Our jaded view of death – coming to terms with a difficult reality

Inappropriate. Tasteless. Even depraved. These are just some of the disparaging adjectives that have been banded righteously about in recent weeks as Jade Goody continues to conduct her dying days in the full glare of the media.

It is hard not to see the irony here. We are a society obsessed with reality TV and Jade has been its showpiece. We were happy to chuckle at her geographical malapropisms on Big Brother; we were suitably horrified by her bullying of Shilpa Shetty with its potentially racist undertones.

But now the story is stage 4 metastatic cancer, Jade is facing death – surely life at its most brutally real – and we would like her to put it away, thank you very much.

However, it is not the propriety of Jade’s overtly public final days that we should be questioning – after all, that is her prerogative (though, incidentally, she claims it is to provide financial support for her children – and that is good enough for me). The more pertinent question here is why her OK! magazine spreads, Living TV documentary and numerous public statements make us feel so uneasy.

With the advent of science and positivism, our attitude to mortality has become increasingly distanced. In times past when death was more prevalent, there was a strong tradition of rituals and customs associated with it. Queen Victoria famously wore black mourning dress for the remainder of her life after the death of her husband. Nowadays, whether subconsciously or not, we are less and less willing to accept the inevitability of death. It has gradually been pushed into life’s darkest corner. Premature death like Jade’s is even more of a taboo.

Rather, we concern ourselves with anti-aging products and life-extending detoxes.

Us Brits in particular seem to view death as something which should be done as quietly and unobtrusively as possible, whereas the ritualistic dimension to death is maintained to a degree in countries such as Italy and Spain. Stiff upper lip and all that. Its very lexicon seems designed to conceal its frightening reality. We talk in a euphemistic and clichéd manner of people ‘departing’, ‘passing away’ or ‘going to a better place’ as though the ‘D’ word was in some way contagious.

The explicit fashion in which Jade has dealt with her illness and imminent death is thus hard for many to stomach. It was just about palatable when John Diamond documented his battle with cancer in the Times, but the ubiquity of Jade’s story is less easily swallowed, and has been met by many with snobbish distain. However, born of reality TV, the tools of low-brow media culture are the only ones Jade has any experience of. It is as natural and cathartic for her to discuss her health problems via interviews and photoshoots as it was for Keats to write the Odes after the death of his brother.

Not only are her actions therefore perfectly comprehensible, but they should even be actively commended. The publicity surrounding the story has had a number of positive outcomes, and whether they were intended at the time is beside the point.

For one thing, the health service has reported a massive increase in women attending screenings for cervical cancer. Furthermore, by refusing to be inconspicuous, Jade is forcing us to deal with issues such as terminal illness and death in a direct, open, and healthy manner.

She talks about her ill health with a refreshing clarity and frankness: “I am devastated, frightened and angry. I don’t want to die, I have so much to live for… The whole thing is absolutely terrifying …I am in a nightmare.” She has spoken candidly of crippling physical pain and the degrading side effects of chemotherapy.

She has refused to cover up her bald head, even declining to wear a veil on her own wedding day. It might not be a pretty sight – but then neither is cancer. It is a brutal, ugly, vicious disease. Like death, it is not a concept that can (or should) be sterilised or domesticated. Death follows life, and for many cancer is a horrific precursor; we cannot shy away from discussing it, and we do ourselves a disservice if we do.

Jade’s artless commentary tells it like it is, like no one else could. It is giving the frequently silenced terminally ill a voice, and enabling us all to face the ultimate fact of life head on. For that she deserves our gratitude and respect, not our resentment.

Her exposed demise is neither crass nor trashy, though it might initially strike our polite sensibilities as both. Indeed, there is something peculiarly dignified in the manner in which Jade is, to crudely paraphrase Dylan Thomas, refusing to go gently into that good night.