This is an excerpt from my book “How to Live Like You Were Dying: Notes from a Cancer Survivor”        Originally written in 2005.

Chapter One

 
“O death, be not proud” from Sonnet X, Jon Donne

 
For most of us, the good news about dying is that we don’t know when it’s going to happen. We don’t know when we are going to die. And for most of us we don’t use the term “good news” and dying in the same sentence, but I’m getting off point.

For most people when the idea of passing away comes up, ignorance is bliss. Psychologists call it denial. To me, it was just the way I lived. For me it was normal.

I never thought much about dying. I certainly didn’t worry about it. I certainly never considered writing about dying. Happily, this isn’t about dying. It’s about how to live. It’s about how I learned to live based on circumstances in my life. It’s how you and I might live better if we have an awareness of our mortality.

On the rare occasion I thought about the possibility of dying I didn’t think it would be my turn soon. I often joked that I wasn’t afraid of death… I just didn’t want to be on the next bus load. I laughed when other people joked about dying; the old joke that they didn’t mind death, it was the dying that was a nuisance. In short, I didn’t make much space in my thinking for mortality, death, or dying.

But who does? Certainly none of the people I knew or associated with did. We were macho. We were immortal, or so we thought.

I only casually thought about death when I brushed past it in my life. A long-time loyal bar customer had an unexpected heart attack and I said a few words at the eulogy. A cherished employee passed from AIDS related disease and I told him “Thanks & Goodbye” in the hospice. A student friend had gotten killed in an automobile accident and it was a shock.

My best friend from grade school was killed in a motorcycle wreck, but with his reckless life, I kind of expected it. Even my father had passed away years before from heart disease near age 69. But I was unfazed; he was in poor health and had heart disease.

I never considered my mortality. As I moved from my 20’s to 30’s and into my 40’s I felt my body change. I got tired easier, I got heavier. I got “soft”. Some would say my body was deteriorating and there’s a medical argument for that, but I never considered the possibility that I could be dying. I never considered that I could be dying soon.

It was a big shock when my oncologist diverted her eyes from mine on our first office visit and told me at best, I had six months to live.

SIX MONTHS? That’s only 180 days. How could she give me this “death sentence” with such certainty? How could she not look me in the eyes when she said this? What was so important on that paper that she had to look at it when she delivered this shocker to me?

I was shocked. I was in disbelief. The doctor had to have made a mistake. I didn’t feel like I was dying.

After all what kind of credibility could she have? She had a bad hair color and dandruff! Her hair was a little greasy and unkempt. There were dandruff flakes on her shoulders. Her roots didn’t match.

Here was a medical doctor, an oncologist, a trained professional giving me devastating news and I was focusing on her personal grooming habits and lack of style! It’s amazing what tricks the mind can play when one gets such shocking news. I was getting the worst possible news in my life and I was criticizing my grim reaper’s lack of élan.

I was judging her for letting her roots show, so that I barely heard the “death sentence”.

Of course your mileage may vary.

Dr Jay