LIVE BY DESIGN | Facing loss – what choices to be made?

Mid-year 1991 Joe Slovo, husband to me, liberation struggle hero to others, phoned me. I was a couple of hours drive away from our Johannesburg home. I was having solo writing time, finishing the last chapter of my PhD. “Please come home earlier,” he asked. He had something urgent to discuss with me.

That evening we sat together and he told me his bad news. He’d gone to the doctor because his ribs were sore. He’d thought he’d injured himself when, accidentally locked in his office, he’d climbed out through a window. No such luck; the x-rays and blood tests that the meticulous GP ordered revealed cancer. Joe told me, “I have multiple myeloma. The life expectancy is two years.”

Many of us have experienced the awfulness of hearing bad news. My stomach churned. I felt nauseous. Stunned. Immobilised. What we thought was our everyday life was no more.

Joe’s immediate responses were: (a) ‘I don’t want anyone to know about this’, and (b) ‘I want to focus on completing my life’s work’. He’d been in his thirties when he was an accused in the Treason Trial. Now, in his mid-sixties, a peaceful transition to democracy was imminent.

Joe curtailed any activity that he regarded as a distraction. He had agreed to interviews with author Charlotte Bauer who had begun to write his biography. He cancelled. Time spent on retrospection was undesirable. He lived for three and a half more years. Those eighteen months beyond the two-year prognosis felt like a bonus.

Roll forward twenty years. I changed my profession. I transitioned from being an agricultural economist-banker. As MD of the Land Bank I was challenged by how people engaged with transformational change. I completed an MA in coaching.

My clients most often want me to work with them to get better at dealing with workplace situations, their work-life balance, racial complexity, or a behavioural issue.

One day, a few years ago, a woman arrived with a different objective. I offer a rapport session to feel sure that I can work with the person and their needs. And vice versa, they too must ascertain that they make the right choice.

She explained her purpose. “I have breast cancer. I was in remission. It’s back again. I understand enough to know that the chemo may not be successful a second time round. I don’t know if I have six months, a year or maybe two. I want to work out how I will best live during this time ahead. Someone suggested you might be the right coach to work with.” She lived three more years. What we did in our few sessions together served her well.

We respond differently to bad news.

I asked a friend whose life partner died a few months after his diagnosis of a brain tumour, “How did you and Clement face loss?” “We never did,” he replied, “he was in denial until the day he died.” Conversely, a client who requested grief counselling shared, “I was the one who refused to accept my husband’s impending death. I refused his efforts to have discussions with me. Only when he died did I discover how thoughtful and forward-thinking he had been. He arranged his affairs legally and financially to make my continuing life with our children as easy as possible.”

My earlier experience of accompanying my husband to his death was imperfect. Afterwards I realised just how many conversations we had not had. I lived with the consequences. Secrets revealed. Financial affairs not attended to. My younger self knew no better. It is this imperfect experience that has drawn me to this work.

I have in mind a book about the choices we make in the face of impending loss. It is about agency, our taking the reins to shape how we choose to live when death becomes imminent, be it our own death or that of loved ones.

UK psychotherapist Glenys Parry wrote to me, “The books on loss I’m aware of are about coping with loss after it happens. Working to help someone who has had bad news and impending loss is very different. I have a client at the moment whose husband has a terminal diagnosis but an indeterminate prognosis. They have a young child, and she is the main earner. I would definitely buy the book.”

Working with your own impending death is the only relationship in which you are in charge. You have agency for as long as your energy holds. It is a completely different experience to accompanying the death of a loved one: your life partner, your parent, your child.

The self-help book envisaged would take you through the coaching tools used, first with Linda (not her real name) and subsequently, with others. The NPO LoveLegacyDignity that Mapi and I co-founded runs an online course, Live By Design – Finish Strong that includes many of these. They provide a framework to consider your life holistically, encouraging you to make decisions as to how you wish to live your remaining days, as well as to secure your dignity and legacy.

We have a request for readers. Consider that you are the person receiving bad news of a terminal diagnosis, your own or that of your significant other, your parent or your child. What would make you buy a self-help book? What would you want to be included? What would help you the most?