But, while still walking to the parking lot where I'd left my car I realised that, disregarding my newly acquired knowledge, I was not any worse than the day before. My body felt strong, there was no pain and I was not about to die that very afternoon. So, I decided to start living my life immediately and get as much of it as I possibly could. I had an operation in February '92. My recovery was quite remarkable - I was up on my feet the very same evening; the next day I walked on my own, ten meters away from my bed and back; on the forth day I was back home, weak, but feeling great. It was then, when I discovered how wonderful my everyday life was: the touch of a warm shower, the pleasure of walking on a spring day, the thrill of riding a bicycle. There was nothing ordinary about my life anymore. Every morning felt like a lottery prize, every day was both an opportunity and an adventure. The significance of my RRSP account faded out, while time spent with family and friends became precious. I was living full tilt, enjoying every minute.

About four months later my doctor told me that, since my kidney cancer was completely encapsulated, and since I made such a good recovery, my chances of long-term survival were "just as good as anybody else's." This, of course, was terrific news which made me very happy and excited for about a month. Gradually, however, the tension of the past subsided and made room for the usual worries: job, mortgage, rusting cars, etc. My thrill with life was getting paler day by day, no matter how hard I tried to keep it alive. Morning showers were just showers again, meetings with friends were less and less special and, eventually, the issue of my RRSP resurfaced. So there I was, back with everybody else. O yes, I tried toys. The first one was a sailboat. Not that I was much of a sailor, but I vividly remembered the oceans of my boyhood's dreams, speckled with tall ships. It turned out, well, Okay. I spent a few hundred dollars on an outboard motor and some other minor things. I sailed a few times in the next four years, most of the time alone. A friend of mine and I went out for a weekend once, and it was great, but the joy I knew from the past was still eluding me. Then I bought a motorcycle and it was Okay, too. I had some nice moments riding it, but the thrill, my thrill just would not come back. Life was normal again.

A few 'normal' years have passed. Sometimes I would remember the great feeling of the past; occasionally I would get a glimpse of it, but such moments had become fewer and fewer. Again, I set up a long-term financial plan which was going to make us rich by the time I would have been 75. We bought an investment property which, aside from money, cost four months of our lives to fix. Gone was the time when days were opportunities - they became duties again, each with a long list of things to do. Chore after chore, task after task, a drink at night to make me sleep, a coffee to wake me up in the morning, a few more to carry me through the day. In the Fall of 1997, I noticed a change in the vision of my right eye. At the beginning it was just a slight blur up in the upper right part of the field, but it soon developed into a dark strip. Occasionally, I felt a sharp pain as if my eyeballs were being ripped to pieces. This was my cancer again, making a triumphant comeback.

About a year later, one-eyed and dependent on pills for adrenal hormones, I am still alive. Miraculously, life feels great again. Not that there is much hope - at least not based on statistics. In its metastatic stage my cancer can neither be cured nor will it likely go into remission. In fact, last tests showed it had made some further progress. Somehow, it does not seem to matter - it is great to be alive.

My life has changed profoundly. Gone are the toys - I have no time for toys. I am not talking of the time to enjoy them (this could easily be found) but of the time to hassle with them - fix and paint and winterise, etc. - this is just too much. Parting with them was surprisingly easy - in fact, it came as a relief. There are many more changes: I drive my car very seldom and I cycle instead. Cycling brings me the feeling of freedom - no traffic jams I cannot bypass, no parking problems, no repair bills. I get my exercise and my private time to think, to listen to the radio and just to be with myself, all at once, while commuting to work. When on my bike, I look with pity at the people in passing cars, visibly tense, with eyes that see nothing but the road, street lights and an unwanted obstacle - me. I wonder sometimes, why did it take the cancer for me to pick up biking - I have wasted so much time!

I have given up my RRSPs so that I can work part-time. Sure, I am fortunate to have a job which attracts my keen interest, but even this appreciation is a rather recent phenomenon. Earlier, my perception of the very same job (although worked full time) was associated mainly with it's low salary. Nowadays, I do not worry about money very much. First and foremost, there are very few expensive gadgets in my life and I have absolutely no need for more. This alone saves a lot. I have come to realise how few things really matter to me. Most of them either are free or cost very little. Most of the things that cost money I already have.

My part-time job leaves me time for things I enjoy. My garden gives me a lot of joy and a sense of accomplishment - this year we eat mostly our own vegetables grown almost organically. I read a lot more than before, perhaps as much as I used to in my formative years in high school. Books I never had time for - great literature, history, some philosophy. They do to me what good books do best, i.e., deepen my insight and help maintain distance with myself. Television, along with other mass media, has very little room in my life - I think I could almost get by without it.

However, the most important change in my life is the feeling of freedom. Before, I always felt I was responsible for most everything and everybody. I thought I could not do things I wanted to do because I had to do things I had to. This attitude took effective control over my life away from me and made it a tiresome chore. It is different now - I am mortal so I cannot waste even a tiniest bit of the rest of my life on things that are not entirely 'mine'. I say 'no' to people much more often than I used to and - surprise, surprise - the heavens are not falling down. The people I say 'no' to are doing fine. I am in charge of my life.

In the modern, liberal, global culture of ours, ruled by the media, where various interest groups are very vocal in presenting their arguments and, yes, interests with great persuasiveness, one's personal values are being permanently questioned. Different points of view become socially possible, i.e. legitimate, i.e. valid, thus thinning and diffusing lines separating good from evil and right from wrong. As I see it now, my own personal ethical landscape became murky and difficult to navigate in such an erosive environment. Quite often I would find myself debating endlessly, in a hopeless effort to reconcile conflicting moral attitudes, entangled in a series of "yes, but ...". My cancer has brought me excellent clarity of my own values. No longer do I have to engage myself in lengthy deliberations - I just know what is right and what is wrong. I do not think it has changed any of my values, but it has certainly simplified my decisions.

Having said all of this it is impossible to escape the realisation that - as paradoxically as it may sound - my illness changed my life for the better. The change has been so profound and so complete that, if I were given the choice of becoming healthy again at the cost of losing what I have come to know about life and living, I would say 'no' without hesitation. To me it would mean trading the limited-term happiness I have for a permanent misery - not a good deal by any standards. Even more so, it is impossible to avoid the question about the nature of the motive that makes my life worth living and which is more precious to me that my own health.

I wish I could say I have found the answer myself, but I have not. More than seven years ago, three months after my first operation and my extraordinary recovery, I went to see my doctor. Actually, I cycled about twenty kilometres to see him. It took me about an hour to get to his office on the beautiful spring morning and, while I was cycling, I thought about all the things I wanted to tell him - how I felt about life and living, what was important to me and what was not. So, when he entered the room I had been waiting in, I gave him quite a spirited talk with many elevated adjectives. As always, he listened politely, and then said: "I've heard many patients of mine say similar things and, in spite of all of this and in spite of my being a surgeon, at thirty-six I still believe I'm immortal." I was stunned - there was nothing about dying in what I had said - it was all about living. But after all these years I think he had got it right - one cannot live fully without an acute awareness of one's mortality. As the late Father Jozef Bochenski, a Dominican monk, a philosopher and a mathematical logician, put it: "Carpe diem (seize the day) and memento mori (remember death) are, in fact, two sides of the same coin." So, the very reason that makes my life so very worth living is the one that I am going to die of - my cancer.

I wonder sometimes if it has to be this way; if it is at all possible to stay deeply aware of one's mortality. But it does not seem to be easy. My doctor knew he could not really believe it and neither could I seven years ago, despite my previous close encounter with death. In our culture, death ceased to be a indispensable part of life - it has been separated from the process of living, moved to separate quarters - hospitals, hospices, etc. - and we keep it there so that no one can either see it or learn it for oneself. As somebody once said, "we know from experience we are immortal - it is the others who die" and we learn about their deaths from obituaries. Thanks to my cancer I am lucky to know my days are numbered.