I think about death quite a lot. Not in a particularly terrified sort of way, but I do think about it.
I faced a significant loss two years ago when my mother, my aunt, and my two beloved dogs passed away around the same time. My mother’s departure was swift and exceptional, which has made me reflect a lot. You start pondering: ‘Why didn’t I express this or that?’
My mother always remarked: ‘I’m not afraid of death, just the journey to it.’ Similarly, novelist Rose Macaulay mused: ‘I’m thinking of departing this summer.’
Conversely, CS Lewis believed that dying felt like being homesick. It was like clawing at the door of the world, yearning to return, which is certainly a distressing notion.
I have a vision of my mum in her dressing gown and little corned feet, trying to get back and crying and crying.
Personally, I wish to arrive in Heaven where my dogs would run to greet me on a sunlit lawn, accompanied by family members. That’s my ideal picture.
I do think Heaven ought to be cleansed of people one doesn’t like very much. Or it wouldn’t be Heaven, would it?
I dread the thought of dying in pain. I recently read John Bayley’s memoir about Iris Murdoch – our generation often fears Alzheimer’s. A stroke is also undesirable due to the dependency it imposes.
Celebrated novelist Jilly Cooper has died aged 88 after a fall, her family has announced
A friend underwent a Caesarean section, during which she was clinically dead, reaching a place filled with beautiful light, joyful people, and an angel. She felt a thrill and a strong desire to enter, but the angel gently stopped her with: ‘Hold on, terribly sorry. You can’t proceed yet; there are people on earth who need you.’
So back she went.
She said it was the most wonderful, welcoming feeling.
The day I returned from my mother’s funeral, a big, black bird had got stuck in the drawing room. It was bashing against the window and I asked my husband Leo to free it.
As he put his hands around it, I thought, that is what death ought to be: a terrifying moment, bashing against the window, then big hands cover you and suddenly you are out of the window into a new life. That’s a good way to go.
We always went to church when I was small. My grandfather was a clergyman, a canon, in Yorkshire. I do try and go at Christmas and Easter, and I feel guilty if I don’t. I am going to try to go more. God is one of those things, like reading Dickens, that I’m going to get round to later.
My will doesn’t say anything about the funeral. One is arrogant enough to think that the children would be too upset to want a huge party. I’d like a notice in the papers, because it would stop people ringing up and asking if I could open a fete the following week.
I know I should be an organ donor. My darling Aunt Gwen wanted to donate all her organs, and we had terrible visions of my poor cousin having to go round all the hospitals in Yorkshire with a carrier bag. When you’re that age, they don’t need all your organs, do they? They could have my legs, as an example of fat Yorkshire thighs.
I’ve gone off burial because of this awful survey, which said that about 500 people a year in France climb out of their coffins. Cremation might be easier. I threw my mother’s ashes over a wild flower meadow, burying a few in a small grave with a headstone that had a family crest, a rabbit and her dates.
For my own funeral, I think I’d want to look quite tidy, wearing a bra and a trouser suit, because of my legs. And I’d like a photograph of Leo and the children in the coffin. And champagne, chocolates, and a copy of Pope John Paul II’s record. It is hysterical: pop music going in the background, and him saying: ‘Be still my children, do not be frightened.’
Jilly Cooper and her husband Leo. He died in 2013 aged 79
For my own funeral, I think I’d want to look quite tidy, wearing a bra and a trouser suit, because of my legs. And I’d like a photograph of Leo and the children in the coffin, said Dame Jilly
It would be a terrific suck-up present to either God or the Devil when I got there.
I’d like two priests to conduct the service: Mr Farrow, from the village, who is a darling, and a great friend called Father Damian, of Prinknash Abbey. He is wonderful. He used to be in the record business and would really ginger things up. I’d like Mahler’s Symphony of a Thousand, played by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Opera House orchestra and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra – all my pet orchestras that helped with my recent novels. They’ll make a terrific din in the churchyard at Bisley.
And I’d like the Lacrimosa from Verdi’s Requiem, and the Good Friday music from Wagner’s Parsifal, with its symbols of rising from the dead. I’d also want the Brideshead Revisited music.
For readings, there is a poem by WE Henley, and it says, ‘So be my passing!/My task accomplished and the long day done. /My wages taken, and in my heart,/Some late lark singing.’ That makes me cry.
Jilly Cooper pictured at home in Putney in December 1978
And for all our drinking mates, I’d like So We’ll Go No More a-Roving. And a poem by Christina Rossetti that includes the lines: ‘When I am dead, my dearest,/Sing no sad songs for me.’
Afterwards, there will be a party in our Gloucestershire garden, looking over the valley.
My son Felix said he wouldn’t want to share me with millions of people and would rather have a small gathering, which is really very sweet.
But a big party could spread over the lawn and all my friends would be there.
I suppose people are bound to talk about me. I always do the same thing at funerals: gossip, gossip, gossip, Oh, God, one mustn’t speak ill of the dead, gossip, gossip. One of the nicest funerals I went to had a lot of wolfhounds at the party, and that was a frightfully good idea, because every time somebody got drunk, they could lean against a large dog.
I’d like to be buried near our dogs’ graveyard with a slate headstone by Roger Venables, with my dates and an engraving of my best dog, Barbara.
‘Jilly wasn’t quite so silly’ would be a lovely epitaph, but is too trite. There is a wonderful one for the explorer Alexander Laing: ‘Something strong and genial and immensely kind has gone out of this world.’ It would not work for me, because I’m not strong.
Schubert’s gravestone shows him arriving in Heaven, looking very surprised, and an angel putting a laurel wreath on his head. In my dreams, I’d like to have an angel putting a wreath on me. But I think it is rather unlikely.
