A Celebration of Life.
I attended a dinner last night featuring many of the army of angels I have written about before. The reason we all got together was to have a celebration of life, and the life that we were celebrating was mine.
Wait... what?
A celebration of life is most often thought of as a gathering of the people that matter to someone after they pass away. It is often less formal than a funeral and is usually stripped of the religious aspects of a funeral. In our increasingly secular Western world (and I make no judgement whatsoever about this trend), this is often the only ceremony that is held to commemorate the passing of someone. But if this is what a celebration of life is, why was I in attendance, walking around and laughing and doing all the various things that very few of the people for whom these celebrations are held are able to do?
Simple - this celebration of life could just as easily have been the more commonly held post-mortem type held in my honour. I actually only attended by a very narrow margin.
I have written a lot about my optimism and how my particular form of cancer is very treatable and how I was very definitely going to beat this diagnosis. But I also wrote about my last flight - which is still the last flight I piloted - and inherent in that story was the recognition that while that day almost a year ago was probably not going to be my last flight, there would be a day when I could fly no more. And in late September last year, when one of the angels on my medical care team was concerned that I had ruptured my bowel from a combination of my diverticular disease and my chemotherapy and sent me for an emergency CT scan. I would find out later that I was closer to death than my team let on at that point.
Yep, that smiling pilot in The last flight... might have smiled no more. And my army of angels might have been lifting glasses of wine and sangria in my honour rather than clinking their glasses against mine and hugging me in celebration last night.
It's taken me a while to accept how near to death I came. I felt alive - well, mostly alive - at the time, but piecing things together I realize that I was very, very sick. My blood pressure was very low (it was 88/54 on multiple readings the week before my emergency CT scan) and I was spending more time having bowel movements than I was sleeping. I had lost over 10 kg and had little interest in food at all. Taking a shower was exhausting, and most days I could only walk from my bedroom to my living room - a distance of less than 10 metres. My world had gotten small and more than a little terrifying. I had given myself over totally to my chemotherapy in the hopes that it would give me a long and (reasonably) healthy life, but I was dancing on a knife's edge between life and death. And there were moments - plural - when I didn't think I could go on.
But I did. And I have survived.
Facing Death did weird things to the way that I perceived things, and ironically surviving cancer is doing just as weird things to my perceptions. When I thought I might die from my chemo I took at least small comfort in looking at the amount of life insurance that is in effect for me and knowing that while I might be gone, at least my wife would be left financially comfortable. I mean, even then I knew that she'd be happier and at least subjectively better off with me than she would with any amount of money... but I wasn't sure that I was strong enough to overcome what I was facing. Losing me and not having the insurance money wouldn't be better and I was certain in at least a few moments that she was going to lose me anyway.
Like I said - weird.
Then, after I had come through it all and was now certain that I would survive, money took on way more meaning in my thoughts than it has a right to. Like I say it was weird and it was very definitely a cognitive distortion, but the only way I could overcome it and change my behaviour was to recognize it and describe the behaviour, then work to change it. In simpler terms, I needed to accept that I had a problem before I could start to fix it. And I've done that - or at the very least, I am doing it as I continue along my journey.
Which brings me back to my celebration of life. I felt so much love, so much joy from my angels last night because I had come through the last very challenging year that I was moved to tears. I felt their relief as well as their happiness in the hugs that I received and heard the thrill in their voices as they told stories of my brief hospital stay or the old days - back when we first met.
Back before I was diagnosed with cancer.
Some of my angels told me privately how very, very worried they were for me, and by extension they told me how very, very happy they are that I was able to attend my own celebration of life. And that's probably the most important takeaway message that I got last night.
As much as my angels matter to me, I matter to them. And - again, by extension - you matter to your own angels.
My wife bought a cake for my angels, with the words Thank you written on the delicious icing. When the waitress brought the cake out I told everyone how their love and caring made all the crap I went through worthwhile. There were more than a few misty eyes in the usually tough crowd as I told them that they were all angels in my life.
So if I have any advice to give after all that I've been through this past year it's this: don't leave the angels in your life in doubt about how you feel. Tell them you love them. Tell them that your life is better because of them. Thank them for making life worth living.
And maybe - just maybe - arrange your own celebration of life while you are still able to tell them these things. My bet is that they will enjoy it much more than our more common modern celebration of life.
Wait... what?
A celebration of life is most often thought of as a gathering of the people that matter to someone after they pass away. It is often less formal than a funeral and is usually stripped of the religious aspects of a funeral. In our increasingly secular Western world (and I make no judgement whatsoever about this trend), this is often the only ceremony that is held to commemorate the passing of someone. But if this is what a celebration of life is, why was I in attendance, walking around and laughing and doing all the various things that very few of the people for whom these celebrations are held are able to do?
Simple - this celebration of life could just as easily have been the more commonly held post-mortem type held in my honour. I actually only attended by a very narrow margin.
I have written a lot about my optimism and how my particular form of cancer is very treatable and how I was very definitely going to beat this diagnosis. But I also wrote about my last flight - which is still the last flight I piloted - and inherent in that story was the recognition that while that day almost a year ago was probably not going to be my last flight, there would be a day when I could fly no more. And in late September last year, when one of the angels on my medical care team was concerned that I had ruptured my bowel from a combination of my diverticular disease and my chemotherapy and sent me for an emergency CT scan. I would find out later that I was closer to death than my team let on at that point.
Yep, that smiling pilot in The last flight... might have smiled no more. And my army of angels might have been lifting glasses of wine and sangria in my honour rather than clinking their glasses against mine and hugging me in celebration last night.
It's taken me a while to accept how near to death I came. I felt alive - well, mostly alive - at the time, but piecing things together I realize that I was very, very sick. My blood pressure was very low (it was 88/54 on multiple readings the week before my emergency CT scan) and I was spending more time having bowel movements than I was sleeping. I had lost over 10 kg and had little interest in food at all. Taking a shower was exhausting, and most days I could only walk from my bedroom to my living room - a distance of less than 10 metres. My world had gotten small and more than a little terrifying. I had given myself over totally to my chemotherapy in the hopes that it would give me a long and (reasonably) healthy life, but I was dancing on a knife's edge between life and death. And there were moments - plural - when I didn't think I could go on.
But I did. And I have survived.
Facing Death did weird things to the way that I perceived things, and ironically surviving cancer is doing just as weird things to my perceptions. When I thought I might die from my chemo I took at least small comfort in looking at the amount of life insurance that is in effect for me and knowing that while I might be gone, at least my wife would be left financially comfortable. I mean, even then I knew that she'd be happier and at least subjectively better off with me than she would with any amount of money... but I wasn't sure that I was strong enough to overcome what I was facing. Losing me and not having the insurance money wouldn't be better and I was certain in at least a few moments that she was going to lose me anyway.
Like I said - weird.
Then, after I had come through it all and was now certain that I would survive, money took on way more meaning in my thoughts than it has a right to. Like I say it was weird and it was very definitely a cognitive distortion, but the only way I could overcome it and change my behaviour was to recognize it and describe the behaviour, then work to change it. In simpler terms, I needed to accept that I had a problem before I could start to fix it. And I've done that - or at the very least, I am doing it as I continue along my journey.
Which brings me back to my celebration of life. I felt so much love, so much joy from my angels last night because I had come through the last very challenging year that I was moved to tears. I felt their relief as well as their happiness in the hugs that I received and heard the thrill in their voices as they told stories of my brief hospital stay or the old days - back when we first met.
Back before I was diagnosed with cancer.
Some of my angels told me privately how very, very worried they were for me, and by extension they told me how very, very happy they are that I was able to attend my own celebration of life. And that's probably the most important takeaway message that I got last night.
As much as my angels matter to me, I matter to them. And - again, by extension - you matter to your own angels.
My wife bought a cake for my angels, with the words Thank you written on the delicious icing. When the waitress brought the cake out I told everyone how their love and caring made all the crap I went through worthwhile. There were more than a few misty eyes in the usually tough crowd as I told them that they were all angels in my life.
So if I have any advice to give after all that I've been through this past year it's this: don't leave the angels in your life in doubt about how you feel. Tell them you love them. Tell them that your life is better because of them. Thank them for making life worth living.
And maybe - just maybe - arrange your own celebration of life while you are still able to tell them these things. My bet is that they will enjoy it much more than our more common modern celebration of life.
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