I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed both nothing and everything. Before my cancer was diagnosed, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. After the diagnosis, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. But now I knew it acutely. The problem wasn’t really a scientific one. The fact of death is unsettling. Yet there is no other way to live.

Let us consider me as a test case. As I have said, I would like to die peacefully with Thomas Tallis on my iPod before the disease takes me over and I hope that will not be for quite some time to come, because if I knew that I could die at any time I wanted, then suddenly every day would be as precious as a million pounds. If I knew that I could die, I would live. My life, my death, my choice.

I see the future as something that could come crashing down very fast. Let me put it slightly by way of a comparison. Normal people, and I use the term very deliberately, by this not otherwise able situation - I'm disabled. I'm abnormal. Normal people dont think very much about the medium term future. They think only about the present, which is constantly changing for them or the very far future, which is just an abstraction. For me, its the other way around, my present never changes. So I dont really think about. But the medium term involves my death so I'm quite conscious of what is going to happen to me in about a year, maybe two years, who knows, whereas no one else I know thinks like that.

I live by the day. Just sitting in the park, looking at the flowers thinking how beautiful they are. It's almost … not hallucinogenic but it's a much stronger feeling than previously. For me, at the moment, going for a walk in the park with Gail is heaven.

To so many people, I am no longer just myself. I am a reminder of a thought that is difficult for the rational brain to accept: that the elements that constitute our bodies might fail at any moment. When I originally got my diagnosis at age 35, all I could think to say was, “But I have a son.” It was the best argument I had. I can’t end. This world can’t end. It had just begun. A tragedy is like a fault line. A life is split into a before and an after, and most of the time, the before was better.

But cancer has also ushered in new ways of being alive. Even when I am this distant from Canadian family and friends, everything feels as if it is painted in bright colors. In my vulnerability, I am seeing my world without the Instagrammed filter of breezy certainties and perfectible moments. I can’t help noticing the brittleness of the walls that keep most people fed, sheltered and whole. I find myself returning to the same thoughts again and again: Life is so beautiful. Life is so hard.

I did the things you might expect of someone whose world has suddenly become very small. I sank to my knees and cried. I called my husband at our home nearby. I waited until he arrived so we could wrap our arms around each other and say the things that must be said. I have loved you forever. I am so grateful for our life together. Please take care of our son.

The movement has perfected a rarefied form of America’s addiction to self-rule, which denies much of our humanity: our fragile bodies, our finitude, our need to stare down our deaths (at least once in a while) and be filled with dread and wonder. At some point, we must say to ourselves, I’m going to need to let go.