Foothills of end

My lovely friend W, who died of cancer last year, kept up her Facebook correspondence until she started to, quite literally, lose her mind. It was tremendously sad to see her incisive, unsentimental updates start to falter, and her phrasing and spelling begin to disintegrate. Then for a few days there were just ‘likes’, and then there was nothing at all. The update that sent a little shock through me, and sent me down to the river to have a proper cry, opened with the words 'foothills of end now'.

It’s a killer of a phrase: you haven’t got long, and it’s only going to get harder. Looks like my mum’s just approaching those hills now. We hoped she’d have a few months on the post-chemotherapy plateau, hanging out in her tent there, relaxing with a book or two, maybe adventuring the odd picnic or day trip. That was why she put herself through it.

But that isn’t what’s happening. No. Instead she has to pack up her rucksack again and start climbing, only she’s not as strong as she was before, and the paths are rockier, and there's no map for this country.

joella