‘I live with the constant background hum of the fear of death,” says David Schneider, opening up his One to One (Radio 4) with Jenny Diski. His terror was heightened by the loss of his mother and now he’s facing it head-on. Last week he had an enlightening chat with an expert in palliative care and now he meets Jenny Diski who has written and tweeted about her terminal cancer with bravery. Hang on, don’t call her brave. She hates that. “It pisses me off because it’s so sentimental,” she says. Call her one of life’s more fabulous people, then, because her attitude and wit are pretty special.
“Death by cancer is sexier than sex,” says Diski in a way that only someone going through her experience is entitled to. She recalls the moment she was given her diagnosis. “Better start cooking the meth now,” she said to her partner. Her oncologist wasn’t down with the Breaking Bad reference, but her natural humour shines through. “Why me?” aren’t words in Diski’s vocabulary and she has no doubt she’s lived life to the full. “Bear in mind, I’m 68,” she says. “Other people die much younger.”
But you can be scared of death at any age. One of the ideas she and Schneider touch on is how some atheists try to foster a belief in heaven towards the end of their lives. “I accept I’m going to die,” says Diski. “What I haven’t done is make any sense of it, because I haven’t got the slightest amount of faith in anything.”
This is the sort of radio show that stops you in your tracks and makes your stomach flip as you’re doing the washing up. It’s realistic rather than uplifting, but in 15 minutes Schneider proves that discussing death should happen more often. Many unspeakables are covered: from being put into a light coma at the end of your life to the struggle to come to terms with non-existence. “What was very shocking at one point was it suddenly struck me that my two very, very young grandchildren were going to die,” says Diski, sadly. It’s an unnerving thought that stays with you for days, but good on Schneider and Diski for facing up to the universal fear with warmth, wit and sensitivity on daytime radio.
