Intimations of Mortality.

One Saturday afternoon in the summer of 2003 I had a phone call from my nephew. He told me that his father, my brother, had died of an aneurism. He had driven his wife shopping that morning, and never gone home again. By 4 pm he was just a corpse in an Oxford hospital. It sharpened my perception of mortality, and I began to dwell on it a bit.

Last summer I was sent for tests on a ‘swollen gland’ under my left ear that had been there for three years. After they'd done an ultrasound scan and a biopsy (which took three attempts and was bloody painful!) I asked the doctor who was checking the sample whether there was any immediate diagnosis to be had. I remember his words well: ‘There’s little doubt you have a tumour, but there’s nothing in the history to suggest malignancy.’ The second part of his statement seemed somewhat vague; it was the first part that struck home. ‘Tumour’ isn’t a nice word. It was the first time I’d heard it in reference to me. It was about five weeks before I had another consultation, followed by an MRI scan. Those five weeks were interesting.

I wondered whether I would still be here at Christmas. I began to have tentative thoughts on what plans I should make, and how difficult it could be to break the news to the couple of people I thought might have reason to be concerned. My spiritual beliefs suddenly seemed a little flimsier than they had previously. Most of all, though, I realised how attached I’d become to this thing I call me. The notion that I might cease to exist before long was an interesting experience. I was aware of how much we take our physical existence for granted. We go to bed every night, not doubting that we’ll wake up in the morning. We say ‘be back shortly’ when we go out, not knowing whether we will or not.

The MRI scan confirmed that I had a Wartharin’s Tumour. They’re non-malignant, and so the sharp edge of my intimations of mortality was blunted, but those intimations haven’t gone away altogether. Sometimes they take the form of numbers. How many mornings have I woken up? How many meals have I had? What percentage of an average lifetime have I now used up?

I know that my life will consist of so many days. Nearly every night when I go to bed, the last thought I have before I turn off the light is ‘that’s another one gone. I wonder how many more there will be.’ It isn’t a chilling thought, nor even a morbid one. It’s just interesting. And it has encouraged in me the tendency to live the moment. The past is merely memory, the future unknowable. Now is all that matters. I’m calmer for it, and more accepting of the mysterious road that is about to unfold before me, on this earth or some other.