How do you approach death and aging?

There’s still quite a lot of my friends who won’t discuss these things with their family. To me, that’s very wrong - why put your family through the shock of not knowing things when it happens out of the blue? Even when your Mum and Dad and Margaret wanted to not telling Joan because of her upcoming head operation - I understood their concern, but I believe in being open. I said, ‘Let me get the results from the doctor first. If it’s good news you can tell her, if it’s bad news, no.’ That’s fair enough.

I think it’s really important that the girls are coming to grips with my decisions, even though they don’t want to - well, none of us do, really. But that’s life. I’ve given this a lot of thought - I’ve got my COPD, my faltering heart could go at any time, and then there’s the diabetes. It’s amazing really - twenty-three years of diabetes, all the lollies and chocolates and fatty foods I eat, and I’m still here! But I know my limits now.

I’ve told them all I’ll give them permission to be sad for five minutes when I go, and that’s it - then put it aside, go over to the pub, have a couple of beers with the family, and be happy. Don’t worry, be happy! I don’t want any of them going around blubbering, saying ‘Oh, I’m glad she’s gone now, she’s out of her misery.’ Margaret used to look for my ‘stop button,’ but now she’s changed it to ‘pause.’ She’ll say ‘Where’s your pause button?’ and I tell her I haven’t found it yet!

You know, there’s a time that you can live and a time when you have to go, whether you like it or not - it’s out of your hands. But while I’m here, I’m still under control. I think because I’m so comfortable talking about death, having seen a lot of people in my life go, it probably makes people feel stressed and uncomfortable. But I’m not talking about it like it’s going to happen today. I think it’s important that people understand my wishes and what I want life to be like after I go - like saying I want people to go to the pub and have a good time. It makes people feel less bad, you know?

When I have trouble sleeping and all these thoughts go around at night, I tell myself ‘Get it out of your head right now and go to sleep.’ This morning, when I was feeling overwhelmed, I sat myself down, made a drink, looked out the window and thought ‘Well, I’m here today. We’ll worry about tomorrow when it comes.’ Then I put on my little hat that says ‘Don’t worry, be happy’ - everyone who came in got a laugh out of that! All my staff were fluttering around doing things, all nice and quietly, not flustering me in any way. And I realized, I really haven’t got anything to worry about. Why is my head spinning around with all this crap in it?

I hope this will be an example to you guys when you get to my stage. Talk to your family, discuss everything. If you’re not feeling well, tell them what’s happened. A lot of my friends won’t even mention that they’ve been sick or anything - they don’t want to go to the doctors, nothing. They say ‘He didn’t need to know that.’ And I say, ‘Yes, he did!’ That’s why my doctor likes me - I write out a posted script every time I go up to see him. He’s never struck anybody like me!