I’ve become the kind of person who checks for keys ten times before I leave my flat and at least once after I leave. On the evening when my oncologist made a home visit and hospitalized me, I began a new kind of checking. (The fainthearted might not want to read this.) Had I actually told anyone that I wanted to be cremated? In my demented mind I think there must be more than two choices; burial or cremation. I guess one can be frozen, well I don’t fancy it. A choice between two things need not be difficult, but somehow it was. I was immersed in ‘Wolf Hall” about the 16th Century and Cromwell and it seems quite normal that we should have the option of being hung in Trafalger Square. Perhaps as an artwork on the fourth plinth It would be better than most of the work shown and would attract the press. I wouldn’t have to worry about who would come because the tourists would throng.
I don’t want a religious ceremony with someone leading it who I have never met\and those weird looking pall bearers who freak me out. In fact I decide (still on the way to the hospital) I only want one ‘event’ and it is quite simple except that I haven’t told the person in charge of the venue what I wanted, because until that night I hadn’t made any plan. Formulating this checklist, the next item was who would need to be contacted, how many would come, would someone say something, what?Was I so much of a control freak that I would have to write the eulogies or order people to say something. If I had a luncheon, who would be invited, and more and more items became additions to my checklist.
Where would the ashes go? I think this checklist will be the last thing I think before I close my eyes for the last time. I couldn’t believe how involved it all got and all the details I had never would have thought had I not been on the way to the hospital. I always assumed doing a will and a living will were enough. Now feeling truly horrible and sure that I was facing the end, all these things flooded into my head. They say that facing death your life flashes by but I’m convinced I’ll be checking and checking and checking until my last breath.
There are other things to check as well. Every time I have cancer I give away or give to charity as many of my things as possible. Then I spend the next years looking for things and wondering , “Have I or have I not given it away?”
I feel I’ve accumulated more stuff during my last cancer remission that needs to go. But not the night, I am on my way to the hospital. That is too much to think about.
I’m adding to this list ten days later. Now I feel better and I’m going home tomorrow. From this vantage point, all this looks like a to do list for some other time.
Reminders keep coming in. . Yesterday was tax day in the UK and that brings on worries about how what little I will no doubt have left be distributed or do I just split it between US tax and the British Tax and call it a day. (Yes expats pay both) Instead of big questions I spent the day trying to pay my tax on line and eventually succeeding.
In the mist I had to call to check if I had money to pay the tax and Barclays (the worlds most hated bank) locked me out of the online banking system and forced me to call on the telephone. As most readers of the blog know I cannot speak above a whisper and calling a Barclays call station in India was extraordinary. “What is wrong with you?” the operator bellowed in a heavy Indian accent, over a noisy background. “Do you have a cold?” No, I whispered back “I’m in hospital and I have cancer’ What? Cancer? What C- a –n-c-e-r, I spelled. It went on like this for 30 minutes, during each security question. When I finally finished she began to tell me in detail how to log on and when I did log on they had taken the money out of the account but had not itemized the deduction in the statement. Useless. I will never call again, so I just hope it is all right. If not, I might go right from hospital to jail. I won’t miss a beat.
This is what comes of too much checking!
Check the guests to make sure they will have the 'correct' state of mind! Almost forgot!
