The Upside Of A Terminal Illness

I doubt that anyone forgets the moment when a doctor tells them that they are never going to recover from the illness that brought them in; it' terminal

I doubt that anyone forgets the moment when a doctor tells them that they are never going to recover from the illness that brought them in and led to all those diagnostic tests. It’s terminal and it’s only a matter of time before you die. Add in the words “There’s no known cure, and we don’t even know what causes it” and the verdict seems absolute: you’re without hope.

Yet my experience over the five and a half years since these words were spoken to me has not felt tragic; to the contrary, I have discovered a surprising upside to the de facto death sentence.

I suppose that it is a blessing that we go through life not knowing when or how we are going to die. One of the first steps toward exiting childhood and becoming an adult is the realization that you, too, are going to die. But, at least for me, that inevitability was always suppressed in my conscious mind, and I operated as ifdeath were not only uncertain as to date and manner, but somehow so unthinkable that it might not even happen. Or at least so far off that there’s no point in thinking about it.

That abruptly changed with the diagnosis, of course. But after the initial shock wore off a day or two later, I began to be astounded at the ways my life changed for the better.

When I got the terminal diagnosis, I was told that the average interval between diagnosis and death was two and a half years, and counseled that there was a lot of variation from the average. But roughly 36 months was a very concrete remaining lifespan to contemplate, and suddenly every single day became more precious. When we forget the incredible gift that life is, we become less human, less worthy of that gift; we squander the present that God bestowed upon us, and we live life less fully than we are capable of. It’s a voluntary surrender of something very precious.

I’d like to pretend that this philosophical position was the first positive thought that occurred to me about my fate. But in fact, it was something much more mundane; in fact, crassly materialistic. I no longer had to scrimp and save to protect myself from the imagined fate of subsisting on dog food when my savings ran out in my nineties.

I am so old (77) that my parents were badly scarred by the Depression, and I grew up with the sense that poverty and physical deprivation was a real threat. The only armor was to save (and eventually invest—I started buying stock in my teens, which required some legal maneuvering for a minor to do) like a demon.

I started working after-school jobs and saving 90% of what I earned in high school, did disagreeable factory work two summers in college, and ever after was a tightwad. The specter of poverty in my Golden Years was always with me, quite unrealistically, given that, when I began working full time, I saved 20-30% of what I earned.

(When I first went to Japan at age 19, to study at Waseda University, I was deeply impressed at how the Japanese on average saved about 30% of what they earned, even though Japan had average incomes well below the poverty level of America in 1967. If they could do it, I could, too, I reasoned. This attitude served me well learning the Japanese language, especially the kanji Chinese characters.)

Suddenly, when I knew that reaching age 80 was extremely unlikely, I realized that I could relax my reflexive poverty-consciousness and spend money more freely. Not that I suddenly booked high roller weekends in Vegas or started lighting cigars with hundred-dollar bills.

Part of what I incorporated into my personal values courtesy of Japanese culture was a love of simplicity and economy. Wasted resources (muda in Japanese) disgust me. My splurges are simple and practical. Eating more sushi and flying business class for overseas travel are the principal sorts of indulgences I allow myself. The important point is not what I spend money on; it’s that for the first time in my life, I feel good about enjoying luxuries that I formerly denied myself.

I realize that this sounds silly, but this internal permission makes a huge difference to my happiness. Maybe I was consumed with a variety of self-hatred before, denying myself many purchases for pleasurable ends out of masochism? I don’t really know if it was psychologically dysfunctional, but once the unreasonable fear of old-age poverty receded, life became a lot more fun. I’m not quite a voluptuary, but I am allowing happiness, not fear of future loss, to motivate my expenditures and inform my moods.

One other psychological buoy comes from the kindness that strangers often show me in my current state. I am visibly handicapped by my illness and carry a portable oxygen concentrator all the time when shopping, dining out, and carrying out other activities in public. Just walking takes a lot of energy, so I move slowly and must rest often.

People hold doors open for me and otherwise are very accommodating. Costco and other big stores offer a hybrid between a golf cart and a shopping cart to cover the distances a hundred thousand square feet of retail space create. Many people offer to pick items off the shelf for me or simply smile and act helpful when I maneuver around them. It nourishes the soul when so many people are so kind.

Then, there is the Handicapped Parking placard the California Department of Motor Vehicles gave me. A lot of times, I feel like a member of the nomenklatura in the old Soviet Union. Special parking spots for me, right near the entrance! Miraculously, in California, at least, parking meters do not have to be fed money; meter maids do not enforce them on the Handicapped Driver nomenklatura.

Now, don’t let me give you the impression that I prefer this illness. It has closed a lot of doors for me and limits me in many ways. I’d much rather be healthy. But I can’t—or at least prefer not to—ignore the upsides. In fact, I dwell on the upsides with the certainty that the secret to happiness is gratitude. And you don’t have to be stricken with a terminal illness for that insight to help you.

This post was first published at American Thinker