It was a music friend’s funeral recently. He died of lung cancer. There was much in common with my own situation.
He was very fit, and in early autumn was walking in mountains in Scotland. He retired a year ago from his job as head of English in a secondary school in the Sheffield area, and had just started the second year of a Masters course in Creative Writing. But there the similarities end.
In October, he noticed a slight shortness of breath when walking up hill and playing his flute. The doctor sent him for an urgent scan (unavailable to me during covid lockdown), and he was diagnosed with lung cancer. An early thought was to offer help with questions from our own personal experiences, seeing that is what I also have, and have had a wide range of tests and treatments. However, a day or two later, we heard he was in hospital after a stroke, and may then have had more. He died fifteen days after diagnosis. Fifteen days! He was 64.
And I’m still here after three and a half years, struggling, but still here and hoping, with luck, to see 2026.
His cancer was in the plural membrane, not one of the lobes.
It is a shame that your musical friend did not retire a few years earlier. It seems so unfair that he should die so soon after hanging up his mortarboard and gown.
ReplyDeleteSuch a short journey from walking in the mountains to a shockingly unexpected early death.
ReplyDeleteLife does work in mysterious ways, doesn't it? RIP to your musical friend.
ReplyDeleteThat was so sudden. And yes, such a different story from yours.
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