People - Contemplating my Mortality
By Yvonne H
I was 8 years old when my mother was diagnosed with colon cancer and hospitalized for a month for surgery and post-surgical complications. I worried that she might die and leave me motherless. I also worried that her cancer might be contagious and that I might very well catch it and die as well. I had no one to talk with about my fears. My father was preoccupied with my mother’s illness while keeping up with his work responsibilities during the day and doing his best to keep our household running and meals on the table for me and my older brother when his work days ended. My brother was 6 years older than me and, as far as I could tell, not one to ponder life’s existential questions, much less engage his little sister in any meaningful or reassuring conversation about our mother’s illness. And so I lay in bed each night wondering if and when cancer would catch me too.
Contemplating my inevitable demise led me, in turn, to thinking about infinity and wondering how that worked, exactly. How could this body of mine, and my consciousness of life as I knew it, dissolve into infinity? How could there be no beginning and no end to anything? I couldn’t make sense of it.
Eventually I resolved the dilemma by deciding that death was probably no different than what I experienced — or rather, did NOT experience — before I was conceived and born into this world. If my non-existence prior to conception and birth did not trouble me or leave me knotted up with fear, worry and anxiety, then death must be very much the same as my pre-conceived nonexistence I decided. Nothing to fear and nothing worry about.
In case you are wondering, my mother did recover from her colon cancer and went on to live another 30+ years with no recurrence. She died alone at home, at age 72, from a massive stroke while my father was away at work.
This past January, I received my own cancer diagnosis: a “high grade metastatic invasive carcinoma of the gynecological tract.” And so, sixty years following my mother’s cancer treatment, I was confronted again with thoughts and fears about my own mortality and the sudden possibility that death might claim me sooner than I ever imagined.
On March 14 I had surgery to remove the tumor that had embedded itself in my bladder. It’s amazing to me how I could be fully conscious on the operating table one moment, and awaken hours later in the recovery room with no recollection whatsoever of the moment I faded into unconsciousness, no memory of having my belly sliced open and sewn back up, and no residual trauma.
And so today, when I consider my mortality, I envision that the moment of my death will be akin to being anesthetized: slipping easily and painlessly into unconsciousness while entrusting my being to a skilled surgeon who will fix me up, good as new.
