It’s a strange privilege to interview people when they know they are dying. The former England football manager Sven-Göran Eriksson announced in January that he had pancreatic cancer and had “at best case” a year to live. A couple of weeks ago I spoke to him, and the interview is in this weekend’s Saturday magazine.
People with terminal illnesses often seem to see the world differently from the rest of us. Perspectives and priorities change. Paradoxically, they appear to have more time for the small things in life. Take Sven. He’s still football crazy (he watched five matches the day before we chatted), but now he’s so much more conscious of everything he’d taken for granted: nature, family, simply being alive. “You appreciate everything,” he told me. “Things like friends saying in passing, ‘Are you free for a cup of coffee?’ ‘Yes, of course, come in.’ And we sit talking about old memories on the football pitch.” Somehow life’s too short to value the essential things when we don’t face an imminent threat. Just waking up every day, he said, makes him feel great. And now he’s hoping to defy his doctors’ predictions, and keep on waking up for as long as possible.
