When I was five, my paternal grandfather was diagnosed with prostate cancer and was given two years to live.
I was a kid who didn't really understand, but I remember the quiet conversations between my parents late at night, the fact mum would sit me down on the bed and explain that Pa was sick, the way that trips to Adelaide suddenly got a lot more frequent because we were on borrowed time. I remember Pa going in for radiotherapy which was a new treatment and had better outcomes in many ways to traditional operations. I remember that the doctor doing the procedure was young and inexperienced and, ultimately, wrong about the radiotherapy working.
I remember Pa being diagnosed with aggressive cancer, that the treatment hadn't worked, and that he had two years to live.
I also remember (because cancer research took off in a lot of ways in the nineties) that there was a new treatment they were trialling and Pa was eligible for it because he was terminal. And how the two years stretched into four.
I remember the news when that treatment stopped being viable, but how there was another new treatment that Pa could do, and that stretched his four years to ten.
(I remember how he hurt his back at the farm, and how Grandma had to have operations on her feet, and how they had to sell and move to the suburbs because they could no longer keep up with the property. I remember a new house that was different and closed in with people. I remember their dog, who was 17, dying. And the new dog (who was an asshole) going from puppy, to adult, to menace.)
When the treatment stopped working I remember chemo being an option, but there was also another new treatment for trial. Pa didn't want chemo, so he signed up for the new treatment. I remember the 10 stretching out into 11, and dancing at my cousin's wedding with my dad wearing her veil on one side and Pa with orchids in his (still full head of) hair on the other, then 13, and I was suddenly eighteen and an adult and he was there calling me "Gull" at my birthday. (I was always "Gull", short for seagull, because as a child I'd always beg for other people's chips. My cousin was "Mite" much the same way, except hers was "Termite" because she always got into stuff. I'm never sure which of us got the better bargain.)
Then 14, when his first great grandchild was born, the cheeky minx, who had his smile and his nose for trouble.
(I remember the new dog being put down because he got diabetes and his kidneys failed. I remember Pa getting Grandma another dog for Christmas, a dog that became his, the way that all dogs became his. Bobby would go on to outlive them both. He retired at fifteen, silly old thing, but Pa saw his first few trips around the sun.)
Eventually, as they all did, that treatment stopped working as well, the year Pa's second great-grandchild was born, how it was almost a tragedy, the cord wrapped three times around his neck, how Pa was my cousin's rock as test after test was done to make sure the baby was okay. I remember Pa going for chemo and being tired and ill. I remember him being in pain. I remember him walking up and down the hallway in the middle of the night, quietly swearing as he used the bathroom again. I remember when the chemo became too much and he gave it up because if he was only going to have a few more months, he was going to go out with dignity and not spending half of them with his head over a toilet bowl (his words).
I remember a funeral where half the town showed up to say goodbye.
(I remember his three year old great-granddaughter, the oldest of her generation, being terrified of ambulances for a long while after because she was old enough to remember him being taken away. Her mother was ten when my grandfather was diagnosed.)
I remember, as a child, I was half-convinced Pa would live forever, because they told him two years and he stretched that out to eighteen.
He never went into remission. His cancer was always classified as aggressive. Science gave him the chance to watch his grandchildren grow, to meet two of his great grandchildren, to see one of his granddaughters get married.
He couldn't be saved, he died eventually, but we all do.
Science and medicine didn't give us a miracle but they gave us time.