The sudden and unexpected discovery that I have secondary tumours in my brain immediately confronted me with my mortality. Yet there was no rush of breath, no moment of fear, no “why me?”
My first reaction was to feel my wife’s hand gently touch my head, and in that moment I began to realise how the news would create sadness and shock in those close to me.
When my mother died I was 10 years old. The suddeness of her death taught me that the continuity of life and love was not ever to be taken for granted. When I was 28 this message was reinforced when my grandmother died, and then shortly afterwards my father suddenly dropped dead of an unanticipated heart attack.
So for most of my life I have been anticipating my own death, not in any morbid sense, but as “death the great awakener”. It has shaped my relationships with others, never wanting to regret the things unsead.
So assuming that “no one gets out of here alive” left me merely considering the way my life would end, whether by sudden heart attack at my father’s age of 57, or through a long drawn out period of dementia as with my aunt and my grandmother..
The latest news that no primary or secondary tumours are evident in the rest of my body, raises the possibility of a deferred exit!