Originally written 2025-02-18, one year post-remission.
The part of Never Let Me Go that struck me the most was the characters’ fixation with the mundane details of daily life against the looming backdrop of their inevitable fates. The way Kath describes the atmosphere at Hailsham reminds me of the strange time I was admitted to the hospital awaiting my biopsy results.
The students at Hailsham are not totally oblivious. Miss Lucy tells them explicitly, on the pavilion one summer afternoon, the tragic details of their purpose and their eventual future. The students seem to not yet comprehend the gravity of it, however, and they neatly file away the daunting reality of their situation somewhere deep in the back of their minds, and they keep on playing soccer and making art.
When I was hospitalized, I knew cognitively that all of this important life-altering business was going on. I was an inpatient in the cardiac unit under constant monitoring because fluid was rapidly building up around my heart, and - oh, right - I had just discovered this massive 7-inch tumor nestled snugly in my chest cavity, but the incessant beeping of the heart monitor and the constant flurry of doctors and nurses and miscellaneous hospital staff filing in and out of my room felt almost like background noise. Like a TV show left idly on while I was playing Hades, drawing pictures, and perusing the surprisingly decent hospital lunch menu.
And in Kath’s situation, or my situation, what can you realistically do? You can’t fight it. You can’t change it. The only thing you can reasonably do when facing something you are completely powerless to change is accept it. The difference is that I lived (without using organs harvested from clones, I might add).
They all die in the end, so Never Let Me Go may not be the best recommendation for someone who has been recently diagnosed, but the book gives a powerful message about coming to terms with an unfair fate. I’m happy that I got a deferral this time, but a deferral is only a delay of the inevitable. Someday, somewhere, I will be right back in Kath and Ruth and Tommy’s shoes needing to confront my own mortality, and I only hope I will be able to face it with the same quiet acceptance.