Friday Extract…

I thought I’d now give over Fridays to my final book, One Last Thing – how to live with the end in mind, which is out in paperback on February 29th….pre orders are an authors dream…just saying 🤣

You can see from the image below that my wonderful publishers asked the designer, whose name escapes me 🙈 (he’s designed the covers of all my books though) to switch the colours around, which I love.

Anyway….HUGE thank to my partner in writing, Anna Wharton, for pulling these extracts together for me. AND, by the way….it’s her birthday today 🥰…Happy Birthday Anna!

What better place to start, than the beginning and the Foreword….hope you enjoy.

Foreword

Death. It’s a strange place to start a book. It is, at first glance, the end. There is nothing more final, nothing more inevitable. Death is the great equaliser, however much we try to avoid it. It depends, of course, on your religious persuasion as to whether you believe there is life after this one, or just a black abyss. That is not what concerns me as I write: what awaits us after we have died we shall have to discover when we get there. Better to focus on another journey, the one towards the inevitable – a journey that I now find myself on. 

Those who have read my previous two books, Somebody I Used to Know and What I Wish People Knew About Dementia, will know that on 31 July 2014, I was diagnosed with young-onset vascular dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. At the time, I had a busy job working as a rota manager within the NHS, I had raised two girls as a single mother, I was a keen runner, and the diagnosis stopped me in my tracks. 

I sank into a deep depression, all too common after diagnosis of a life-limiting illness. And completely understandable. We all know we’re going to die, but it is, for the most part, a luxury that we can afford to push far back into the horizon of our minds. Instead, we busy ourselves with life, with waiting for the next holiday, counting off the days that separate us from weekends, or we wish the now away and convince ourselves we will live more happily once we shift that stubborn half a stone, or stick to our promise of good food and exercise. There is always something lying in the future that will make us appreciate life more totally. Perhaps it’s what we call hope, a wonderful part of the human condition – but hope relies on time. And we don’t all have that. 

A diagnosis of a progressive or terminal illness takes that hope away, or at least it dulls its bright beam so that in the interim it feels impossible to see through the dark clouds that descend. 

I still remember those dark clouds, that hopelessness. I have said many times before that dementia is a bummer of a diagnosis and you could apply that to any progressive or terminal illness; there is no getting away from it. But I think my own diagnosis was made harder by the attitude of medical staff. I assumed it was the end because they didn’t tell me any differently. 

There are some who, having received such a diagnosis, stay in the dark clouds, struggle to find their way back into the light. Perhaps they think there is no point. After all, we live in a society that seems to value more the able body or able mind. But during my own journey living with dementia, I realised that my particular progressive illness had a beginning and a middle, as well as an end, and when there was so much life to be lived in between, why was my mind racing towards those closing chapters? Perhaps it was a case of wanting some control over the cards that life had dealt me, a way of convincing fate I had got there first, that its cruel surprise had failed.

I felt it so strongly that I wrote in both of my books that there is hope after a terminal or progressive illness, and I still believe that to be true. I also wrote how these same diagnoses can sharpen the mind with regards to living in the present, how they make many of us who are living with them – living, not dying – more mindful of living for the day, in some ways leaving us more alive than we were the day before our diagnoses. That is our incredible human instinct for survival, our ability to see the light through the dark clouds. 

Living with dementia, nine years on, the clouds descend more frequently now. What keeps me going during those foggy days is hope – hope that tomorrow will be a better day. But more often, one day becomes two, becomes three, four, five, and the fog hangs around, making my thoughts all sticky with glue. But the hope still cuts through –tomorrow might just be better. I comfort myself that while that thought is still able to burn through, I have not gone over the edge. I am still me, not quite the Wendy I used to know, but recognisable. 

But I am aware that there is an edge now, even if I cannot see it as it comes closer. I am aware that more days after I finish writing will be spent in the fog – until the day when I don’t find my way back out again. And so I would like to turn my attention to the end. That is why I have started this book with death. 

If I have been able to adapt to life with a progressive illness, I would like to think that I will be able to adapt to life with the end in mind. Here, at the beginning of this book, I wonder what that looks like to others and what it might look like to me, and I am going to invite a whole host of people to come and discuss that with me – and you. I will ask the questions that we all might have: what will the end look like? Will there be pain? Is there anything I can do now that will make me more comfortable? Is there anything I can do to hasten that ending if I feel I may suffer? I will be accompanied, as ever, by my partner in writing Anna Wharton, who has co-authored both of my previous books. On the days when the fog has descended and mixed up my thoughts, she will ask the questions for me. 

I invite you to read this book as if you are joining in the conversations between Anna and me and the people we have asked to share their experiences. Some of the stories and the answers will be sad, others will make you laugh, but I would like you to read as if you have pulled up a chair, cup of tea in hand, and you are sitting at the table alongside us. Pause at the end of them if you like, and write some notes about what you think – I’ll leave lots of space for you to do that. 

Please do not fear: you will not find anything frightening within the pages that follow. I am not trying to tell you how death must be done, or how it should feel for you. I just want to gently remind you that one day it will come, and the more prepared you are, the more conversations you are able to have with medical professionals and with those you love, the more empowered you will feel to live in the now – and you don’t need a progressive or terminal illness to do that. I will share with you how I feel about death, and some of what I reveal might surprise you. Be sure not to let it make you feel sad; know that I am making my own choices as far as I can, as one day you will make yours. I would like to be a light that guides the way. 

See this book as a gift, a focus on the present by glancing – just a peek – into the future. And with that, we better get on with the business of living, and to do that, we need to talk about death. 

Wendy Mitchell, autumn 2022