Cancer 61

Does it make it easier or harder to know that you are dying? Even though I do not know how quickly I am dying, I do know I am. I would like to think it is easier, that I am pretty certain that I won’t be facing the real decay and distress of old age, but the reality is, like most people, I crave for more life. I desperately want to live. I dream about a miraculous cure, that the consultant is going to be astounded, saying that she has never before seen such cancer completely disappear. I walk around, I look at the world, I interact with people, and I want more of it. I like it. I thrive on it.

It does make it harder knowing you are to die. When you are young you are immortal. As you age you recognise mortality at one level, you begin to recognise that one day you will die, but because there isn’t a date, we are not on some sort of Logan’s Run, it still remains out of sight and out of mind. I know I don’t have a date, and I can’t predict what the date will be, but I feel like I have a date. It is a terribly strong feeling, one that I cannot remove or ignore.

As I did before I received my death penalty, I do things, I look forward to things. The doing of things does not gain an intensity I used to think it might with a death sentence. Today I went around the Roman fort of Vindolanda, south of the Wall. I enjoyed it much as I would have done a few years ago, though I am far less fit, needed to rest regularly and could not get around the whole place.

It is more painful looking forward to things. We are making plans for whatever future there is. I want to go away as much as possible. I cannot practically leave the country but there is a lot to explore in the country. Since I have recovered from my operation we have been twice to the Yorkshire Dales, to the Highlands of Scotland, and are currently in Northumbria. For the future , we have booked trips to Norwich (a city break? Me?), Shropshire and the Pembrokeshire Coast (the one original National Park I have never been to). I have these trips to look forward to, along with my book coming out in January and a new car (my first ever new car) around November. I have no idea whether I will be alive for these things and, as I have said before, if I am not then it really doesn’t matter as I will know nothing about it.

But I am alive at the moment. I still have those hopes and dreams we talk about in such a throwaway manner when we are alive in a normal way. I want those trips. I want that car. I want to see my book.