The idea of death can make you appreciate life

Along with many other people, I was shocked to hear 702 Talk Radio presenter Xolani Gwala talking about the fact he had been diagnosed with colon cancer … and that it is at an advanced stage.

I am no medical expert, but the words “cancer” and “at an advanced stage” send shivers down my spine. This sort of thing doesn’t always end well, but I wish him the best in the fight that lies ahead for him.

It is sad that Xolani, at the age of just 42 and the father of a young family, should have to contemplate his morality so early. Death is not really something you pay much attention to until the day comes you realise that what lies ahead is far less than is already behind you in terms of life.

When I was 19, I thought I would live forever. So I didn’t really think about it when the army truck ran off the road and into a ditch and the three of us on the back were tossed up into the air. Had we not been sheltering from the rain by huddling up close to the cab, we could well have been thrown into the trees. And at 60km/h, that wouldn’t have ended well.

Still later, as we ran through a tea estate with bullets cracking over our heads and shrapnel whizzing around us like a swarm of angry bees, I didn’t think of the blank screen at the end of my life’s movie.

When I was in my 20s and wandering around alone, with a camera and a notebook, covering the slaughter of the Ndebele people in Zimbabwe, it didn’t occur to me that, had I been found near some of the mass grave sites I found, the Fifth Brigade’s killer soldiers would have made me disappear, as they did to thousands of others.

Things changed when I had children. When you see yourself in a tiny helpless creature, you want to see how that particular story turns out: will they sing, will they dance, will they win a Nobel Prize one day?

On press assignments in townships in the 1990s, I kept well behind cover while the reckless photographers pursued their “bang bang” glory. One day, I ran away from a story. No job is worth giving up watching your children grow…

Now, as I think about the less ahead and the more behind, I am acutely conscious of the gradual physical decline which awaits all of us (yes, even you pretty millennials). After 60 000km of running, my joints are starting to get their own back, I need glasses to read and I don’t look forward to check-ups at the doctor.

In the past two years, I’ve had a medical scare or two of my own, more thanks to doctors jumping to the wrong conclusions than any real danger, I believe. But, I have also seen a few people, colleagues and acquaintances, succumbing.

I continue to do what I do best: I avoid thinking about the future and the ways in which I might go (the best way would be to go to bed with a glass of good red wine and not wake up in the morning).

Yet, occasionally, as in the case of Xolani, I am reminded: you never know when life can catch up with you. And, even though it is a cliche: make the most of what you have…

Citizen acting deputy editor Brendan Seery.