And it’s the Scorpio newmoon
When I awoke of Friday (6th Nov), the morning after I got the news, this Paul McCartney song was circulating in my head…
When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be…
And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be…
Yes indeed. She is. The sun is shining in through my windows, and a little wren looked in just now.
I went to the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro on Thursday.
There, I received some news. I was kinda ready for it, having contemplated the alternatives before me over the recent weeks and months, and it concurred with my own indistinct recent feelings and experiences. That is, I knew this, deep down inside.
My helper, Claire, took me. She’s empathic and steady, with experience in this kind of thing. She really is a guardian angel, bless her, and I am so grateful she’s standing by me now.
“The time has come”, the Walrus said, “to talk of many things: of shoes, and ships, and sealing-wax, of cabbages and kings, and why the sea is boiling hot, and whether pigs have wings…”. That ran through my head too.
I have been given four or so months to live.
Perhaps I might survive a bit longer, inshallah, though I’m not sure. I’ll go at the right time. For the magic to work, if it will, I need to develop a certain equanimity, an openness to whatever unfolds.
The medicals… My situation is a bit complex, concerning treatments. I now have three cancers: multiple myeloma (a blood cancer), carcinoma (a skin cancer) and lung cancer (like the Pope!).
The treatment I’m on for myeloma is not working any more – I’ve been on Lenalidomide for 2+ years. I cannot start a new myeloma treatment (Elratanamab, a newly-developed treatment) until the lung cancer is operated on.
But I cannot be operated on for lung cancer because the myeloma will deteriorate too quickly while the lung cancer process is happening. Myeloma progresses fast once it breaks loose. And the lung operation will weaken me, making revival with and for the new myeloma treatment unlikely.
So neither the lung operation nor the new myeloma treatment will work.
After seven years of life with cancer, time’s up. I don’t want a lung operation. I’ve been a dedicated tobacco-head for years and, this morning, I remembered that, had this not been so, I would have died in 2015.
Actually, since I’m not a foodie (another way of weighing myself down), tobacco has helped me stay in my body since my near-death in 1974, after which I have not been plugged into my body in the way most people are. You might disagree, but I take responsibility for it. This unpluggedness has been both a blessing of insight and a bane of seeing.
So I must prepare for ‘palliation’ – having a comfortable, happy end-time and death. And though this is all rather a shock, I’m kinda okay about that. Life has been hard – my back is in pain and I cannot walk far. While the prospect of life getting harder might provide a deep-level learning experience, I’m not sure I need it.
I am deciding not to do the lung operation – success is not guaranteed and I don’t feel right about it. Instead I shall accept the situation and make the best of it. After all, I’ve been living on extra time for at least five years. I have been given time and grace to complete my mission and ready myself for the next chapter. After all, there is a next chapter.
That’s the sumtotal of the news, as I now understand it. So now it is ‘palliation’.
And, before we go any further, I do not want your sorrow and regret, thank you. No loss is involved, even if yawning gaps do open up in our lives when someone close to us dies. Dying is a moving experience to witness, yet nothing is wrong.
And it’s coming for you too, one day, being an integral part of life. Rejoice: all things that begin come to an end, and this is the cycle of life.
To some extent, life is but a preparation. Dying is a transition and an evaluation of where we’ve actually got to. How far did we actually progress in the life we’ve had? What did we become? Life seems to be long-lasting, but it’s a stage in a journey and, when viewed from the other side, it’s a short clip in a much larger movie.
The day after receiving the news, I felt kinda okay, though delicate. It’s cards-on-the-table time. There’s an element of relief to it, combined with a seismic feeling of being shaken and rocked from the foundations up. There’s a feeling of constraint and finality (I’m a Saturnine person), and also an enormous feeling of open space (Neptunian too!). I’ve had time to prepare for this inevitability, yet it still impacts hard and it is, to put it mildly, ‘thought-provoking’.
So, be glad. I’m not sure what happens next – it’s a full-on encounter with the here-and-now.
A few requests.
- Please do not pepper me with messages asking “How are you?“. It gets too much. The answer is, “Right now, I’m like this!“.
- I do not need a miracle cure, thanks. Forget it. I don’t need saving. Also, please try not to load work on me, with well-meaning suggestions, imperatives, admin tasks and requests.
- My aim is to have a happy time in the weeks and months I have left, not to ‘get better’ or cling onto incarnate life as if it’s all there is.
- Visitors. People have said they will visit and have not done so. It might be too late. That’s okay. Visitors are welcome up to a point: please assess in a guilt-free way whether a visit is necessary (it can involve a lot of housework!). Send positive thoughts instead. Thanks. I love you.
Besides, there’s stuff to do on the other side. Just because I die, it doesn’t mean I stop being myself. I’m a humanitarian soul, and there’s a lot that needs doing on the other side. Whatever my faults, I’m an incorrigibly mission-driven soul.
And the world is yet to go through its Big Change.
In coming days and weeks I’ll probably go up and down – dredging through my stuff. There are fears, incompletions and allsorts to get through, and days when I’ll be energyless and uninspired.
I don’t know what happens next. Also, I haven’t managed to find anyone to manage my online affairs while and after I die (someone geographically close, communicative, thoughtful and competent). We shall see.
I have a copious online archive. And this is probably not my last blog.
May Spirit be with you and bless you, holding you in light and being with you. All is as well as can be.
Mashallah. It is as Divinity wills it. I’m in the hands of a very big and hidden set of hands, readying to take me home.
With love, Palden.
A few relevant links:
My copious online archive: https://www.palden.co.uk
Latest podcast: https://www.palden.co.uk/podcasts.html
About my 1974 NDE: https://www.palden.co.uk/nde.html
Intro to me: https://www.palden.co.uk/introduction.html
A life lived against the grain and with the flow (short autobiog): https://www.palden.co.uk/autobiography.html
