IT WAS noon on Christmas Eve. “You can go in now,” the secretary said; so we — my wife, Becky, and I — knocked on the door, and went into the oncology consultant’s office. “Do you recognize why you’re here?” she asked, and I said I believed it was something to do with the blood tests that I had had a couple of days earlier. She said, “Yes, well, you’re right in a way. I actually have bad news. The blood tests revealed that you have got prostate cancer, and I’m afraid to inform you that it’s terminal. There is nothing we are able to do for you because your PSA is so very high.”
We just sat there, expressionless; completely bowled over by what we had just been told. She continued: “Your PSA really must be no higher than five, and yours is 795; so you may see that it’s beyond treatment. Is there anything you’d prefer to ask me?” and I feel I managed to stutter: “Is there no more that might be done?” She said: “Well, there’s one type of injection which may possibly have some delaying effect, but I’m unsure whether we now have any left within the pharmacy, and it costs £12,000 per injection. I’ll write you a prescription, and you may go all the way down to the hospital pharmacy and see in the event that they have any in stock.”
We sped to the pharmacy, to be told there was one dose left. We grabbed it, and returned to the consultant, who said: “Good. Let’s do it immediately.” Once that was finished, I said, “Do you have got any idea of the length of time I actually have left?” She replied: “We don’t normally prefer to make predictions, but I feel realistically you’ve got about two to a few months, with a maximum of 1 12 months.”
When we left her office, we went straight to the chapel, where we sat down, checked out one another, burst into tears, and held one another. For some time, we couldn’t say anything, until, eventually, I said I believed we shouldn’t tell the remaining of the family until after Christmas Day, once I had accomplished all of the Christmas Eve and Christmas Day services.
All this, with its prognosis that I had at most one 12 months to live, happened ten years ago.
IT HAD begun within the previous October (2013), when the father-in-law of considered one of my daughters very kindly invited my wife and me to stick with him for per week at his residence in Jamaica. This was something that we were delighted to simply accept. We had a beautiful few days until two days before our departure, once I went swimming within the afternoon, and felt great pain in my back. Not knowing what had caused it, my wife suggested that I should keep as still as possible, and we should always get in contact with the doctor as soon as we got home.
On our return, I saw a health care provider, who said that she would refer me to the physiotherapists for exercises and massage. The pain continued — and, indeed, increased; so the doctor prescribed painkillers. None of this made much difference, but I didn’t feel that I ought to return to the doctor, so just carried on until the week before Christmas when, on waking up one morning, I discovered that I simply couldn’t move.
The pain in my back was excruciating, and so my wife rang the doctor, who told me to come back to the surgery immediately. When I used to be called in, she took one have a look at me and said that she thought that something was very mistaken. She took bloods, and told me to await a call from the hospital with the outcomes.
The call told me to go to the consultant the next day — Christmas Eve: not the most effective time to be away from the parish. We did as we were told, nonetheless, and reported to the consultant, who gave us the bad news.
As we drove home to a vicarage filled with a few of our youngsters and grandchildren, we tried hard to work out the right way to hide the news, but found we just couldn’t: we had to inform our two daughters, who knew that something was up.
They were, in fact, devastated, and it was a time of tears and hugs before we were able to return out to the grandchildren, whom we didn’t tell. Then I rang considered one of my sons (who was spending Christmas at home together with his wife and child), and he immediately got within the automobile and drove to us. Our final phone call was to our second son, who was living in Dubai; again, it was a really difficult conversation, but we were in a position to persuade him not to leap on the primary plane and are available home, but to await further news.
It was very hard to conduct the standard family crib service, with about 400 people, mostly very young and really excited. We wished all of them a comfortable Christmas, probably not knowing what our Christmas Day was going to be like. Afterwards, considered one of the curates got here to the vicarage to listen to the outcomes of my blood tests; once I told her the news, she offered to take the midnight mass and the eight o’clock communion on Christmas Day, which was enormously helpful. Had she not done so, I actually don’t know whether I might have been in a position to take those services without breaking down.
AFTER Christmas, Becky and I needed to work out how we were going to deal with the diagnosis, and what, going forward, it might mean for our family. I discovered it astonishing that, having preached resurrection for 40 years as a parish priest, I used to be very emotional about what looked like being the tip of my life on this earth, and, I hoped, my return “home”. The hospital gave me some strong painkillers, and — as a CT scan showed secondaries in my spine and ribs — monthly injections.
I felt that I needed to check with those that can be best placed to assist Becky and me through all this. My spiritual director — a monk at an Anglican monastery, to whom I had been going for spiritual advice and confession for some 26 years — was very helpful. My bishop was also a source of enormous support. The cathedral precentor on the time had been given the same kind of diagnosis for a distinct disease, and so we began to fulfill and discuss our experiences and our thoughts concerning the future.
Rachel MaguireThe creator, taken by his daughter
As a results of these conversations, he and I wrote an article for the journal Theology, during which we were in a position to be honest about how we felt — each in the current, and for the long run. (I’m glad to report that, ten years on, he, too, continues to be alive.)
Becky and I made a decision that we can be open concerning the diagnosis. Family and friends, parishioners, relatives, all those whom we knew — once they asked, as people do, “How are you?”, we told them the news. Initially, it was extraordinarily difficult to have the opportunity to speak about it with people without becoming emotional; actually, I discovered that I couldn’t ring my 90-year-old mother to inform her the news; so I asked considered one of my sisters to do it for me. My mother took it thoroughly; being a devout woman, she would, I knew, immediately take it to God in her prayers.
Becky also asked whether my name may very well be included within the cathedral’s weekly list of those in need of prayer. This meant that a fair wider circle of individuals were aware of the situation, and their prayers were clearly very helpful to us. When considered one of my brothers posted on Facebook that prayers were needed, 50 Muslims, Jews, and Christians responded positively. As time went by, seeing that I used to be not yet dying, people would ask how I used to be getting on, and my response was at all times that I used to be being kept alive by the prayers of the saints.
I HAVE been enormously strengthened by having the ability to speak about what is happening — with Becky, obviously, but additionally with all the opposite members of my family (through to my grandchildren), in order that there isn’t any hidden agenda. Even six-year-old Becca calls herself Nursey-Nursey; when she hears the alarm that indicates my pills are due, she’s going to rush to fetch them from Becky, and provides them to me, one after the other.
They are all aware that I’m dying, and that — at some stage, ultimately — I’ll actually die; but I feel, when the time comes, they are going to recognise that we now have used this additional time well. Talking with the grandchildren is a vital a part of my illness: my hope is that, by seeing my gradual deterioration, they are going to have a greater understanding once they are told about another person who has got that dreaded word, “cancer”.
THERE are various things in my relationship with my wife, Becky, which have modified since I used to be diagnosed. My background was of boarding at a prep school and public school; then joining the police force; then being ordained; and, for 25 years, being a Territorial Army padre. At the time, all those jobs were very much “stiff upper lip”, and, although Becky and I actually have had an exquisite relationship for 51 years, for 41 of those years I discovered myself unable to say to her “I really like you.”
That may sound extraordinary — and, indeed, it’s — nevertheless it was a part of the best way of life that every one those jobs (wrongly) looked as if it would me to require. But, as soon as we received the diagnosis and went into the hospital chapel to attempt to tackle board what we had just been told, my tongue was loosed to make use of those words “I really like you,” and, subsequently, I actually have said them to her over and yet again, each after we are alone, and likewise after we are in company.
Very closely allied to saying “I really like you” was the undeniable fact that I had never cried — no less than, not, I suppose, since I used to be aged about ten or 11, at prep school. It was definitely not the done thing to cry at public school; and people who did cry, for whatever reason, were — I’m ashamed to say — mercilessly bullied for it. In the police force, I saw many devastating things happening to other people: there have been horrible automobile crashes with multiple injuries, shocking cases of domestic abuse, and dreadful attempted murders — but I had to take care of control.
While I used to be within the Territorial Army, I served for some time on the front line. During the Balkan war, within the 12 months 2000. I used to be stationed in Pristina, Kosovo; while there, considered one of our soldiers was shot dead. The undeniable fact that he was just 18 or 19 — and that the opposite members of his patrol were roughly the identical age — just emphasised the awfulness of what took place. None the less, it was not for the padre to weep in front of the soldiers, but, relatively, to take a seat alongside them, and permit them to dictate the agenda — just sitting in silence, or trying to provide them comfort once they broke down.
IT WAS much the identical during my 40 years of ordained ministry. Every priest is frequently faced with probably the most ghastly situations, and is required to be there and take a look at to assist in a technique or one other. The death of a toddler or a baby, people cut down in mid-life by cancer, the breakdown of families, and so many other things — all needed to be met with compassion, and it was not until afterwards that I might have the opportunity to let off steam with Becky. She has the wonderful gift of having the ability to bring comfort to all those in need — and, ceaselessly, the one in need was myself.
With all that within the background, it’s remarkable that, just minutes after being told that I had terminal cancer, I used to be in a position to cry with Becky within the chapel. Ever since, when things in my health have been difficult, I actually have continued to have the opportunity to cry with Becky.
Over the past ten years, these two things have been an infinite help to me, and I’m so grateful to God that he has been in a position to help me turn the massive negative of the diagnosis into an infinite positive of a latest stage in our marriage.
ONE of the doctors at our local hospital wrote in his report: “Reverend Wilkinson continues to astound me together with his ability to remain alive.” Thinking that I had a limited time left, I made a decision to follow Jean Pierre de Caussade’s advice in Abandonment to Divine Providence, during which he talks about “the sacrament of the current moment”. Wasting time can be the worst option I could take; so I made a decision that I would want to have a each day timetable of prayer, meditation, and reading. Over the ten years since my diagnosis, my each day timetable has modified quite a bit, because — as I speak to other people, and browse widely — I feel I actually have got to know God at a deeper level.
Karl Barth said: “To clasp the hands in prayer is the start of an rebellion against the disorder of the world.” I actually have some each day constructing blocks, all joined together by the mortar of the Jesus Prayer. Let me explain. I spend the primary hour of the morning silently reciting the Jesus Prayer. Then I say matins, and have half an hour of personal prayer. Then my wife and I discuss the readings of the day, and what they could — or may not — have said to us.
Afterwards, if we now have no plans, I read a book that will help me in my spiritual life and growth. At midday, I say the midday office — sometimes with a small group on Zoom; otherwise, alone. After lunch, I actually have my each day meditation for an hour. I read evensong within the afternoon, and the remaining of the day is unstructured.
This form of disciplined approach might fill many individuals with alarm — and there are occasions when it isn’t possible for me to excuse myself from family or friends because I would like to take care of my prayer life.
SOMETIMES, I actually have said that I’m grateful to God for the cancer. That may sound extraordinary, but I do know that, without the cancer, I might have spent my retirement very in a different way. For me to have gone deeper in a lifetime of prayer and silence is more vital than having done a large number of other things. In a television interview in 2017, the playwright Dennis Potter said (cf. de Caussade), “The only thing you recognize obviously is the current tense, and that now-ness becomes so vivid that, in a perverse kind of way, I’m almost serene.” He was already riddled with cancer, and died just two months later.
During lockdown, technology made possible keeping in contact with people remotely, or attending online services. In addition, on those days once I am feeling very unwell and unable to do anything apart from lie in bed, I can still take heed to the Offices, or to beautiful religious music (which affects me emotionally); or I can just repeat the Jesus prayer, and feel myself being comforted by the Lord, and by the prayers of the Church.
The introduction of live-streamed services has enabled me to proceed to feel a part of the body of Christ. I’m also enormously indebted to a few of my friends who’re priests, and who will bring me communion if I am going for various Sundays without receiving the sacrament.
JESUS said: “Very truly, I inform you, nobody can see the Kingdom of God without being born anew.” It is a tough thing to say, but I do imagine that my diagnosis of cancer was the time that I used to be born again.
I had arranged so many things for my upcoming retirement, and the diagnosis put an end to all of them; I remember the African saying, “God laughs at your plans.” But, instead of those things, I feel that I actually have been in a position to reach a wholly latest depth in my relationship with God, and to grow spiritually in a way that I don’t think I otherwise would have done.
My each day meditation/contemplation leaves me waiting in silence in God’s presence. Thomas Merton quotes St Macarius, considered one of the Desert Fathers, who says: “Meditation is that prayer of the guts, which consists in invoking the name of Christ, with profound attention, within the very ground of 1’s being; that’s to say in the guts.”
In times past, I at all times needed to do some form of work in my mind to know that I used to be within the presence of God. What I now realise is that “work” or “expectation” is the very opposite of what meditation is all about. In the third of his Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot says that “[Old] men should be explorers”, and continues, “We have to be still and still moving into one other intensity.” “Still, and still moving” may sound like a contradiction, but I actually have found that the stillness and silence of meditation has indeed led me to, as Eliot says, “one other intensity, a deeper communion”.
BEFORE starting meditation, it is nice to hope that we are able to overcome any external noise, and — much more importantly — that we are able to meet all those thoughts that seek to come back between ourselves and God, by praying that we are able to notice when our attention has wandered.
Also, before starting our time of meditation, we should always make confession of our sins. If I don’t do that, it is nearly as if there’s a wall between God and myself, and I’m unable to be at one with him due to the sin that exists between us. I’m very much reminded of the story of Mary and Martha: for many of my life, I actually have been the Martha figure, rushing around and attempting to do far an excessive amount of. Jesus said that it was Mary, who simply sat on the Lord’s feet and listened to what he needed to say, who had the higher part.
Helped by Becky, I actually have to recognise that my body can now not do the things I used to enjoy doing. Under the maxim “Use it or lose it”, I actually have been encouraged by my GP to take as much exercise as I can. In the course of my illness, my mobility has decreased significantly; initially, it upset me to grasp that I used to be getting weaker and weaker, but I actually have come to recognise that I’m now not on top of things — ultimately, I feel it’s a matter of easy acceptance.
Many people, faced with such a diagnosis, are understandably each very upset and really offended — offended with God, and offended that such a thing could occur to them. “Why me?” is their cry, and I completely understand how feelings of anger can come to the fore at such a time. It is something that I actually have come across all too ceaselessly during my years of parish ministry. Someone have to be guilty, and so the anger is directed against God, or the NHS, or whomever. For myself, I can only say, truthfully and surprisingly, that I had no feelings of anger towards God or anyone else.
While it quite natural to think along such lines, stepping back barely from the immediate situation allows us to recognise that we live in a world where such things are a breath away from each of us, on a regular basis. When Winnie-the-Pooh is sailing across a pond at some point on an empty honey-pot, he says to his friend: “I should say that it isn’t just an peculiar kind of boat. Sometimes it’s a Boat, and sometimes it’s more of an Accident. It all depends.” “Depends on what?” he’s asked. “On whether I’m on top of it or underneath it.”
I feel that getting offended, or becoming depressed, or withdrawing into ourselves, is barely going to make the situation worse. What we now have to do, I feel, is try our utmost to vary this terrible situation into something positive.
Talking is a technique during which we are able to begin to grasp why we’re so offended, and I actually have found that friends, colleagues, the Macmillan Cancer Trust, and plenty of others have been extraordinarily helpful. Stepping back from what is occurring to me has helped me to grasp that we live in a world during which we wouldn’t have protection from illness, whether or not we’re religious.
IN HIS book Domestic Monastery, Ronald Rolheiser succinctly says: “Anything we do to organize for death mustn’t be morbid or be something that distances or separates us from life and one another. We don’t prepare for death by withdrawing from life; the other is true. What prepares us for death, anoints us for it in Christ’s phrase, is a deeper, more intimate, fuller entry into life. We prepare for death by starting to live our lives as we should always have been living all of them along.”
For me, that’s the novel answer to the query of preparing for death. What each considered one of us must do is to open our minds to be more receptive to people of other faiths, different political persuasions, indeed, of all that divides us, one from one other. Again, as Rolheiser says, “The best way we are able to prepare to die is to start to stretch our hearts to like ever wider and wider, to start to like in a way that takes us beyond the natural narrowness and discrimination that exists inside our hearts, due to temperament, wound, timidity, ignorance, selfishness, race, gender, religion, circumstance, and our place in history.”
For me, that involves an amazing deal of labor. Having been brought up in a middle-class family, with typically middle-class attitudes to ways of behaviour, and other people of other faiths, color, or ethnic origin, I want now to be earnestly searching for to embrace all those that formerly I actually have in any way unintentionally disdained. With the time left to me, I’m working hard — through books, conversations, and prayer — to rectify, no less than to some extent, where I now understand that I actually have been mistaken.
Ultimately, I rest upon absolutely the forgiveness of God for all those sins of which I’m guilty. With his help, I look forward with confidence to the long run.
Canon Simon Wilkinson is a retired priest living in Salisbury.
