On The Beach…

A Royal Navy term meaning “retired from the Service”.

Also the name of my favourite novel, written by Nevil Shute. I was what you might call a precocious reader when I was young, my Grade Six teacher Mr. Bone would score me the brochure for the Scholastic Book Club that was reserved for the senior elementary (Grade Seven and Eight) students, not normally available to the lower elementary grades. It was our little secret, it was with great excitement that I awaited the monthly delivery of my new books (and that’s about the only thing I would spend my allowance on; the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree with my daughter either).

On The Beach isn’t what I would classify as great literature, it’s generally not deemed Shute’s finest work. The story is that of several characters living in post-apocalyptic Australia, aware that certain death is to follow after nuclear bombs are presumed to have wiped out the rest of Earth’s population after the eruption of World War III.

I was watching a bit of TV last week, a show in which a young cancer patient is asked by her therapist what her favourite book is  -  to my shock she cited On The Beach. My jaw could have dropped.

It’s not that it’s an unknown entity, the book was made into a movie in 1959, again as a TV movie in 2000. Many of you may know the story.

It’s that this book, read over and over again throughout my teen years,  had been my guidebook from an early age as to how I would hope to cope with adversity.

What struck me at the first reading was how the characters each face  imminent death in their own way. Two characters, Lieutenant Peter Holmes and Commander Dwight Towers, became my heroes.
Despite knowing with certainty that they in just a few short months  will die of radiation poisoning, they go about their daily lives with as much normalcy as they can muster and circumstances will allow.

Gardens are planted, dinner parties are thrown, new friendships are forged. They continue with the mundane tasks of life as if nothing has changed, yet acknowledging at the same time that everything has indeed turned upside down.

My heroes. Facing the end of their lives not with anger, but with acceptance of what is to come. There is no hope, yet grace and gentility reign.

I’m sure that I’m not alone in having thought out in my younger days how I might handle a diagnosis of a life limiting illness. If and when those thoughts ever crossed my mind, my mind would go to this book.

The game plan I had imagined for how I would deal with serious illness is pretty much on par with how things have actually gone. I knew that I would investigate and try treatments, but would have a sense of when enough was enough. I reached that point last year when I decided that I’d no longer put my body through experimental treatments, nor would I have any more diagnostic tests done. I don’t need to know any more details of the ravages to my body, the knowledge offers neither comfort nor advantage.

Despite the overwhelming challenges to keeping some sort of normalcy, we do what we can to shelve my illness for at least a part of each day. I may not leave this apartment, but as a dear friend recently noted – it appeared to her that I seem to do more ”living” between these four walls than some others on the outside world do.

It was not without a sardonic twist when I named this  blog “Without A Manual.”  To be certain I’d had very little experience with serious illness and death in my lifetime, but I’d had plenty of adversity thrown in my way. I’d like to believe that all the challenges along my path were practice for the biggest and most difficult of them all. I don’t presume to know the answers, I can only acknowledge what I believe to be the right path for me. I can only walk in my own shoes.

I’m on the beach, looking out to the sea’s horizon. It’s there waiting for me, it’s my prerogative to choose whether I let the current carry me out or I swim towards it.

I am not afraid.