Pain is not always caused by physical illness. Occasionally, when things have happened in your life without a peaceful resolution, their effects can linger subtly without us even realising it. When you are very ill, your defences are weakened, your vulnerability increases and unresolved fears, emotional pain and worry can erode what energy you have left. Even despite medication, it is pain of this kind that can persist.

But when we are confronted with death, more than at any other time, we think about what is meaningful in our lives. We look closely at our relationships with our loved ones, and we wince uncomfortably at some of our memories. Our human condition is such that as we grow in maturity and wisdom, we begin to see more clearly things that may have gone wrong. Things happen to all of us that we know in retrospect could have been handled better. Or we remember how we were hurt by those we cared about and loved.

Dr David Kuhl, MD, author of ‘What Dying People Want’, related the words of his Grandfather who was dying:

‘Dying is hard work – not the physical part, but the part which is the inside of me, the work about who I am, who I have been, and who I will be.’

When confronted with the knowledge that your life may soon be over, the perception of who you are can be shaken as you feel a loss of the place you held in your life, your job, your role in the family, your social place amongst friends. No-one wants to assume the role of a patient. As soon as you come into an Emergency Department, your own clothes are replaced by a generic white gown: sudden loss of individuality; you lie on a barouche and are pushed to XR, even though you walked into the hospital. You want to go to sleep but a nurse thinks it’s important to check your blood pressure again. Your life is suddenly intruded upon by a cast of strangers.

I’ve noticed that the only patients at work who bring in their own pillow with its distinctively different pillow-case, are the cancer patients. Plenty of other patients come in to hospital regularly, but they’re not terminal. They don’t bring in their own pillow. It’s a little thing, but its a piece of individuality, identity and comfort that I’ve noticed they bring with them. Though all are at different stages of their illness, there is not one of them who hasn’t been thrown into this hard work that Dr Kuhl’s Grandfather talked about. And plenty of them suffer from the pain which is not necessarily physical, the stuff of the past.

If you are one of these people who has been told that you have a terminal illness, somewhat surprisingly, this is actually a new cycle of your life. Paradoxically it is filled with opportunities to become more than you were. No-one who goes through suffering of any kind, comes through without its imprint on your soul. The saddest and most difficult journeys inevitably produce a silver lining of some kind. Anyone you meet who has sacrificed and suffered, has a depth to them that cannot be learnt from any book. What you have now is time given to you in this life that you still now live, albeit with illness, to work on your inner self.

You are so much more than a body.

Some say that we are spiritual beings having an earthly life. I’m not brushing aside the fact that it can be horrible at times. I just want you to see something that you might not have seen before, that your journey has goodness in it.

I remember when my Father died from lung cancer, the material things of this world suddenly became completely meaningless. I realised how much energy was given to wanting things, improving things and getting things. All just things. As I grieved for his loss, I gained an understanding of what was truly meaningful, this being the love I felt for him, the good memories (somehow the bad memories are just forgotten) and the importance of being together as a family in his last days. We were all there for him, every day, even Mum. I say that because they had been divorced for many years.

Illness and impending death wipe away that which is really not important. The love you feel for each other becomes your driving force. And so you are not the only one who grows and suffers through your illness. Anyone who loves you is also becoming more than they were. Every family member or friend who cares for you, even every nurse or doctor who gives of themselves professionally to support you during your illness becomes more than they were. The unexpected gift, the silver lining of terminal illness.

Erica Fotineas