The distance between us

Includes bibliographical references.Simon Critchley introduces his book on death, philosophy and literature, Very Little - Almost Nothing, with a preface titled As my father, I have already died, and describes his work as an act of mourning. What follows is an account of his last moments with his father who died after a long struggle with lung cancer. Critchley missed his father's death by twenty minutes: A nurse took me to see him and then left me alone. The room was unlit and sparsely furnished. In pale winter light, he lay with a single sheet covering his corpse: tiny, withered and ravaged by cancer. I spent no more than five minutes alone with him, initially standing petrified, then sitting, and finally summoning up the courage to touch his cheek and nose and caress his forehead. It felt cool. So, this is what death looks like, I thought. This is what my death will look like