N.A.

Imagine that you're a 70-year old man or woman. You live in a house just outside town. It feels rather lonely, because, although your child and its family live in the house, they have work, and school, and math lessons, and jobs to take care of. They're only home after 7 pm. And you're looking forward to that. You have a small dog in the house that's your only companion from 7 am to 7 pm. Every week day. Every month. Except for Christmas. Now imagine that you have cancer. And that you're undergoing chemotherapy. You don't know how long you've got left. Sometimes you wish it wasn't that much, because the chemotherapy is a two-sided sword - both saving and killing you. Or just prolonging the torture. Depending how tightly you grasp to life, and how much you want to live. As I said, your only companion is a small dog and you can't wait til your family gets home. Well, you do get along with your neighbors and aren't usually as lonely as this, but today you've been feeling more exhausted than usually. You've been feeling weak. You've got the flu, and in normal circumstances, that wouldn't change much, but you've got cancer. You've been lying all day on the couch, with the dog lying next to your feet. Or your head. Touching you with its nose. Now it's finally 7 pm and someone is knocking on the door; your family is finally home. You love them so much but you don't have the energy to stand up and open the door. You don't have the energy to be happy that they're finally home. You generally don't have any energy. Someone unlocks the door slowly. They see you lying there and perhaps they wonder whether your heart is still beating. Just imagine. I don't have to imagine all this, because that's my grandma, and too many times when she's sleeping I've caught myself eyeing her strenuously, examining whether her chest is moving up and down, just to make sure she's still breathing. And somehow every next time when I do it, it seems to me that her chest is moving ever so slightly less.