Philip Gould - When I Die

I think it is fair to say I have not been anywhere near attentive enough to the people I love during this period. I was determined to use this sense of purpose to drive us forward, but it is a legitimate complaint that certain lines in the sand have been crossed. I decided that I would cross those lines. I decided that I would go further than might be wise, and I know that other people might disagree with what I did.

Gail has carefully read everything I have written on the subject. Grace has read it, and Georgia has read it too. But I am making the decisions here, nobody else, and there is, I recognise, an arrogance involved and a lack of humility.

So many people told me to tell the truth. So many doctors, so many surgeons, so many people kept on coming back and saying, ‘Please tell the truth.’ Especially about the surgery I underwent. So I think I have done the right thing. I have been careful – though perhaps not careful enough. But I would do it again, for sure.

I think the gains have been enormous. The gains for Gail have certainly been enormous. She has changed from someone who was private about cancer and about death to someone who wants to be public about it and who now actually wants more information to be put out there.

The kids are starting to get anxious, even a bit angry about things sometimes. Death is about abandonment. Everybody will have concerns and feel sadness and anger about abandonment. I can see that. But nonetheless the children too believe there have been gains as well as losses. What I have done in talking and writing about my illness has been hugely important for us, and not the kind of thing I could do too often. I have been nervous about it all the way through. But I was determined to do it and I am determined to continue doing it as long as I can.

The point of life is that you evolve, change, develop, and become a different person. The idea is that life is something that you actually do .

I certainly do not think that a sudden, unexpected death – dropping dead, as they say – would be better than what confronts me. You would lose so much. Of course, it would be nice to avoid confronting death, nice to blunt that sharp edge. And you would avoid a lot of pain, I suppose. But I think those things are far outweighed by the things you gain from knowing that you are going to die and having the chance to act on that knowledge.

To have three months, or two months, or one month, or even a week in which to actually sit down and to fulfil and complete your relationships is almost the greatest gift that death can offer. If you can accept death, the process of grieving that follows may still be intense but it will pass and will ultimately be fulfilling and elevating. And if you can look death in the eye and accept it, and then fulfil your relationships, that is healing.

In the last few weeks I have had to come to terms with all that I have done in sixty years of living. Making sense of this is important. And it is not a passive process of reconciliation but an active one.

All this experience comes together. All the extraordinary connections and relationships made during a relatively long life must be considered. And in the many reconciliations and reckonings of this process there is the power of fulfilment. This is when you surge forward and grow. I feel I am surging forward and growing at a pace that I have never experienced before.

This surge of understanding takes you into a different state of being. All of us tend to think in terms of linear time. One thing follows another. But this is only one form of time’s many complexities. I can no longer think like that.

What good is it to me to think in terms of conventional time? Six months or nine months no longer exist for me. So I am trying to make sense of the world not through time but through emotion, through relationships, through feeling.

I am looking at the world through this great collection of emotions and relationships and progressions and changes. All at once. That is what is happening for me now. When I try to push forward in terms of conventional time, to look ahead, to count the minutes or the hours or the days, sooner rather than later I hit a solid rock: I am dead on the other side of this.

I think instead in terms of other, richer conceptions of progression – relationships, emotional connection, spiritual understanding, the sense of God, the sense of divinity. There is no future for me now so I am flowing back and this here, now, is the place for everything. Here, now, is where I live, where all these ideas and feelings circle on themselves.

Of course, for a short while at least, I can look forward to tomorrow. I have looked forward to every single day this week and every single day this week has been better than the day that preceded it. Every single moment is almost better than the moment that preceded it.

I feel nothing but optimism. I know that the future will be bad. I know that it will be difficult. I know that there will be those horrible moments when the stomach does this and the stomach does that, and God knows what else. I know all that.

But life cannot be better than this. I cannot feel better than this. I do not see how life can be better for me than this. I know how life can be better for those who care for me and love me. I understand that, I do not try to deny that. But for me, even though this may well be the worst of times, it is also the best of times.

Given all that I have said here I think it is reasonable to ask what I would do if I was offered the chance to have the death sentence suddenly, miraculously, lifted. Would I prefer that, even if I had to give up all the things that I have found here in the Death Zone? It is a difficult question.

I would have to accept the offer for the sake of Gail and for the kids. I do understand that my family wants more time with me and I respect that. But I believe that this is the right place for me and I want to be here in this state of mind and to die in it if I can. I am, I hope anyway, a different and better person than the one I was before this happened.

This is what I am meant to be. This is what I am meant to do. I have to make this more than just a good intention. By my example, I want to change things for other people as well.

I am comfortable with my life now. This is a frightening process, of course. But it is also true that it is possible to confront that fear and transcend it. You go to another place. You really do.

I have had a lot worse happen to me in the last four years than is going to happen in the next four weeks. It will be difficult but I hope, I believe, I think, ultimately it will be sublime. That is not to say it will be sublime in some great religious sense, although it might be, but I believe there will be a quality of the sublime about it.

I feel very calm. I feel at rest. I have found that the experience of the last few weeks has been as good as it is possible for the experience to be. And that has been typical of my life since I entered the Death Zone.

When I was recovering from my surgery in Newcastle I began to think once again about arranging my own burial plot. So I called Highgate Cemetery and asked if they had any plots. They did, I was told, and I was given the name of a man to speak to about it. And then, what with one thing and another, I forgot about the idea.

When I was diagnosed as being terminally ill, and told that my death was coming sooner rather than later, I remembered again. I called the number I had been given. The person I had been told to contact had left the cemetery but the man on the end of the phone said he would look after me anyway.

‘I’ll do it,’ he said. ‘My name is Victor. I’m the gravedigger.’