| I remember reading this: http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2011/11/30/how-doctors-die... It moved me greatly, and also resonated because shortly after a friend of mine at the time, a cyclist with a wonderful personality and charisma, was diagnosed with a stomach cancer and within two weeks, on New Year's Eve, he died. I remember him in hospital, he knew what was coming, had taken his last ride, had refused chemo, and was now in bed dying. I remember vividly how he comforted another friend who was crying, he was in bed, in pain, and told the other friend it would be alright. How the pain wasn't so bad now, and how he would be riding soon (when he knew full well he wouldn't and the pain was causing him to wince). It occurred to me how much he, in those last days, did more to calm and comfort the people around him, how he took so little from them. And it occurred to me how much joy he had in those last few rides, the sun on his skin as he glided around country lanes just South of London. It reinforced what I'd read about how Doctors die. Reinforced my personal view that life is more than a number of days. Just as work is more than a salary alone. My wife knows of this opinion and choice, she's very strongly communicated the same opinion, and even the manner and form of her funeral. We choose to go when the time has come, and to live life fully until that moment. Some things we would live with, but other things, with a terminal prognosis, we would embrace as the striking of the final hour. Instead of spending that hour attempting to lengthen it, we choose to live and savour every moment of it. |