ebbs out life's little day

The fiercely atheistic writer Christopher Hitches has been given a 1 in 20 chance of still being alive in 5 years time. Suffering from cancer and at the age of 61 he reflects on facing the end in an interview with Jeremy Paxman. His comments while not changing his atheism do seem to me to be a little softer in tone and little less confident. At any rate they make sober reading - bringing home again the awfulness of death if there is really no hope and no God.

The author said his disease did not make him angry, but sober and objective. 'To borrow slightly from Dr Johnston it does concentrate the mind to realise that your time is even more rationed than you thought it was. Everyone has to go sometime. I've always thought that will be a bad day, at least for me. I now have a more pressing idea of what that might be like.'...

He said he feared not death but dying. 'I feel a sense of waste about it because I'm not ready. I feel a sense of betrayal to my family and even to some of my friends who would miss me. Undone things, unattained objectives...'

The realisation of his impending death does not make him regret things he has said or written. 'I mean, I've sometimes had cause to regert saying things or wish I'd said them in a different way but that's part of the ongoing revision of being a writer. I hope. This hasn't prompted me to that, no. Perhaps it should.'

'I'm not afraid of being dead - that's to say there's nothing to be afraid of. I won't know I'm dead, would be my strong conviction. And if I find that I'm alive in any way, well that'll be a pleasant surprise. I quite like surprises.'

From the The Times, 26/11/10, p29

Hebrews 9:27 John 11:25-26 John 3:16-21 1 Corinthians 15:51-57

Pray for Christopher Hitchens.