Donald Featherstone

Well, I certainly didn't intend to post about death again so soon. I was watching 'Annie Hall' with my elder daughter yesterday - an attempt to counteract years of anti-Woody Allen  prejudice from her mother - and, as you will no doubt remember, the subject crops up frequently therein. Diane Keaton's Annie refers to 'Death in Venice' and in the ensuing conversation she complains that Allen only ever buys her books with death in the title. Allen replies to the effect that death is a serious business. Quite so.

I am not a religious man. By and large I'm with Marx on this subject (as with a surprisingly large number of other subjects, especially given what I do for a living) when he wrote "The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.". However,  I envy the religious the strength their faith gives them during bereavement and, whilst I cannot share their belief in an afterlife, I often share the sentiments they express, but in a less literal way. And so when Conrad Kinch writes of Donald Featherstone that "In death he is reunited with those that were taken from him in life" I simply say "Amen".

Donald Featherstone's books gave me immeasurable pleasure both when I was young and upon re-reading more recently. I, like most of us, have moved on from the specific rules, but not from the enthusiasm engendered and for that I thank him. I also honour him, as I do his comrades-in-arms, for being one of those who served to defeat facism and save the world. And furthermore I note with no surprise at all that like many successful people he achieved that success in two completely disparate fields; in his case the other one being sports physiotherapy.

Marx also said that "Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand." and perhaps death is therefore the exception that proves that rule. For surely it is the knowledge that we shall at some point die that above all separates man from other sentient beings. As Hamlet says "if it be not now, yet it will come". As well as my own recent family bereavement, there have been a series of deaths of people that I only knew by their work and reputation and yet whose names I instantly recognised: Heaney, Frost, Jacobs and now Featherstone. As one read about their lives and the impact that they had made on others one common thread came across - a kindness and generosity with time and support. It seems to me quite clear that their success in life was not achieved despite this attitude, but because of it. By being nice to others, they caused others to be nice to them. If I were founding a religion then I might adopt that as a rule for my adherents to live by; one could do worse.