Rory, 53
Even just yesterday, I was curled up with her in the afterglow and I felt total bliss
In September, I was diagnosed with cancer, and in January I found out I only have months to live. I’ve lost a lot of weight, but physically I still feel relatively normal – which is a relief, but also confusing. I am even strong enough to have sex with my wife, Anna, and in the last few weeks sex has become even more precious to us, because it somehow releases us from the weight of my diagnosis.
Knowing I have so little time is crushing. I’ll see a stranger doing something totally unremarkable, like riding a bike, and feel overwhelmed by the fact I’ll probably never get to do that again. But when Anna and I have sex, we disappear into our own world, and I genuinely forget about the cancer, even if it’s just for 20 minutes.
Anna is remorselessly positive. It is what I love most about her. She can see light in any situation, and wants us to spend this time having good experiences. Just after we got the bad news, I booked a hotel in London. There was a fancy bathroom, and Anna asked if she could watch me take a shower. I don’t look like the man I used to be because of the cancer, but Anna watched me with so much love and desire. To be admired by her made me feel like myself again. We are having sex every couple of days now – which is more than before I got ill – and it feels amazing to be close to one another.
The sex is more gentle, and I get tired in certain positions, but I get swept up in the moment, and it quietens that constant voice in my head. The only other time I forget momentarily about my diagnosis, weirdly, is when I’m doing a jigsaw. It’s just the right level of engagement without it being a huge task. There’s no massive sense of jeopardy, but it’s engaging enough to take your brain over. So I’m doing a lot of jigsaws and having a lot of sex.
In the last few days, I’ve started feeling this numbness in my feet … I don’t want to ask the doctors exactly what this means, but I know my body is failing. Anna is convinced I’ll live another eight months, but I don’t believe it. I know I’m starting to die now. But sex is still a place Anna and I can go together to forget. Yesterday, I was curled up with her in the afterglow and I felt total bliss. All my despair fell away.
Anna, 52
I still find just looking at him intoxicating. It doesn’t matter that illness has changed his body
Last night and all this morning, I lay in bed saying to myself, “He is ill and he won’t survive this.” I am struggling to get it into my head. But when I do get close to accepting it, I start crying – and I’m of no use to Rory that way.
So I’m trying to hold myself together.
He is terrified I will emotionally detach from him because it’s too painful to be close like this and know he is dying, but I won’t do that. We have this ritual where I stroke Rory’s wrist to send him off to sleep, and sexual touch comforts us both in a similar way.
During sex, I don’t avoid touching Rory’s scar and around his liver – the area where his cancer is – because I won’t let it rob me of one part of him.
Rory and I got together when I was 36, but I’d never had an orgasm during sex before I met him. My ex-husband wasn’t bothered about pleasing me sexually, but Rory was the opposite.
I still remember being in bed with him, on our first date, and the orgasm building. It felt like on the TV show Naked Attraction when the screen goes up to reveal the contestants and you hear the music – Dah! Dah! Dah! I remember the physical sensation travelling up my legs from my toes. Even after 16 years together, I still find just looking at him intoxicating. It doesn’t matter that he has a scar, or that illness has changed his body. I know there will be a day when Rory won’t be able to have sex in the traditional sense, but I hope he might still want to be naked together, or let me stroke his skin.
The other day I was making up the spare room and Rory came in and flashed me, jokingly. It didn’t lead to anything. It was just an affirmation of the sexual sparkle between us.
I want that sensuality and humour to bleed into all the time we have left together, because it is pure joy. It lifts us out of the panic and terror.
When I picture the end of Rory’s life, I want the intensity of what we feel for each other now to still exist, right up until the last moment.
