Now they are saying
the cancer’s spread further.
I think I know
when this bad news is going to end.
I’m ready for death
I’ve heard how likely
my treatment is to turn palliative.
But is death ready for me?
I look disappointingly unlike
someone about to die.
The doctors believe it,
but should I believe the doctors?
Sickeningly healthy
might be the term.
Perhaps I'm pretending:
that would be sick.
Sepsis didn’t kill me
The bowel-blocking tumour didn’t kill me.
It seems I am immortal
for a few more months.
It feels odd
to be back in the world of not-ill
and odder yet
to know that I don’t belong.
My bowel is short
but, like my big and crooked nose,
non-one's impolite enough
to mention it.
Of course I wonder about the cause
especially as the doctors say
I’m in the 10% attributable to bad luck.
Better, though, to concentrate on turning the bad luck good.
Everyone says that I'm strong
I’ll get through it.
For once I'm resisting
the urge to prove everyone wrong.
I've bought myself
a new diary.
Is there no end
to my optimism bias?
Existence
is only a brief reprieve
from the infinite opposite either end.
Why should it seem so significant?
Will I die tonight?
If I tell myself 'yes, I’ll go in my sleep',
waking to find these weren’t my last words
will feel quite the bonus.
Life spools behind me
more precious and good
for the quickening perspective:
I have always been here before.
Life’s
been pretty great so far.
What a comfort
that it hasn’t got long to go wrong.
Would it be kind
to start being mean?
Just to make sure
I’m not missed…
The outside is healing
nicely, thanks -
I like to claim it’s unusually neat.
It’s the inside that I wonder on, blindly.
This table is now the cancer office
the ultimate administrator of schedules and doses
Is it only love
that will survive of us?
I suppose the immaterial is the most natural fit
for immortality.
What happens if I die
is what I'll never know.
Did I mean a more down to earth
and concrete sort of question?
What happens if I die
before my tax return’s due back?
Do I save myself a lot of hassle
or cause Steph even more?
2.19 a.m.
This is the steroids waking me,
certainly not worry -
unless it's the worry that the steroids will wake me.
My tastes remain
annoyingly consistent.
The novelty of enjoying of eggs –
or opera, rugby or video games – is still denied me.
‘Half of a date is sugar!’
warns Steph. She’s concerned
in case sugar accelerates tumour growth.
‘I’ll have the other half’.
‘From what I
am about to receive
may
the Lord make me truly better’
would
be to seek help from a non-interventionist God
whose
stance is probably caused by non-existence.
Is there comfort
in melancholy?
Not much. I’d rather
look to gallows humour.
Traffic jams, spam mail
call centre menus, Xmas jingles,
bad grammar, heating bills…
What's not to not miss?
I haven’t given up
the ghost. In fact,
in my mean and manic way,
I haven’t given up anything.
The toaster’s refusing to pop
until the bread’s been pretty-much cremated.
We’ll get a new one:
I will not be mocked.
The blinds are down.
The heating’s off.
Only the stand-by lights remain.
The house is with me.
I’d better get planning
Who wants their last words to be
‘I wish I’d had longer
to refine my last words’?
Think of the global warming impact
of widespread immortality.
In times of crisis
we all have to do our bit.
My teeth are terrible
The dentist was urging
major reconstruction
before the good news that they’ll probably see me out.
You want it darker?
I’m not scared of that:
I write on
an illuminated screen.
A bit of
pain
to sharpen the reality?
I recommend the sore mouth and the tingles:
they're nothing much.
We need to avoid
the meta-fret: fretting about whether to fret about -
or even report -
various minor side-effects of chemo.
I seek no honorific
for death, but if I did
that exemplary failure to discriminate
would have to make it ‘Mx’.
On the plus side
plenty have told me
of their chemo successes,
and no-one has told me they died.
I love cancer
and cancer loves me.
Sounds a good slogan,
but only half true.
Should I wish I had a legacy
requiring a distracting amount of planning?
Or be glad of easeful easing out,
knowing that I haven’t?
Just another day on earth?
Only for those
who feel immortal
even though they know they're not.
Is this the real death
or just a test to see
exactly what it feels like
to know it’s coming soon?
I've bought myself
a new diary.
Purely for the pleasure of planning
what I know I’m unlikely to do.
I’m not so sure
that dying is an art,
but maybe it’s essential
to the whole of art’s production.
Art, after all
is recuperation from time
and right now I am out of it
trying to catch this.
The mystery is
that I’m feeling fine -
like a condemned man
brooding in his cell.
Should I go to London?
Steph prefers not: cautiously, touchingly
she wants me to live
I say yes: I want to live.
It's a classic patient-carer tension
according to my colorectal nurse:
that and the question of whether to talk about death
or bury it in the unsaid.
I wake at night
and thoughts occur
like streamers in extremis.
Is this one?
Will I return
as something else?
I don't even I know
if I've had a prior existence.
The couch was not enough
to consummate any residual wish.
Freud died in his consulting room
on a brought-in bed.
Between the forceps and the stone?
Hardly: I came out easy
and plan to go up
in smoke and scatter.
Is naked cremation an option?
Why burn good clothes
at time when I expect to be
well beyond any pretence.
Can I have a double funeral please?
File right for classical: Bach, Schubert
and Shostakovich. Or left for indie rock:
Joy Divison, Cope and the Cocteaus…
I imagine observing
from the balcony of the dead
as the funerals stream in aftermath
trying to work out which group is most affected.
The death of a soul
is a contradictory matter.
Can only those who never had one
hope for its demise?
I am not afraid
of your anger, death.
Though sometimes I may pause to consider
your cunning and your stealth.
I hear I'm no angel
nor will I become one.
But why would I want to be
a being that doesn't exist?
I’m a generous man
After years of low cost the NHS is spending big
on me. Yet I’d happily put the budget back
to where it used to be.
It’s what’s inside that matters
as in some children’s morality tale,
albeit the more unusual sort
that doesn’t end happily.
I’m avoiding fast food
for reasons Steph can explain in detail
and because I’d rather not ask
for anything ‘to go’.
Patrick Caulfield
got there first
with a tombstone reading simply ‘DEAD’.
And so, perhaps, I’ll have to go with ‘GONE’.
The freest death
would make sense of my life
without looking backwards
other than to prove the time is right.
Imagine a ‘Where's Wally?’
in which Wally is death
and you start to wonder
if you'll ever find him...
to see posterity,
but I’m happy to delay
the opportunity.
I was wondering whether
I might dream of a beautiful death
when it struck me
that I won’t be dreaming of a beautiful life when I’m dead.
People say I’m brave
but I’ve done nothing
save carry on existing a bit longer
and acting as I please.
Everybody cuts me
a fantastic amount of slack.
If only ‘dying’
could be a permanent state.
Now I can be blasé
Air fares rising? Fungal toenails?
A window pane cracked?
Do me a favour!
How ludicrous would it be
to worry that these thoughts
will seem to lack integrity
should I survive?
I stroll out daily
to prove I’m not yet –
even if I could be –
a dead man walking.
I've bought myself
a new diary.
Value for money is less of an object
If everything matters
then nothing matters.
But does that work
the other way around?
This is brilliant!
Any event I don’t want to attend
falls
‘at the wrong time in the chemo cycle’.
Soon I’ll be dead
and people can say what they like.
Hang on –
they’re ahead of me!
I'd get high
on hope
if I could see the point -
for what would that change?
Did we invite you
trespasser of doom?
We're not inhospitable
but we don’t have the room.
Surely it would be
too pointed to be believed
were 'hated’
the only anagram for death?
I've always thought
biennial Christmases would be quite enough.
But this year better not be fallow
if it's going to be my last.
I have been handed
one hell of a trump:
‘I’m dying’, I point out,
‘Surely you’ll do this for me?’
I feel the kiss of death
But does Death kiss?
Surely I'm more likely
to be fucked.
Can I have a Golden Death?
One that makes
my life seem
that it had to be as was?
Perhaps they’ll say
‘He took to death
like a fish to water’.
Water in which the fish drowned.
Is it too late to change my afterlife?
I say it ought to be:
why should a craven end-fearing switch
outweigh sixty years of denial?
It isn’t so much that death becomes me
as I’ll become death -
in which state
I might as well be anyone.
Abducted from nowhere
I ended up here.
I guess I’ll get
right back where I came from.
Idiot!
Saving up my finest achievements
for my last two decades
only to find I’ve already lived them…
I’ve got the darkness
nailed down tight.
The question being
if the other side is light.
I've bought myself
a new diary.
I need to schedule blood tests, chemo,
operations, funeral.
It’s one thing to know
that I should welcome death
when the moment comes,
I spent 17 September – 11 October 2022 in Southampton General Hospital with sepsis followed by an operation to remove a tumour from my bowel: see 'The Death Suite'. Shortly after discharge I received the news ('Now they are saying') that the cancer had spread not just to the liver but also to the peritoneum (wall of the abdomen) - tricky because the abdomen can't be removed. ‘Death in the House’ was written in the run-up to Christmas during a 12 week course of chemotherapy, to be followed by an assessment of whether further operations were feasible to deal with the secondary cancers. Doctors said the odds were against me, though there was a chance.
There's a difficult judgement call to be made during chemotherapy ('Should I go to London?' and 'It's a classic patient-carer tension') - should you get on with normal life, or stay at home and avoid contact with others - given that the drugs compromise your immune system so it is more dangerous than usual to catch a virus. Apparently the 'ill one' always wants to do more than the carer would like (and typically the man in heterosexual couples prefers to avoid talking about death - so we're not wholly predictable).
As in 'The Death Suite' there are echoes of others, though the chemo life seems to have reduced the number and lightened them up. Or maybe I was just running out...
Simone de Beauvoir ('Existence') - A Very Easy Death, 1965
Leonard Cohen ('You want it darker?') - You Want It Darker, 2016
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