The drapes are drawn, the tones are hushed, and the air is heavy with grief and anticipation. The patriarch hovers between life and death on the dank, crumpled bed, propped on stained pillows, surrounded by his court. The elder son, the younger son, the adviser, the physician, all with their own secret hopes, fears and ambitions, hold their breath and lean forward as one over the parched lips of their benefactor as, in a hoarse and pain-racked whisper, he utters his final decrees.
It was a scene such as this that was summoned to mind as I watched the recording of Melvyn Bragg’s interview with Dennis Potter, just weeks before Potter’s death from pancreatic cancer in 1994. Potter sat gingerly in his swivel-chair, his red-rimmed eyes peering benignly through his spectacles. His air was of a beneficent old school chaplain, or a favourite great-uncle, compassionate and forgiving as he made his final, gentle indictments on English society.
We forgave his dependencies as he reached alternately for cigarettes, alcohol and painkillers. Our hearts went out to him in his evident infirmity, his need to absent himself temporarily during the course of the interview, his request that Bragg open the too-tight lid of his hip-flask of morphine. And we leaned forward in rapt attention as he tore bloody shreds, softly, quietly and relentlessly, off media ownership, the new political conscience, patriotism, feminism, virtual reality and the management of the BBC.
Why do we listen so attentively to the words of one about to die?
It was with the same fascination that we avidly scoured the newspapers recently for progress reports on the slow demise of Timothy Leary, sixties drugs guru and pop culture king. Almost until the end, Leary planned to have his head removed at the exact moment of death and preserved cryogenically until future technology allowed for its rehabilitation. Until then, he was granting interviews at $1000 per hour, and an Internet homepage detailing his achievements, ideas and pronouncements was updated constantly by staff at his headquarters in California. (Unlike Potter, who obviously saw the Bragg interview as his last chance to speak publicly, Leary had every intention of leaving his brain as a resource for future generations. But he changed his mind at the last minute, citing as the reason the lack of humour among cryogenicists.)
Maybe we suspect that as death approaches, gone are those inhibitions that curb our words, that modify our utterances to make them palatable to those listening. Could Potter’s criticisms of the current leadership of the BBC, the hand that fed him, have been stated in any spirit other than a genuine desire for increased quality in programming? He certainly had nothing to lose, but then again nothing to gain in the personal sense, from a change in management. Neither could his plea for sanity in the English press have been anything other than real grief at its deterioration over the last decade, even if he had named his cancer ‘Rupert’. Hidden agendas fly out the window when there is no potential for future gain.
Maybe it’s the urgency born from imminent departure that forces the dying to economise, to state only the most vital, the essential, to separate the grains of truth from the chaff of embellishment. Someone with no time to waste will not waste ours, either, with inanities. After the interview Potter thanked Bragg for the opportunity to broadcast his views, which he had presented eloquently but frankly. Virtually uninterrupted by Bragg, he paused in his discourse only to top up on analgesics; by the end of the hour one was left with the feeling that he had expressed all those views, but only those views, that were necessary. Our time and attention was not given in vain.
Even those of us who believe we have time to spare can imagine the honesty and directness forgiven those close to death. But in our ignorance and fear of death, is it possible that we credit those knowingly about to meet it with some special insight into life itself? Surely one about to complete their life, however short, must have more understanding of it than those of us still in the middle of it?
So perhaps it’s the frankness borne of having no need for diplomacy. Or maybe it’s the urgency of imparting the essence, and only the essence, of the message. Or maybe it’s that we attribute an exclusive wisdom to those about to enter that next realm of which we know nothing. But I know that I, for one, listened hard to Dennis Potter’s words that night, and was touched to the core by his insights.
Written May 1995