as we are that our beloved friends, the departed and the remaining, are to live for evermore with God, and enjoy his universe and its intercourses, we should be glad to, decline it for ourselves, and to lie down in an eternal, unbroken rest. At these seasons, when, though we know all that can be said of renewed powers and relish, and a more elevated and privileged life beyond the grave, we cannot feel it; and, while admitting all such consolations as truth, we cannot enjoy them, but, as a mere matter of inclination, had rather resign our privileges;—in these seasons, when the wish would be father to an opposite thought, the belief in our immortality is at the strongest; the truth of our inability to die becomes overwhelming, and the sleep of the grave appears too light to satisfy our need of rest. I believe it to be owing to this natural and unconquerable belief in our immortality, that suicide is not more common than it is among sufferers. I am persuaded that the almost intolerable weariness of long sicknesses, unrelieved by occasional fits of severe pain, would impel many to put out a hand to the laudanum-bottle, in hours when religious considerations and emotions cannot operate through the indisposition of the frame, if it were not for the intense conviction that life would not thus be extinguished, nor even suspended. I do not believe much in the “natural love of life,” which is usually said to be the preventive in such cases. I do believe in the vast operation of religious affections in withholding from the act: but I also believe in frequent instances of abstinence from death, from a mere despair of getting rid of life—a sense of necessary immortality.

I have spoken of the relief afforded by visitations of severe pain. These rally the vital forces, and dismiss the temptation, by substituting torture for weariness—at times a welcome change. The healthy are astonished at the good spirits of sufferers under tormenting complaints; and the most strait-laced preachers of fortitude and patience admit an occasional wonder that there is no suicide among that class of sufferers. The truth is, however, that the influence of acute pain, when only occasional, and not extremely protracted, is vivifying and cheering on the whole. The immediate anguish causes a temporary despair: but the reaction, when the pain departs, causes a relish of life such as the healthy and the gay hardly enjoy. Though a slow death by a torturing disease is a lot unspeakably awful to meet, and even to contemplate, there can be no question to the experienced, that illness in which severe pain sometimes occurs is less trying than some in which a different kind of suffering is not relieved by such a stimulus and its consequent sensations.

Thus much it is useful to know,—useful to the student of human nature, to the nurse, and to a sufferer under sentence of lasting disease. But instances have been known, perplexing to those inexperienced in pain, of devout thankfulness for the suffering itself, under its immediate and agonising pressure; and this in men far superior to the superstition of believing present pain the purchase-money of future ease,—the fine paid down here for admission to heavenly benefits hereafter.

Strange as this rejoicing in misery may appear, it is to some minds as natural and authorised by the laws of our being, as the joy which attends the acquisition of a great idea, or the verification of a potent truth. It is as verification that such pain is welcome. To men of the most spiritual tone of mind, every attestation of the reality of unseen objects is a boon of the highest order; and no such attestation can surpass in clearness that which is afforded by the sensible progress of decay in the material part of the sufferer’s frame. All attempt at description is here vain. Nothing but experience can convey a conception of the intense reality in which God appears supreme, Christ and his gospel divine, and holiness the one worthy aim and chief good, when our frame is refusing its offices, and we can lay hold on no immediate outward support and solace. It is conceivable to the healthy and happy, that, if waked up from sleep by a tremendous earthquake, the first recoil of terror might be followed by an intense perception of the fixity and tranquillity of the spiritual world, in immediate contact with the turbulence of the outward and lower scene. It is conceivable to us all that the drowning man may, as is recorded, see his whole life, in all its minute details, presented to him, as in clear vision, in one instant of time, as he lapses into death. Well,—something like both these experiences is that of extreme and dissolving pain, to a certain order of minds. The vision and the attestation are present, without the horrors caused, amidst an earthquake, by the misery of a perishing multitude, though at the cost of more bodily anguish than in the case of the drowning man. Though there may be keen doubts in a modest sufferer how long such anguish can be decently endured,—whether the filial submission will hold out against torment,—there is through, above and beyond such doubts, so overpowering an impression of the vitality of the conscious part of us, and of the reality of the highest objects for which it was created and has lived,—so inexpressible a sense of the value of what we have prayed for, and of the evanescence of what we are losing,—that it is no wonder if the dying have been known to call for aid in their thanksgivings, and to struggle for sympathy even in their incommunicable convictions. If the shadows of the dark valley part, and disclose to such an one the regions that lie in the light of God’s countenance, it is no wonder that he calls on those near him to look and see, though he is making the transit alone.

Those who speculate outside on the experience of the sick-room, are eager to know whether this solitary transit is often gone over in imagination, and whether with more or less relish and success than by those at ease and in full vigour. In my childhood, I attended, as an observer, one fine morning, at the funeral of a person with whom I was well acquainted, without feeling any strong affection. I was somewhat moved by the solemnity, and by the tears of the family; but the most powerful feeling of the day was excited when the evening closed in, gusty and rainy, and I thought of the form I knew so well, left alone in the cold and the darkness, while everybody else was warm and sheltered. I felt that, if I had been one of the family, I could not have neglectfully and selfishly gone to bed that night, but must have passed the hours till daylight by the grave. Every child has felt this: and every child longs to know whether a sick friend contemplates that first night in the cold grave, and whether the prospect excites any emotions.

Surely;—we do contemplate it—frequently—eagerly. In the dark night, we picture the whole scene, under every condition the imagination can originate. By day, we hold up before our eyes that most wondrous piece of our worldly wealth—our own right-hand; examine its curious texture and mechanism, and call up the image of its sure deadness and decay, And with what emotions? Each must answer for himself. As for me, it is with mere curiosity, and without any concern, about the lonely, cold grave. I doubt whether any one’s imagination rests there,—whether there is ever any panic about the darkness and the worm of the narrow house.

As for our real future home,—the scene where our living selves are to be,—how is it possible that we should not be often resorting thither in imagination, when it is to be our next excursion from our little abode of sickness and helplessness,—when it is so certain that we cannot be disappointed of it, however wearily long it may be before we go,—when all that has been best in our lives, our sabbaths, all sunset evenings and starry nights, all our reverence and love that are sanctified by death,—when all these things have always pointed to our future life and been associated with it, how is it possible that we should not be ever looking forward to it, now when our days are low and weary, and our pleasures few? The liability is to too great familiarity with the subject. When our words make children look abashed, and call a constraint over the manners of those we are conversing with, and cause even the most familiar eyes to be averted, we find ourselves reminded that the subject of a person’s death is one usually thought not easy to discuss with him. In our retirement, we are apt to forget, till expressly reminded, the importance of distinctions of rank and property in society, so nearly as they vanish in our survey of life, in comparison with moral differences; and, in like manner, we have to recal an almost lost idea, that death is an awkward topic, except in the abstract, when our casual mention of a will, or of some transaction to follow our death, introduces an awe and constraint into conversation.