Joy

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

An old man died earlier this year, and I’ve been meaning to write about the manner of his passing.

He was the botanist and ecologist David Goodall. Born a Brit, he moved to Australia the year after I was born, to lecture in botany at the University of Melbourne. His career was longer than most: he was still editing scientific papers last year when he was a hundred and three.

He welcomed life, all one hundred four years of it, and he welcomed death. He spent a part of his long life advocating for assisted dying, and at the end chose to die himself that way. Two days before leaving us, he said his life had been spent in the field working, and that he’d love to be able to walk into the bush again, and see what was all around him.

This is what he chose to hear as he slipped away from this life, closing his eyes, looking all around.