We’re in the kitchen and Lizzie is telling me about the brother of one of her best friends, who’s just had a TIA – in other words, a mini-stroke.
‘Poor guy,’ I say. ‘How old is he?’ The only other person I know who had TIAs was Lizzie’s father, who died a couple of years ago. But he was in his late eighties, when he had his TIAs.
‘He’s sixty,’ says Lizzie, of her friend’s brother.
So, the friend’s brother is quite a few years older than Lizzie’s friend. But still… getting TIAs at sixty seems relatively young – younger than being in your late eighties, anyway.
I remember my conversation with another friend of ours (a couple of weeks before) who said that, approaching a significant birthday in middle age as we both are, he’s finding it much harder to do things – physically – than he did a couple of years ago. That said, one of the things the friend likes to do is boxing… and he’s clearly far too old to be doing that anyway (if, indeed, you should be inflicting your body to the punishment of boxing at any age).
‘Hmm,’ I say to Lizzie, gloomily. ‘Middle age sucks. It’s all downhill, health-wise, from here.’
Something occurs to me. I.e. what a ridiculous statement that is to make to someone who’s just had cancer.
‘Er…’ I say, ‘although you’ve kind of reached the bottom of the hill already….’ Not sure that’s helping.
Lizzie doesn’t seem to mind my foot in mouth moment. Presumably, she’s used to it.
‘You know,’ she says, ‘when I was in the middle of the chemotherapy, I just had to get through it, one day at a time. I couldn’t think about the day after that or the one after that. Who knew what was going to happen?’
‘But now I’m feeling better, I’m like… what are we doing this weekend? And next weekend? Where are we going to go on holiday this summer? And the summer after that?’
I had noticed Lizzie’s strong ability to plan ahead (and her ongoing frustration at my non-ability to plan ahead at all) has recently kicked back in, full-throttle.
‘I guess what I’m trying to say,’ says Lizzie, ‘is that now that I’m feeling well, I’m totally taking life for granted again.’
She smiles. It’s clear if the choice is between a) taking life for granted, or b) simply being relieved, day by day, to be alive at all, then the better option is obviously a).
P. D. Clifton 
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