All’s well that ends well | 2 November 2017

Mandy was 38 when she was told she was ‘in the end stage’, suffering from COPD and finding it more and more difficult to breathe. Matthew, in his twenties, was given just four to five years of life after being diagnosed with a brain tumour. Vivek, also in his twenties, is confined to a wheelchair because he suffers from Duchenne muscular dystrophy and is already reliant on a ventilator for much of the time. Sophie has stage four lung cancer and tumours in her lungs, lymph nodes, bones and brain. You might think a programme made up of their thoughts, words, experiences would be one of lament and moping, misery and fear. Not a bit of it. Before I Go on the World Service (beautifully made by Sue Nelson) was not in the least bit self-pitying. On the contrary, the mission of Mandy, Matthew, Sophie and Vivek is to get us all talking about dying as an essential part of living, and to emphasise how being given a death sentence can change your quality of life for the better by making you really think, every minute, about the value of what you are doing.

They all know they are living in the shadow of death but, as Mandy explains, so is everyone else. From the moment we as babies take our first breath we are on a journey to the grave. We can never know when our final breath will come, not even Matthew, Vivek, Sophie and Mandy, who are so much closer to it. ‘It’s very frightening,’ says Mandy, ‘but there’s nothing you can do about it.’ Each of them, in their own way, has found a way to live with death. As Sophie says, their programme is ‘a gift from us to show you what it’s like’.