Somewhere between Christmas and New Year I completely lose my appetite, along with four kilos. I can feel my body steadily going into decline, but I say nothing. I don’t want to worry anyone else until it’s unavoidable. New Year’s Eve, James and I drive to the top of the cliff that overlooks the town and watch fireworks explode in glittery bursts against a black sky. It is hard to say goodbye to the last full year on this earth that I will have lived in, even though it was the year that brought me the worst news. Despite that, and the treatments that failed to buy me more time, I don’t hate the year as much as I would have thought. Because it was the year that also brought me James. And that’s a pretty big highlight as far as I’m concerned.

It is terrifying to think that I am now in the year of my death. The four-digit number that will be recorded beside my name in a computer somewhere and on a headstone—it has arrived. Like a black storm cloud that has been threatening on the horizon, it is here.

Notes from Ava

(Women’s Weekly, January 14)

Don’t forget to take the time to enjoy the simple pleasures.

I know it’s so easy to get caught up in the big things, working hard to save for a new house, new car, that expensive holiday, that we often forget to just take the time to enjoy the small stuff.

And I know that sometimes, in reality, things that sound magical all too often actually aren’t. Like dancing in the rain, for instance, or buying a puppy. Rain tends to be a cold, wet affair, and puppies can be bloody hard work, given their natural tendency to pee on the carpet or chew your shoes.

Baking your own bread sounds a noble pursuit. Till you forget the yeast and waste an hour waiting for bread to rise that doesn’t, but you bake it anyway and then wonder why you bothered when it’s harder than a slab of rock and not half as pretty. Not even the birds will touch it, or the dog, and that’s saying something because he eats the cat’s fur balls. As for growing your own vegetables, painstakingly tending to them for weeks only to have some bastard rabbit eat them from under your nose right before harvest time, well that’s just infuriating. It’s so much easier to buy your lettuce in a bag and your carrots pre-peeled.

You might think a nice family afternoon walk on a Sunday afternoon conjures up images of rosy-cheeked children dashing gleefully ahead to frolic in hedges and marvel at nature, while Mum and Dad stroll hand in hand blissfully behind, overwhelmed by how blessed they are and how wonderful life is, but then you actually go on a walk. And the fight begins before you even leave the house when you have to prise your cherubs away from the TV. Before you’ve even gone five hundred meters someone sits down in the middle of the road, crying, because their legs are too tired to continue, the other child is in desperate need of a bath and possible decontamination because they poked a dead possum with a stick “to see what would happen,” your husband is wondering whether if “we turned back now” we might make it back for the second half of the game, and you end up climbing a hill in an effort to get cell phone service so you can google where the nearest pub is.