All My Friends Are Fictional’s Reviews > Departure > Status Update

I am at least trying to be stoical, and I sleep more since cancer and its treatment arrived in my life. And while I still hate and fear death (though recognising the pointlessness of such protests), do I rage against it? I'm not sure I ever did — I think I tried to wail lucidly against it. And self-pity is hardly relevant when you see how suffering strikes down others, and how ill-equipped many are to deal with it.

“Later, I began thinking about members of 'my breed' who wrote well about love, whether aphoristically or novelistically. 'In love, there is always one who kisses and one who turns the cheek' — I quoted that in my first novel, and it now seemed appropriate to the present case. Then there was the more famous: 'There are people who would never fall in love if they hadn't first heard it talked about.'”

“The need for self-correction comes with age, like the habit of repetition. It must have something to do with death and departure from this life. Like confessing your sins and errors in the old days. Now it's a different sort of reckoning before you die. ‘I just want to get this one thing straight,’ we say. As if it will make much difference, at the time, or later.”

“Some cancer-sufferers do this, naming their tumour after someone they most hate or despise - … you have named an enemy… But as we know, this is a mental tactic which makes no difference to the outcome. And anyway, in my case, there is no centre to my illness that I can name and vilify. It's just an anonymous overall presence - not really a companion as I just called it, for it hardly feels companionable.”

“Joyfulness, pleasure, passionate interest — like their photographic negatives, sadness, grief and boredom — flow over us in waves. We can take precautionary measures, seeking to prolong the former and delay the latter, but these make only a minor difference. … If everyone around you agrees they are happy, perhaps you are too, because there are no real tests for happiness except the individual concerned.”

“I have had a lifelong engagement with death... Yet, despite the shiver of ‘I can't tell if it is or isn't leukaemia’, I hadn't received a death sentence. Instead, I had received a life sentence: sentenced to live with my cancer until I died. The obituarial line ‘He died after a long struggle with cancer, bravely borne’ should read: ‘He died after cancer had a long, brave struggle with him.’”

„Mental attitudes — contrary to what we would like to believe — make no difference to cancer outcomes. 'Being brave', or being shit-scared, or occupying a midpoint of stubborn self-deception, don't alter anything. The obituarial line, 'He died after a long struggle with cancer, bravely borne', should read:
'He died after cancer had a long, brave struggle with him.'“

„I have had a lifelong engagement with death, both theoretical and actual, and have written about it many times. Yet, despite the shiver of 'I can't tell if it is or isn't leukaemia', I hadn't received a death sentence. Instead, I had received a life sentence: sentenced to live with my cancer until I died. When I checked — you have to check — … I was told (if in more scientific terminology): fat chance.“