Lucky in the Hospice

A contradiction in terms?   Not at all.   I’ve been a patient in the Hospice Twice.  Now I visit every week to be kept an eye on, and be a member of this establishment, and a good thing too.  

Are we a beaten group?  No.  Unlucky?  Well, yes, in that random average dishing out of cancer, we drew the tickets.  But the raffle carries on from there.  I’m going to die. So are you actually.  I shall probably do it sooner, but that’s not definite. More raffle tickets you see.

If ever you are in the same position, hope not naturally, but if, cheer up. I’ve done six months at the Hospice and am still here.  ‘They’ are never absolutely sure when ‘they’ say terminally ill (not that they actually say that, younhave to guess. But if you are in a Hospice there’s a clue.)  They do know what they are doing, and it’s their best diagnosis, given all the evidence.  But it may not turn out like that. It’s happened many times I bet.  The red sticker on the folder at Christmas and he or she is out digging the garden next spring.    What I mean is that the members of the Hospice have not got the same life expectations as the 30’s holiday Club at the Kings Arms, but we do not die like flies.

I am the person who is ‘Lucky in the Hospice.’  Still alive, feel alright and, this is the clincher, for the first time in my life have started to be ‘Lucky.’  Evidence.  I’ve won the Hospice raffle twice.    Two weeks ago won flowers and a vase, Marks and Spencers gear excellent.

Blow me down, this week ‘Lucky in the Hospice.’ I won the Easter raffle.   Large box of Black Magic.  I hope to eat at least one layer and most of the creams.

So it is not a contradiction of terms, you can be either lucky or die in a Hospice, or both in their turn I guess. As for dying, some of the others have done that.  If all life’s acts are an achievement, I would say dying is one of them, a fairly noble one.  No one would be able to move about town for long if we didn’t practice it.  It might also be a piece of cake, nobody knows what it’s like,  so they can’t frighten you with that.

In the event of a death at my Hospice we float a candle in a big round bowl of water and shining glass pebbles. . There is a parallel with life in that candle. People and candles burn out, only the time is different.  We can remember, with the candle May, very little, always smiling.  We remember John and look at the chair he always sat in and his dislike of yellow peas, i.e. sweet corn.  There’s worse remembering.

Me? I’m a Kamikaze, flying the cancer Zero, bang goes the point five guns from the destroyer  John.D.Harrison.  My plane and cancer disintegrate. Protected only by my sandwich box, out I shoot, plonk into the sea onto a floating settee discarded from Admiral Halsey’s cabin on the flagship.  Fair winds waft the large American cushions and I land on a sandy little island where no one knows about war until it’s all over.  Then I go back to Osaka and cut Sushi for Dad’s café.

A bit far fetched? Could it happen?  Remember the monkeys typing Shakespeare.?  Of course it could happen.

Yours sincerely,

Lucky at the Hospice.