Reflection on Mortality

When I was in kindergarten, I thought about what primary school would be like, then secondary, then university, work, then death, and the blanketing darkness that came after. I was excited about primary school, unsure of secondary school, and well, the topic of death did not disturb me much. I probably thought of Death as just a noun — not an unusual musing, but one of the many natural ponderings of the mind; many of my friends have deliberated on this as well. But like any musings, it is soon forgotten. 

My diagnosis came in my thirteenth, or fourteenth, summer. Like every patient with the diagnosis, I had a fever that wouldn’t break. I couldn’t walk for more than ten minutes at a time. At the clinic, I cried because I was so tired from walking the stairs. The pace of the deterioration of my strength was terrifying. 

My parents kept the diagnosis hidden from me at first. I could sense something was wrong, but any attempt to make sense of the situation quickly deplete my rapidly diminishing energy reserve. So the feeling lingered in the back of my mind, persisting, a faint thought like the dim lights in the sky that refused to fade. As the disease was considered an emergency, we took a taxi to A&E immediately after the diagnosis. Wow, the A&E was so scary. A towel streaked with fresh blood. A granny was screaming. Why was she screaming? Was it because of the dressing change? Or something else entirely?

My mom said she was sorry. I didn’t know what for. But she was crying, so I comforted her and cried too. My dad, as always, did not cry, but that day, his frame was sullen. Every parent wants the best for their child. It is hard not to take the offence of the disease personally. I understand I suffered as  a matter of chance. No one knows what caused it. It was simply bad luck. Nothing personal. No cause. Just probability. 

For the entirety of the treatment, the fact that I had leukaemia never truly sank in. I memorised the drugs, the treatment duration, and the side effects. I intellectually knew I had cancer. Much to my mother’s dismay, I held my pinkie up and told her there were cancer cells in my pinkie bone!). I was aware of the survival rate, which was about 70%-80%. The data was old, my doctor told me it is above 80% now. (40-60 children are diagnosed with leukaemia each year, and a simple survival rate calculations yields that roughly ten children die each year[1].) Nonetheless, I responded intellectually, not emotionally. (I will not die. It won’t be me.) I am not sure why. I just took everything in stride and did not feel anything. 

After my recovery and school started, I had a chilling realisation that if I had died in my sleep, I would know nothing of it. I would be gone, without my conscious acknowledgement. In a state of complete oblivion, my life would no longer be mine. In the first week of diagnosis, I spent my days sleeping, soundly. I was completely blind and deaf to the world around me. I could not stay awake for more than five minutes, and sleep was devoid of dreams. 

In fact, that sleep probably felt a lot like death. My body was deteriorating rapidly (walking to the toilet was a triumph!). And that realisation was deeply disturbing. Death had felt tangible. How do I plan for the future when you might die tomorrow? Obviously, I was already cured— Do I really want to spend my days cramming for tests? I have to though. So what do I do? My belated panic came delayed, a year and a half after the diagnosis. The danger felt near only after it had passed. 

The fire alarm goes off. The younger me was deeply disturbed. Why is the fire alarm ringing? I am already healed! I will not relapse! Still, phantom fires everywhere. The feeling that lingered in the back of my mind grows and infects and infests. But the actual fire is already put off and I am staring at the charred roots. So why won’t the alarm shut up!

When the night was lifelessly quiet, I remembered, I despaired. A mother told us with happy eyes that when her daughter saw me walking around the ward through the isolation room’s window, she felt hope that she could one day recover just like me. The same mother later told us with brave eyes red with tears that when her daughter died of severe haemorrhage, she couldn’t see, and the world went dark. I felt strongly, deeply, her panic. What happened to her, couldn’t it very well happen to me too? To feel utterly hopeless at your dying hour, could not even see her mother’s face, to lose the last familiarity with the world. She told her mother she is scared. This memory punched the air out of me. Her mother was smiling when she told us, for a moment we were fooled and we thought her daughter was still alive. I remembered the sleep, the pain. I remembered I was still a kid, my petulance, my pettiness. All these were packaged into a deep malaise, a hopelessness, a paralysis. Even when the days crowded out the memories to my relief, the days could not crowd out the sticky feeling. 

But as I grow older, the terror gives way to acceptance. If life is a road, then death is the sudden plunge, the cliff under which the seas are roaring. Fog shrouds the road, and we build cities, aspirations ignorant of death. Only when we build the cities too close to the edge, when the fog lifts, when we peer down at the sea, terror pierces and permeates. But now, we build towns along the flowy contour of the cliff. What can we do anyway other than acceptance? 

For now, the bone-chilling feeling has passed. I live knowing I will live to see tomorrow. (Or have I gotten used to living again? Am I taking it for granted? But I have to, though, if I want to plan for the future.) Still, knowing my time is somewhat borrowed, I do not spend it insincerely. I hope to feel a little more love, to feel a little more deeply, and, if I can, do it happily, and contentedly. 

Whatever we have carried away, I hope one day we will look upon it with acceptance, peace, and even a little love, for it shaped our lives hopefully for better. Sometimes I still shudder from the stories around me. Long bone removal from sarcoma. Recurrent nightmares from radiotherapy. Heart problems from chemotherapy. Hard things to accept. How long does it take for others to accept their fates? The trajectory of our lives took a sharp dive, and the dominoes fell, still falling. Unstoppable. Could we still have the life we wanted? 

Perhaps, it is just another cliff that we build our lives around, yielding, accepting, then making the best out of it, flourishing. 

Some sorrow, anxiety, inferiority and anger have been weaved into the fabric of our souls.  But at the same time, hopefully our clothes can now wrap around more love, acceptance and peace. I know mine did. 

Reference: 

[1]: https://www.ccf.org.hk/en/information/diagnosis_and_treatment/?id=9