Nothing is ever perfect, however, for alongside those who laugh, there will always be others who weep, and sometimes, as in the present case, for the self-same reasons. Various important professions, seriously concerned about the situation, had already started to inform those in power of their discontent. As one would expect, the first formal complaints came from the undertaking business. Rudely deprived of their raw material, the owners began by making the classic gesture of putting their hands to their heads and wailing in mournful chorus, Now what’s going to become of us, but then, faced by the prospect of a catastrophic collapse from which no one in the funeral trade would escape, they called a general meeting, at the end of which, after heated discussions, all of them unproductive because all of them, without exception, ran up against the indestructible wall of death’s refusal to collaborate, the same death to which they had become accustomed, from parents down to children, as something which was their natural due, they finally approved a document to be submitted to the government for their consideration, which document adopted the only constructive proposal, well, constructive, but also hilarious, that had been presented at the debate, They’ll laugh at us, warned the chairman, but I recognise that we have no other way out, it’s either this or the ruin of the undertaking business. The document stated that, at an extraordinary general meeting called to examine the grave crisis they were going through because of the lack of deaths in the country, the funeral directors’ representatives, after an intense and open debate, during which a respect for the supreme interests of the nation had always been paramount, had reached the conclusion that it was still possible to avoid the disastrous consequences of what would doubtless go down in history as the worst collective calamity to befall us since the founding of the nation, namely, that the government should make obligatory the burial or cremation of all domestic animals that die a natural or accidental death, and that such burials or cremations, regulated and approved, should be carried out by the funerary industry, bearing in mind our admirable work in the past as the public service which, in the deepest sense of the term, we have always been, generation after generation. The document went on, We would draw the government’s attention to the fact that this vital change in the industry cannot be made without considerable financial investment, for it is not the same thing to bury a human being and to carry to its final resting-place a cat or a canary, or indeed a circus elephant or a bathtub crocodile, for it will require a complete reformulation of our traditional techniques, and the experience already acquired since pet cemeteries were given the official go-ahead will prove extremely useful in this essential process of modernisation, in other words, what has, up until now, been very much a sideline in our industry, although admittedly a very lucrative one, will now become our sole activity, thus avoiding, as far as possible, the dismissal of hundreds, if not thousands of selfless and courageous workers who have, every day of their working lives, bravely confronted the terrible face of death and upon whom death has now so unfairly turned her back, And so, prime minister, with a view to providing the protection merited by a profession which has, for millennia, been classified as a public utility, we ask you to consider not only the urgent need for a favourable decision, but also, in parallel, either the opening of a line of subsidised loans or else, and this would be the icing on the cake, or perhaps I should say the brass handles on the coffin, not to say elementary justice, the granting of non-recoverable loans that would help towards the rapid revitalisation of a sector whose survival is now threatened for the first time in history, and, indeed, long before history began, in all the ages of pre-history as well, for no human corpse has ever lacked for someone who would, sooner or later, come along and bury it, even if it was only the generous earth herself opening up to receive it. Respectfully hoping that our request may be granted, we remain.
The directors and administrators of hospitals, both state-run and private, were soon beating on the door of the minister in question, the minister for health, to express, along with the other relevant public services, their worries and anxieties, which, strange though it may seem, always highlighted logistical rather than health matters. They stated that the usual rotational process of patients coming in, getting better or dying had suffered, if we may put it like this, a short-circuit or, if you prefer a less technical term, a bottleneck, the reason being the indefinite stay of an ever larger number of patients who, given the seriousness of their illnesses or of the accidents of which they had been victims, would, in the normal course of events, have passed over into the next life. The situation is extremely grave, they argued, we have already started putting patients out in the corridors, even more frequently than we usually do, and everything indicates that in less than a week’s time, it will not only be the lack of beds we have to deal with, for with every corridor and every ward full, and given the lack of space and the difficulties of manoeuvring, we will have to face the fact that we have no idea where to put any beds that are available. There is a way of solving the problem, concluded the people in charge of the hospitals, however it does, very slightly, infringe the hippocratic oath, and the decision, were it to be taken, would have to be neither medical nor administrative, but political. Since a word to the wise is always enough, the minister for health, having consulted the prime minister, sent the following despatch, With regard to the unavoidable overcrowding which is already beginning to have a seriously prejudicial effect on the hitherto excellent working of our hospital system and which is a direct consequence of the growing number of people being admitted in a state of suspended life and who will remain so indefinitely with no possibility of a cure or even of any improvement, at least not until medical research reaches the new goals it has set itself, the government advises and recommends hospital boards and administrations that, following a rigorous analysis, on a case-by-case basis, of the clinical situation of patients who find themselves in this position, and once the irreversibility of those morbid processes has been confirmed, the patients should be handed over to the care of their families, with hospitals taking full responsibility for ensuring that patients receive all the treatments and examinations their GPs deem to be either necessary or advisable. The government’s decision is based on a hypothesis within the grasp of everyone, namely that a patient in such a state, that is, permanently on the brink of a death which is permanently being denied to him, must, even during any brief moments of lucidity, be pretty much indifferent to where he is, whether in the loving bosom of his family or in a crowded hospital ward, given that, in neither place, will he manage to die or be restored to health. The government would like to take this opportunity to inform the population that investigations are continuing apace and these will, as we hope and trust, lead to a satisfactory understanding of the still mysterious causes of the disappearance of death. We would also like to say that a large interdisciplinary commission, including representatives from the various religions and philosophers from a variety of different schools of thought, who always have something to say about such matters, has been charged with the delicate task of reflecting on what a future without death will be like, at the same time trying to make a reasonable forecast of the new problems society will have to face, the principle of which some might summarise with this cruel question, What are we going to do with all the old people if death is not there to cut short any ambitions they may have to live an excessively long life.