Hemingway once wrote that courage is grace under pressure.But I would rather think with the 18th-century Italian dramatist, Vittorio Alfieri, that “often the test of courage is not to die but to live. For living with cancer engenders more than pressure; it begets terror. To live with it, to face up to it—that’ s courage.

After I became ill, I embraced upon many things I had been putting off before. I read the books I had set aside for retirement and wrote one myself, entitled the Art of Surgery. My wife Madeleine and I took more holidays. We played tennis regularly and curled avidly; we took the boys fishing. When I review these past few years, it seems in many ways that I have lived a lifetime since I acquired cancer. On my last holiday in the Bahamas, as I walked along the beach feeling the gentle waves wash over my feet, I felt part of the universe, even if only a minuscule one, like a grain of sand on the beach.

If one realizes that our time on this earth is but a tiny fraction of that within the cosmos, then life calculated in years may not be as important as we think. Why measure life in heartbeats? When life is so dependent on such an unreliable function as the beating of the heart, then it is fragile indeed. The only thing that one can depend upon with absolute certainty is death.

I believe that death may be the most important part of life. I believe that life is infinitesimally brief in relation to the immensity of eternity. I believe, because of my religious faith, that I shall “return to the Father” in an afterlife that is beyond description. I believe that though my life was short in years, it was full in experience, joy, love and accomplishment; that my own immortality will reside in the memories of my loved ones left behind, mother, brother, wife, children, dear friends. I believe that I will die with loved ones close by and, one hopes, achieve that great gift of God—death in peace, and with dignity.