A good death?

Ever since Norman Painter died on October 29th, I’ve been waiting for Phil Archer to snuff it. And yesterday he did. Jill came home from an outing with Peggy and Christine to find Phil sitting by a recently  emptied teacup with The Dream of Gerontius playing on the gramophone. 

  It was a moving moment, particularly for those of us who’ve dipped in and out of the Archers since its inception in the 1950s. ‘I’m glad they gave him a good death,’ said Pat. And by today’s standards it was.

  Our mediæval ancestors would have thought it the worst of all possible deaths:

     ‘A subita et æterna morte, Libera nos Domine,‘                    they prayed. 

And King Hamlet would have concurred:

    ‘Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,
    Unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd,
    No reckoning made, but sent to my account
    With all my imperfections on my head’

If this is the only life we have, the scriptwriters gave Phil a good death; if it’s not, I’m not so sure.