Die dood van Steve Jobs is sekerlik ’n groot verlies; nie net vir sy naasbestaandes nie, maar in sekere opsigte vir die wêreld. Maar dit volg nie dat almal hulle inligting van ’n rekenaarskerm moet bekom nie. Daar is diegene wat, soos Wouter dit formuleer, steeds in boekwinkels “rondhang” (SêNet, 6 deser). Diesulkes is normaalweg geletterde, beskaafde, gesofistikeerde mense, waarvan daar ongelukkig glad te min is.
Wouter is soos reën. Hy bly lang tye weg maar kom dan skielik te mildelik terug. SêNetters moet maar self besluit of die droogte of die oorvloed verkieslik is. In een van sy talle ander skrywes (SêNet, 6 deser) verwys Wouter na Joan Didion. Ek is opreg dankbaar dat hy dit gedoen het. Die onderwerp van een van haar boeke is die dood van haar eggenoot. Dit vind dus aansluiting by Jobs se afsterwe.
Daar is boeke oor die dood wat my glad nie aanstaan nie. Twee wat by my die indruk van kommersialisering gewek het, is Donald en Myfanwy Horne se Dying, a memoir (Camberwell: Viking/Penguin, 2007, 266p) en Mitch Albom se Tuesdays with Morrie (New York: Random House, 1997, 192p). Van laasgenoemde is 11 miljoen eksemplare verkoop. In heeltemal ’n ander liga is Joan Didion se aangrypende boek, The year of magical thinking (London: Harper Perennial, 2006, 227p). Ek volstaan met aanhalings.
“People who have recently lost someone have a certain look … The look is one of extreme vulnerability, nakedness, openness” (p 74). “How exposed they seemed, how raw. How fragile … How unstable” (p 169). “I could not trust myself to present a coherent face to the world” (p 168). “I have lost the skills for ordinary social encounters” (p 212). Die dood van ’n geliefde ervaar sy as “the unending absence … the void” (p 189). “The permanent impassibility of the divide” (p 195). “My awareness of the final silence that separated us” (p 196). Philippe Ariès: “A single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty” (p 192).
DH Lawrence: “I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself” (p 193). Mettertyd besluit Didion: “I would not lead the rest of my life as a special case, a guest, someone who could not function on her own” (p 222). Die boek eindig met gevolgtrekkings soos: “I know why we try to keep the dead alive: we try to keep them alive in order to keep them with us. I also know that if we are to live ourselves there comes a point at which we must relinguish the dead, let them go, keep them dead. Let them become the photograph on the table” (p 225-226).
Christopher Rush se ewe roerende boek, To travel hopefully: journal of a death not foretold (London: Profile Books, 2006, 264p), handel oor die dood van sy vrou. Na haar dood vertrek hy uit Skotland na Frankryk om soos Robert Louis Stevenson die berglandskap van die Cévennes met ’n donkie te verken. Hierdie tog bevorder Rush se begrip van lewe en dood en lei tot ’n mate van berusting.
“Hope keeps on trying … to break through and contradict the facts” (p 20). “The time torn off unused, the sure extinction that we travel to and shall be lost in always. Not to be here, not to be anywhere. And soon” (p 27). “The first day after a death the sudden absence is hard to comprehend. Then it dawns on you like a new day. The absence is eternal: it will never go away” (p 38). “Normality from now on will always be the abnormal” (p 46). “Our children … were all that was left now of their mum” (p 47).
Kanker noem hy “a free gift in the genes” (p 59). “Her death isn't something that happened, it goes on happening, every day. Death is the continuing absence, the daily bread. It is eating alone, sleeping alone, waking alone” (p 146). Die dood is ’n abstraksie: “There is no such thing as death: there are only deaths” (p 191). “On life's journey you are certainly going to be robbed … First of your loved ones, then of life itself” (p 248-249). “Death is everything because it is the sum of everything it steals from us” (p 255).
Mediese wetenskaplike kennis en tegnologie kan in baie opsigte nie begrip vir en berusting in die dood bring nie. Boeke gebaseer op deurleefde ervaring, soos dié van Didion en Rush, kan help. Ek het die genoemde vier boeke teëgekom omdat ek in boekwinkels rondgehang het. By meer as een geleentheid is ek met die dood van ’n naasbestaande gekonfronteer. Ek ervaar elkeen van hierdie dooies as ’n gat in die werklikheid; ’n niks waar daar iets was.
Johannes Comestor