[to finish the story....maybe.]
How does that fit in with my chess game? In chess, as the end of the
game itself approaches, the losing player's king is placed in check, and
the final trap is sprung when the king is checked and has nowhere to
go. That's it. Checkmate.
There is one slim hope for the losing player, and that is a stalemate, but I won't try to explain that here. Well, I
did
explain it, but it got too complicated and didn't add anything to this
story, so a pointless paragraph is gone, and we're all the better for
that.
In a stalemate, no-one wins. It's a Get Out of Jail Free card for the
player who was going to lose. (Ah, sorry – I've just Monopolised my
chess game....)
In my game, there will be no stalemate. Mr C won't fall for it. I may
evade his attack for as long as I can, but a stalemate won't happen. I
know this because of the signs that are constantly increasing in number.
The return of seizures, the headaches, loss of balance and increased
difficulty in walking and swallowing, the strange, apparently random
tremors in other parts of my body when I'm sitting or lying down; the
increasing failure to remember something that was in my mind a minute
ago, whether a word or an idea. Some of these symptoms of accelerated
tumour activity are not completely new, but the permutations and
combinations tells their own story.
It seems the king is rapidly getting boxed in.
♖ ♖ ♖ ♖ ♖
In a real game, the losing player will see defeat coming, shake hands
with the opponent, and resign the game before having to play it out to
an inevitable and perhaps humiliating conclusion.
Mr C doesn't like that ending. He may play a mean game of chess, but he
only seeks growth at the expense of dependency, and the great irony is
that his win is his own death. He will refuse to accept the resignation
of his host and he will demand that the game be played out to the bitter
end.
It may well be that he's more subtle than a mere biological cell-cloning
program, and is capable of tiny mutations that render yesterday's
treatments ineffective, or less effective than they were. His only
intelligence is to find ways past the barriers that contain him and his
influence. Don't be fooled; he may well be better at that game than many
give him credit for, and this means researchers can be trapped in
relying on outdated remedies or approaches and faith in faulty data. But
that too is another story and takes me away from this one.
Here's the blunt bit. There is no honorable resignation for me. Our
society, for all its multiplicity of reasons, some logical and some
idiotic, decrees that the game must be played out to the last gasp. It
allows no right for the player to decide just when the game should end,
and thus, on grounds of higher purpose, denies the last shred of dignity
in the process. And this is specially true in the sequence of events in
dying from brain cancer, or other neurological calamities for the
organism, where the invasion is into the core and very centre of our
being.We are no longer who we were.
I've always accepted that life, by its very nature, is not fair. I go
along with that. In the natural world, fairness is not an issue; for
humans, fairness is a rather simplistic idea constructed by the mind,
and exists only there. If you believe in fairness or unfairness in such
cases, then you have the sticky question of explaining why it happened,
morally – and most of the answers I've seen to that question are far
from convincing. In fact, I'll go so far as to say they usually insult
my intelligence.
So to me there is a terrible cruelty, with no redeeming feature, in
cloaking the right to a dignified ending to the game in platitudes,
specious arguments and blind dogma. None, including bishops and those
new knights of the realm, our politicians, have any right to impose this
nonsense upon those who do not accept their views. They play their
games with our lives; but not content with that, with our deaths as
well.
This didn't end up quite as you expected, did it? Me neither."
February 2013
I don't usually make comments as I have always felt that the blog is 'Den's thing'.
I
always appreciate your insightful comments Bob, and the stories you add
to the mix. I fear that if other people were to contribute postings,
the result would be just as much time and energy spent this end, in
formatting and commenting on them - we all know he couldn't resist :-)
More importantly, the blog would no longer be about Denis and his journey, which has been very much the point.
Denis
has spent a long time now, years actually, keeping everyone else
informed and also entertained. I know you all appreciate how much time
and effort this takes, not to mention answering the countless private
emails and messages that this blog generates.
The blog has
brought so many outside people in, who now feel very close to Denis and
his circumstances. People that he hasn't spoken to in many years and
probably may never have again, if things were 'normal'. That has been a
wonderful thing for Denis and also, I feel, for them.
But then
there are the people who are actually, physically here. Den's time is
just as precious to us as it is to the many people who now feel that, in
some small way, they own this journey as well.
So now, the selfish statement of my heart....
I
sincerely hope that you would all wish, or at least understand, that as
things progress into the end times that it will finally be a time for
it to be just about Denis....and me....and his family.
Trace xo
