“She’s dying Bob,” said the voice over the phone.

“Get her into the hospital,” I said.

“She doesn’t want to go!”

“She has to go,” I said.

“She says she is ready to die!”

The conversation lingered in my mind through the whole evening. I knew what my friend had said was true. His wife was ready for death. She had told me so. I remembered something I had read, written by the Director of radiotherapy and radiology in New Zealand, in 1973:

‘Cancer makes people start thinking about the quality of their lives. Everything they do become completely human beings and really start living until they get cancer. We all know we are going to die sometime, but cancer makes people face up to it. They are going to go on living with a lot of extra enjoyment, just because they have faced the fear of death. Cancer patients aren’t dying. They are living. I have near seen a suicide note because of cancer.’ (Palmerston North Evening Standard).

Said David Watson: This has certainly been my own experience, and I am much more aware of the value of each day, and the importance of making good use of it. The quality of life has far from diminished. Philosophers have always maintained that the key to life is coming to terms with death. No one can live well until they can die well.

In the famous words of Samuel Johnson, “When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully!” Certainly all the great issues of life and death come into focus when the future is known.

Says John Robinson, “When I was told I had six months to live the first reaction was naturally one of shock – though I also felt liberated, because as in limited overs cricket, at least one knew the target one had to get. My second reaction was ‘Gosh, six months is a long time, one can do a lot in that. How am I going to use it?”

A story is told about a priest. One morning, while discussing points of theology with a group of friends, he was asked” ‘Father, what would you do if you knew for sure that the Lord was going to take you away tonight?” In his quick and impetuous manner, the priest replied: I’d go out into my garden and plant an apple tree” – meaning he’d go about his ordinary business!

And on the grave of Martin Luther King, are these words;

               Rev Martin Luther King Jr.

                      1929-1968

              ‘Free at last, free at last,

       Thank God Almighty I’m free at last.’

The words of the telephonic conversation came back to my mind. “She says she is ready to die!

“Yes,” I whispered to myself as tears welled up in my eyes, “she knows she is going to be free at last..!

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