You don’t have cancer. Not cancer, I replied. Did we think I had cancer? The doctor looked at me over her glasses. No, we didn’t think so. I didn’t even know why the doctor had called me in for the appointment, and now it had been determined that I didn’t have cancer. Are there more things I haven’t got, I asked. The doctor was not interested in humour, so she went on to check blood pressure and all the other things doctors do.
Although this was good news, I was completely unprepared for the fact that this was something that had to be investigated. Even the word is terrifying. Cancer. And even though I didn’t have cancer, the word was out and flying in my subconscious now. It was like a reminder that the end was out there.
When you reach my age, you can never be twice as old again. The consolation must be that it is not the length but the depth that counts in life. A perfect and complete life can stop at any age.
There is a time for everything. The end also has its own time. Like most people, I have pushed it ahead of me and kept myself busy with unimportant nonsense, fun and interesting people. I have never searched for the meaning of life. I have just lived it.
But now I sensed that the end was lurking somewhere over there where I could see it. Everyone I know and have met and everything I have bought and collected is a reminder of what I will one day lose. In addition to all the memories. “All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain” as the humanoid Roy Batty put it so well.
Sometimes I wish I believed there was a God or an afterlife, but I basically don’t believe in anything afterwards. The best I can hope for is that it’s like a long deep sleep. But I will probably miss waking up again.
Qui vivra verra – or the opposite in this case.
Billy Bronco is telling you 