Death

Death has a smell.

I don't mean the smell of death itself; everyone smells when their bowels involuntarily empty.

I mean the act of dying,

It has a look and scent that is not like any other.

Despair also has a unique aroma if you read about some of the worst things that us humans do to each other then there is always an element of the scent of despair.

I have been reading about what to do when someone us dying. Thank goodness for the internet that enables you to see this that you never wished to see or learn things that you never wished to learn.

There is a personal reason I research the topic, but that is a chapter in another's story.

But this is also useful for my book.

There is one version of this tale where the young princess is sitting at the beside of her beloved. father watching him die. It is not a duty that is meant for her. It is the King's son, her brother, that should be here. And that causes her some resentment.

Here she is in a darkened room with her father dying, and her mind is a whirl that there are so many things that she is not allowed to do, things that will help her life and make her happy but because of tradition and protocol she is not allowed. But when the king is dying in a pool of his own vomit and shit, she is allowed to break with protocol, actually forced to break with protocol and take the place of a man who did not have the stomach to do his duty.

It is another injustice for woman kind. We will supress you and expect you to obey by our rules unless it is to our benefit that you do not.

I have re-read that passage and it is so emotionless. But I was young then and I barely knew about grief.

I barely knew about anything and the only thing that I could identify with in this writing was a trapped young woman who could not see a way out and if she did, she would not know what to do with that freedom.

A person may lose their appetite when they are dying.

Their skin may change colour and they may lose. control of their bladder and bowels, and they may closed their eyes,

Then it goes on to say that even though they may not appear to be responsive they could still here you and you should say things that are important to you both.

In the other story I touched upon the last words were very important. They were words of love and so both parties knew that even though their story was coming to an end their love was eternal.

But what can a caged princess say to a dying father whom she has grown to love less and less as the years progress. When she wasn't a pawn in the politics of royalty she was allowed to be loved and free.

What do you day to dying one that you resent?

And then I think of the phrase 'important words' such words do not need to be important to the dying but maybe only to the person that is watching them die.

I have been watching a documentary called the last Nazi's about hunting the last of the war criminals; and the argument that any second world war criminal is now in their 90s and should be left in peace.

But their victims have not been left in peace.

And then I am coming back to. the idea that word don't always have to be the best for both, and that age should not be a reason not to speak or do. So, in this final moments of her father's life does she say all the things the she wanted to but never did? Does she open her heart to this man and hope that he carries her words to him in the afterlife? Or does she open her mouth and realise that it is not worth her breath?

Victims of something or someone should be the main focus. They should be able to do what they think is best to enable them to continue with their lives. Those who chose (and even following an order is a choice) should not be able to decided when their victims are silenced.

And the princess is a victim here. She does not want to be, but circumstance has put her in a position where she has very little power or knowledge to leave.

And as she sits in the dark, airless room at the back of the castle hidden from anyone perhaps her final moments with her father are not ones of hatred or sorrow. Perhaps they are moments of Ephinay. A decision that she must accept where she is or take the first options to leave it.

And suddenly a thread of thought untangles and entwines with something else I had not considered before.

The princess realises that she does not need to waste her breath on a dying man she has no affection for any more than I need to waste words at his death bed.