Lah-hoo-zer

Serious post today, about how we deal with death. Don't panic people, I'm not about to curl my toes up, just need to get this off my chest (that's a CF pun that is) and since there's nothing on telly I thought I'd do it now.

It's a language issue really. Specifically the kind of language we use when someone has died from an illness - it's usually cancer but I have heard the same choice of words used many times after the passing of CF patients too..it's a response to a death from incurable illnesses really.

The phrase in question is "so and so lost their battle with [insert disease]." This is very unfair on the deathee. By that rationale if everyone who dies from an incurable illness is deemed to have lost their battle, then that makes all of us losers because we're all going to die aren't we.

How does anyone get to win? It's impossible. To win you'd have to defeat the disease, but by definition you can't defeat an incurable disease, so we're all condemned to lose by people who are trying to tactfully and respectfully announce our death.

And why is it necessary to think of life in those terms anyway? Winning and losing? Who decides what constitutes a win? It's a funny old business. If you must see life in these rather simplistic terms - winning and losing ought to be judged on what sort of a life the person led, not on it's inevitable ending.

I myself have never battled against CF even if at a younger rebellious age I thought I was. CF is as much a part of me as anything else..my personality, my sense of humour and my lovely eyes. It has a negative impact on my life, as so do those other things I just mentioned. But it also has had an equally positive impact, one just needs to think a little more abstractly to recognise this. Granted that takes a bit of time, but eventually the bigger picture emerges. It's like those anamorphic pictures that only make sense when you see them from a very specific point of view and then it all becomes clear.

Point is anyway, I live with CF not battle against it.



Now then, the point of this post is if you know me to set people right when the time comes and you happen to hear someone using this depressing and unfair summarising to describe my passing.

Well now, I think that about covers it. Much obliged.