Simon Boas, development worker: I am happier than ever in my life

In September 2023, Simon Boas was diagnosed with throat cancer. At just 46 years old, he was told that the disease was fatal and that it would ultimately take his life.

Over the next year, he compiled his thoughts on life into a book: A Beginner’s Guide to Dying. The book is due to hit the shelves in October. It will be published posthumously.

I have my pain under control and I’m incredibly happy. It sounds strange, but I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my life.

I used to think I would rather get hit by the proverbial bus, but for the past few months I’ve known that this is coming. This has really helped me to both get through the boring minute of death, and to organize my thoughts and prepare myself and develop such a great acceptance of what is to come.

It was actually a great bonus.

The title of the book is “A Beginner’s Guide to Dying,” but what I’m really trying to convey is that living life to the fullest is preparing you for it.

In a way, I’ve been lucky that my life and career have taken me to many places where death is a more integral part of life than it is here in the West.

I have worked as an aid worker all my life – much of it for the UN – and I have lived in places where death is not just lurking in the background, but is an immediate possibility.

I headed a UN office in Gaza for three years. I spent a lot of time in Rwanda and Sierra Leone and worked in Ukraine. It helped me a lot to see people there for whom death is a part of life – they lose children and don’t know where their next meal is coming from.

I have also been a Samaritan for four years. Sometimes you are on the line while people end their lives, so I think death has played a bigger role in my life than many other people.

It is good for all of us to think about this.

And not in a gloomy way. By realizing that it is inevitable and part of life, you put life into perspective and can enjoy it more and give priority to the important things.

My family is facing the most difficult time of their lives. My dear wife Aurelie and my parents … are in good hands and I hope that my cheerfulness as I say goodbye will perhaps help them in the years to come …

Each of our lives is a small book – but it is not someone else’s complete book. You are a chapter or a page or a footnote in someone else’s life, and that person will continue to write beautiful chapters even after you are gone.

And those green shoots can grow around the grief and put it in perspective. I hope people will think, “I’m glad I read that – Simon’s story.” And just because it’s over doesn’t mean it’s over.

You don’t have to have been a politician, a doer, a development worker or anything else. Each of us makes a big difference.

I love this quote from George Eliot’s Middlemarch:

“The effect of their existence on those around them was immeasurably far-reaching: for the increasing prosperity of the world depends in part on unhistorical deeds; and that you and I are not so poorly off as we might have been, is half due to the number of those who faithfully led a hidden life, and rest in unvisited graves.”

Each of us makes a huge difference in life. I love the idea that most movies about time travel revolve around changing one tiny thing in the past and then of course coming back to the present and everything is different.

If you plan ahead, you can change a lot of things in the future.

In a few years, all our graves will be unvisited – all our deeds will be largely forgotten – but the smile you gave the lady at the checkout or the kind words you said to a stranger on the street may still resonate.

We all have that opportunity and that is an enormous power. And I want everyone to realize how special and valuable they are.

I love melted cheese. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to eat anything since Christmas. Chemotherapy has destroyed my taste buds and radiotherapy has destroyed my salivary glands.

So melted cheese and all the things I loved are unfortunately not on the menu.

However, I have been given full permission by my oncologist and hospice team to enjoy as much Muscadet and as many Cheeky Rollups as I want – and I will certainly indulge in them and spend time with my family.

I’m not really looking forward to my last day – that’s obviously the wrong way to look at it. But I’m curious about it, and I’m happy and ready.

As Julian of Norwich said, “All will be well, and all things will be well, and all things will be well.”

Simon Boas comes from Jersey in the Channel Islands and is expected to move to a hospice on Thursday, where he will spend his final days surrounded by his family.

When the Today programme contacted him this morning, he was – unsurprisingly – in good spirits.