The Worst Week Of My Life - Day 7

On the seventh day, I rested. I slept in that Saturday morning, November 24, 2012, the combined effects of emotional exhaustion and too much Scotch the night before. I'm fairly sure that there were equal amounts of both liquids, Scotch and tears, involved in the night. When I did finally awaken, it was to the sounds of people chattering and clattering in the kitchen, either making breakfast or clearing it up. What they were talking about I don't know, my hearing has been bad for years. But they were laughing too.

How could they laugh? Didn't they get it? My life had come to an end not 48 hours earlier. I wasn't dead. I had gone from the theoretical thought of my death to the reality of its imminent arrival. What right did they have to be happy?

I lay there for a minute thinking of other things. This day was the last anniversary of my marriage, at least the last one where I would be married. I was in the middle of a difficult divorce, and I had just been diagnosed as terminally ill. How would I live when I could no longer work? Did I want to work anymore? What good was a life with this kind of disease?

I lay there a bit longer, thinking of other things. I thought of my brother Peter. He had a saying. "Your going to live until you die." Eventually I would steal that part and add my own clause. "Make sure you live before you die." But right then, all I knew for sure is that I was still alive, still living, and I had a choice to make. I could get up and live, or lie there and die.

I will not say the day was easy. It wasn't. It was, however, the first step in what has now become a four year journey, a full year past my expiry date. It started with me deciding that I would live with ALS, not die from it; that I would still be me, terminally ill or not; that I was still here. So I did what I had to do. I got up. I got dressed. And I walked, a talent soon to be lost to me, out from the land of the dead and into the land of the living. Living with ALS.