Dying (15 page)

The accident of birth is just that. And so is everything that happens afterwards,
or so it seems to me. How many times I could have died before now, and in
how many
different ways. And yet I came close only once: a speeding sedan ran a red light,
hit three other vehicles, and jack-knifed into my rear wheel a split second after
I'd stepped out of my parked car. A bystander described the scene to me later.

‘You were a millimetre away from losing your legs,' he said.

I hadn't seen a thing, only turning as the sedan came to a halt and the teenage driver
emerged unhurt.

‘My brakes failed,' he said, shaken and apologetic. ‘I couldn't stop.'

So many times I've wondered what might have happened to me if I had lost my legs,
or even just my right one, where my first melanoma appeared two or three years later.
If I'd just been a second slower stepping away from the car, I might not be dying
now. I'd be legless, of course, but still in good health. Of these fateful forks
in the road are our lives made up. We are all just a millimetre away from death,
all of the time, if only we knew it. The
Hagakure
is a samurai manifesto, written
in 1716, to remind its readers of this incontrovertible fact
.
‘It is silly,' writes
the book's author, Tsunetomo Yamamoto, ‘to spend an entire lifetime struggling and
worrying and doing things we don't want to do; after all this life is like a dream,
so short and fleeting.' It's a good piece of advice even now.

And of course I wonder why I was not more vigilant about checking my skin, because,
if I had been, I would have picked up that first melanoma before it turned bad, and
saved myself a lot of heartache. When I was first diagnosed, I was angry with myself
for being too lazy and stupid to bother with anything but the occasional quick examination.
But then I decided that kind of thinking was a waste of my time, because we start
dying the moment we are born. I know that now, not in the child's way I knew it when
I saw the skink disappear down the kookaburra's gullet, but in a dying person's way.
The knowledge has changed from that first illuminating but soon forgotten premonition
into an undeniable lived reality.

I imagine at the very end I might feel a little like my mother felt when her marriage
finally died. Oh God, what have I done. I've crossed the line. What started out so
well, and seemed so full of promise, has come down to this, a big zero. But that
presumes that I will be lucid to the last moment and able to think this final thought.
If I'm being realistic, that isn't the most likely scenario. As far as I can tell,
I'll either succumb to some opportunistic infection, for which I've refused antibiotics
in advance, or, having similarly declined forced feeding, I'll starve to death. Every
day, my body demands less and less fuel and, although I still enjoy food, I eat like
a bird, much to Shin's despair. He's always been the family cook. He's been
feeding
me since the day we met. Everything I know about Japanese food I know because of
him. So now that's another pleasure gone, perhaps the greatest. I don't know how
long it takes to die of starvation, or whether it hurts, but I dread it, just as
I dread my sons watching me go like that. Because that will be what they remember,
their mother reduced to a bag of bones. What it will do to Shin I can't bear to contemplate.

And all the while my Chinese drug offers an alternative way to go. I'm grateful
to have it. It helps me to feel that my autonomy is still intact, that I might yet
be able to influence my fate. Even if I never use the drug, it will still have served
to banish the feeling of utter helplessness that threatens so often to overwhelm
me. I have heard it said that modern dying means dying more, dying over longer periods,
enduring more uncertainty, subjecting ourselves and our families to more disappointments
and despair. As we are enabled to live longer, we are also condemned to die longer.
In that case, it should come as no surprise that some of us seek out the means to
bring a dignified end to the ordeal, while we are still capable of deciding matters
for ourselves. Where is the crime in that? A sorrowful goodbye, a chance to kiss
each beloved face for the last time before sleep descends, pain retreats, dread dissolves,
and death is defeated by death itself.

I've come to the edge of words now, to the
place where they falter and strain in the face of dying's terrifying finality. The
reason I was always such a fan of film is that films are about showing not telling.
If I were writing my death scene for a film my very last moments would go something
like this. A montage. Shaky, over-exposed home-movie footage of a girl with a dog
in dappled sunshine, a car speeding down a dusty road, the same girl on a beach with
palm trees, arm in arm with her mother in some outback moonscape, crossing the tarmac
at an airport with a silver jet in the background. The jet takes off. A kookaburra
sits on a branch laughing. A skink slinks away under cover.

Fade to black.

Acknowledgments

This book would not have happened without Penny Hueston, my editor at Text, who gave
me the idea and cheered me along throughout. For all their love and kindness along
the way I'd like to thank Yuriko Nagata, Terry Martin, Alfreda Stadlin, Peter Dodd,
Kaoru Kikuchi and John Slee. To Barbara Masel, who for so many years has been my
first reader, my friend, my adviser, I owe too much to ever express or repay.

I'm also deeply indebted to the nurses and staff at Karuna, who have provided me
with the peace of mind to work on this project despite my failing health. I could
not have wished for more compassionate care and counselling over these past months.
And my thanks to the late Susan Addison.

And of course I thank Shin, for everything he is and does.