Kites

 To know the date of one's demise is a privilege granted to few, yet the knowledge carries distressing burdens. At our last meeting with the oncologist team at Addenbrookes, Ann challenged them with the unenviable question, "How long does John have?" The reply was starkly uncompromising, "Twelve months." This was on the autumnal equinox, September 21st, so the countdown has begun. Already, one month has passed of the twelve I have been allocated, with a memorable visit to Brussels, but it is hard to plan too far for the future, so one ends up living day to day under the ultimate deadline. Logically, such times are unpredictable, and as a GP I was careful to be vaguely hopeful when asked a similar question. It is the question many people with terminal cancer will always ask, but to be given a hard date produces a strange situation where I ring next year's equinox with a black box and begin the final countdown. I have three hundred and thirty-three days left for delight and enjoyment, or creative production, though not much sign of novel inspiration at the moment. Happily, I remain pain-free and active, with a brain still ticking over even if, where once words flooded in readily to hand, it sometimes takes an age now to remember the word I want. I retire each night with a brief question, will the weary heart fade quietly; will unwelcome death creep in this night? Yet sleep comes gracefully with many vivid dreams, and I wake refreshed, glad to take each new day. 

Strangely, I don't feel despondent but am cheerfully enjoying the health and days I have. Ann is working hard to build me up for the battle to come, even to the extent of getting beef and ale pies against all her convictions, to give me iron and protein to strengthen my natural immunity to fight the beast within. I have another paper accepted in a peer-reviewed journal, Astronomy, and have been asked to submit another to a journal called Galaxy, which published a previous paper and for which I have acted as  occasional external reviewer, but I do wonder if I can complete another paper. One thing did come to mind though. With the hindsight of age there is so much I wish I could have asked my grandparents, but as a child never sought to know. Grandad was born in 1874, his father, John Moorhouse, in 1836, and his grandfather, Roger Moorhouse was born in 1794. My grandmother, Grace Kershaw, was from a large family with many brothers and sisters that I never knew because she died so young, but mum would have known, yet never talked of them. If any one of them had left a diary of their lives, how fascinating we would now find it. I am therefore resolved to write my own recollections as objectively as I can, though doubtless glossing over more embarrassing episodes, in the vain hope that perhaps some grandchild or distant great grandchild in their more mature years may enjoy reading of how life was in the deprived 1940's and 50's.

My life has now spanned eight decades so to celebrate, Edwin and Andre are arranging an eightieth birthday binge after Christmas to which all friends, rels and neighbours are invited. He is theming it as a costume party, with any costume in the decades of my life starting from the wartime forties, so breakout those drainpipe trousers, winklepickers and mini-skirts! It should be fun.

Kites

Then into this great divide

Comes the Lord of life’s short reign – 

Old death, whose ghost

Hangs round us all, waiting:

Here a day less,

There a day more – 

To step leisurely from the gloom

And claim us to his bosom.

Uncaring, untiring,

Never sleeping, never smiling,

Solemn and grotesque he waits a while

To give us pause and tempt us on

To think we’re kings whose much crazed notions – 

Given wings by tiny moments leant by him – 

Exaltingly strike upwards.

Soaring kites that test the air for half a day;

And then he pulls the string.

And down we plunge into his waiting arms,

As if we’d never flown.

 JHM