If
any god told you that you would die tomorrow, or certainly on
the day after tomorrow, you would not care much whether it was on the
third day or tomorrow, unless you were in the highest degree mean-spirited.
For
how small is the difference? So think it no great thing to die
after as many years as you can name, rather than tomorrow.
—Marcus
Aurelius, Meditations, Book 4 (tr
Long)
After
years of ever worsening chest pains, shortness of breath, terrible exhaustion, and
then finally sudden unpredictable bouts of passing out, I was advised that I
had perhaps six months to live.
My
heart, they said, after all the fancy tests, was just failing. Various hugely
expensive surgical options were suggested, of course, all of which involved
ripping me open, putting me under for many months, and all of them with
absolutely no guarantee of doing anything at all.
I think,
perhaps for the first time in my life, I actually managed to show even a little bit of
courage. Thank you, I said. Please give me whatever you can to make it easier,
and to make the end come more smoothly, but I’m not going to try to extend my
meager life in quantity, at the expense if its quality.
I know
that choice is not for everyone, but I made my own choice based on Stoic
principles. I would rather live well, with whatever little time is given to me,
than lie there having been chopped up like a piece of meat, with tubes in me,
numbed by drugs that cloud my thinking, a faceless number in a sterile hospital
room. Whatever will come, will come, but I will not choose to die to the
chirping of machines, covered in plastic. I’d rather die with the chirping of
birds, surrounded by fresh air.
And here
I am, now over two years later, still alive. The esteemed doctors squirm when I
show up for a renewal on my prescriptions. I know it could end at any moment,
and I no longer have any fear of that. Perhaps it is just my tough Irish
constitution, or the fact that I am just generally a stubborn bastard. None of
that matters.
I do
know it will end sooner rather than later. It no longer troubles me. I at least
suspect it will end quickly, and quite unexpectedly, whenever it happens, and
though there are things I will miss most terribly, I hope that I will have done
my part.
I
learned that I needed to come to terms with who I am, not how long I have happened
to be here. We are always told, by the big moneymaking machine, to invest in
our future. I realized there is nothing more important than investing in my
present.
It
hasn’t been an easy path. The physical pain is far outweighed by the way the
situation makes the Black Dog bite me emotionally all the more. There are times
I will want to surrender completely. I even developed a little mantra for
myself, whenever I went to bed in a very foul mood:
Close your eyes. Fall asleep.
Don’t wake up.
I was
saddened by how few people showed any concern at all, but that was itself the
test that Providence offered to me. It has helped me to rely on my own
thinking, and to recognize when there is actually compassionate thinking in
others, however few those others might be.
How
much? Meaningless.
How well?
Priceless.
Written in 12/2016
A chirping bird, not a chirping machine. . .
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