There's always someone worse off. Blah blah.

The day began and ended with terminal cancer.  Found out today that a colleague's wife has it, while Ron, who sings next to me in second tenors at St Cuthbert's choir was told, in July 2008, that he had "two to three years" to live.  He's not a well man but looks set fair to defy his prognosis all the same, and his breath control, the sense of pitch even in the midst of dissonance, as unfaltering as ever.  We're working on Rutter's Requiem, which is quite gloomy in parts.  The Agnus Dei in particular is queasily chromatic, not sure what key it's in, and its middle section reminds us that "man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery".  Life's a bitch, and then you die.  Thanks for reminding us, John.  "In the midst of life we are in death, we are in death, we are in death" sing the men, while the women reprise the main theme above them.  Then we reach "I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord".  I find this the most musically pedestrian bit of the whole work, which seems to offer death as a land of shades, or maybe a big sleep, but there's no gloryland that outshines the sun here.  And Rutter can do glory hallelujah with the best of them when the mood takes him.

Ron does not seem to have been well served by either his GP or the hospital.  The significance of the back pain with which he originally went to his doctor wasn't picked up; at a recent outpatient appointment he was asked "aren't you having such and such a treatment", said no, to which the response was oh, well you should be, we'll put you on the waiting list - and this to a man who's already on borrowed time.  It's not good to go into the last chapter of your story feeling that you can't trust the people responsible for your healthcare.  Ron complains they don't even answer his questions properly.

There's a lot I should be thankful for.  Dad's health centre has an excellent reputation, borne out by my conversations with staff, and I have - so far - no complaints about the care he's recieved as a hospital outpatient, or indeed two or three times in recent years when he's been admitted.  Social Services seem to be on the ball too; we'll see how thorough they are in assessing him in a couple of weeks.  But then he is an old man - ten years older than Ron, while my colleague's wife is younger than me.  If his days are numbered, at least he can hardly complain that he hasn't had enough of them.  Where I take issue with Fate is in the way it looks as if his life is going to end.  There's no need for that. 

But then there's no need for cancer to strike at men and women in the prime of life, at teenagers, children, babies: and it does.  I suppose right now we should be grateful we're not in Libya, as Gadaffi prepares to fight to the death, not caring how many he slaughters as he goes, and the West decides what to do for the least worst.  Nor am in New Zealand, knowing that my loved one is under a certain pile of rubble after the earthquake, pretty well certain by now that they've died but not daring to wonder if it was all over in a moment, or whether they took hours, days to give up the struggle, unable to cry audibly for help, maybe a few feet from would-be rescuers.  By comparison with your average Libyan, many New Zealanders, my colleague's wife or even Ron, Dad can consider himself lucky.  He's had his threescore and ten and a dollop on top.  But still: who would choose to go the way it looks as though he will?