Carpe Diem

From the time of Jen's first diagnosis with breast cancer, I started counting the days we'd had since then. It seems an oddly appropriate response for a mathematician, and for a while it was a bit of a joke between us. But the act of counting was also a commitment to make the days matter, to value the uncertain time we might still have together. I stopped working in evenings so that we could enjoy them (although during various parts of the chemo cycle Jen would crash out exhausted relatively early). We both made an unspoken decision to avoid as far as we could the petty arguments that sometimes crept into our relationship when under stress.

Jen died on day 310. Nothing in that time was easy, but we had some memorable and beautiful days together. There was an intensity to it that I miss now. For some couples I know, a cancer diagnosis in one person has brought them closer together, such that it now forms some of their best memories. C. S. Lewis makes a similar comment about his time with Joy even in the late stages when all medical hope was gone. Sadly, there's a grim reality that in many cases such a diagnosis causes the relationship to end rapidly.

Reading Naomi Reed's account in "No Ordinary View" of her second time in Nepal, she recounts the process of leaving their village for good. Initially there was a desperate rush in case they had to evacuate the country as the political situation reached a crisis, and then unexpectedly there was more time. She writes of the deliberateness of leaving, of saying goodbye to those who'd become important to her, and knowing she might never return. That unexpected gift of time is like the one advantage, if you like, of cancer over a car crash or other instant death - there's the opportunity to be deliberate, to say the important words over and over, to slow everything down just a little.

That deliberate preparation reminds me of my current state of preparing to run another marathon on Sunday morning. Since the start of the year I've run about 850km in training, lost about 5kg, and even begun a regular program of stretches and strength exercises. My past experience tells me that the hard part of marathon running is in the training. Now I've changed my perspective a bit, so that the race is really just a motivational tool to get me to run for exercise and general health. Every time I've done this, I've been amazed at how much one can sacrifice in the cause of running a marathon. I wonder if I could have that dedication continually, and apply it to other pursuits.

Marathon training has the advantage of a definite horizon - the day of the race. I can make the effort to train precisely because it is limited in scope. I know there will be a slackening off before I choose the next race. Even with Jen's cancer, it was clear that her life was likely to be short, perhaps a year or two more on the optimistic side, and that very limitation helped us to seize the day. Being alive is a very uncertain diagnosis - you could have days or decades still to go. My question to myself is whether I can live now as I would want to if I knew my days were numbered.

The answer is no. I can't live with that same deliberate depth and quality of love for the people who matter most to me, as I would if I knew I didn't have long left. That's not altogether bad, because it's ultimately about balance. In the ten months before Jen's death, I eased back from work and dropped a number of other commitments. As my life goes on without Jen, I have to give time and attention to the mundane as well. In the first year or so after Jen's death, I was tempted to throw myself into some things, because I was driven by an awareness of the possible shortness of life. But some matters, especially with people, need patience. Not every issue or hurt can be resolved now. Some decisions are best made slowly.

As a Christian, the parallel challenge is to live being aware of the nearness of death and eternity, and therefore the importance of God in that domain, alongside an engagement with this world. A friend related to me that the 17th century clergyman and poet John Donne had an open coffin in his room for twenty years in order to remind himself of the nearness of death. To quote from the start of his poem Hymn to God, My God, in My sickness

Since I am coming to that holy room,

Where, with thy choir of saints for evermore,

I shall be made thy music; as I come

I tune the instrument here at the door,

And what I must do then, think here before.

I need the daily reminder of prayer and reflection to have any real focus on God in a noisy world, to have any hope of 'tuning my instrument at the door'. Even though I must give balanced attention to all the demands that flood in, my desire is to still give priority to the people I love over the tasks I have to complete.