"I'll Journey Back" by Johanna Jaffa Snellman

It’s very grey outside today – again. The sun has barely been out since July, and isn’t supposed to come out until the weekend again. It’s been miserable, but it got me thinking.

Usually, when the weather is gloomy, like today, I feel quite defeated, and the best I can do is to brew myself a strong cup of tea. It becomes the very center of my universe, especially when the outside presents nothing but a dismal void.

One day in January a few years ago most likely began with that same familiar microcosm in a cup: a PG tip and a splash of milk. It’d been snowing all night and my husband and I decided to hit the slopes, hoping for some powder. Upon arrival, we were greeted by a foot of fresh, ungroomed pow. However, it wasn’t long before the snowing turned to sleeting, and then to raining. The snow became compacted, saturated, and weighed down with water. Our goggles quickly frosted over, rendering them useless. Everything was drenched and bitterly cold.

Any other day we would have admitted defeat and headed home, but this day we didn’t. We embraced the cold, the wet, and to be frank, the rather miserable weather; we chose to ski on. We battled the heavy snow, played around, and genuinely enjoyed ourselves! Lost in the experience we forgot about the wet conditions, completely engulfed in the experience, having the slopes to ourselves. Not really giving a damn about the circumstances (although, my husband might beg to differ).

The sunlight never truly made its way through the clouds that day, it seemed to transition straight from dawn to dusk. After completing 13 runs (I know this as I keep a skiing journal), with hunger gnawing at us from having skipped lunch, we decided it was time to head home. As we sat in the car, carefully peeling the wet layers of clothes off, all the windows fogged up.

My hands felt like blocks of ice despite wearing my warmest mittens. I took a moment to looked at them. My hands have always captivated my attention, and it’s not as whimsical as one might think. As a little girl, it wasn’t about comparing them to others but observing their evolution. Witnessing their transformation – from their small, dainty nature to being more elongated and refined – was like watching a personal timeline of growth. Somehow, deep down, they became my silent markers, mapping out where I was in the continuum of life. That intuitive way of gauging life through my hands hasn’t waned. Today, they show more signs of life’s wear and tear, be it from nicks and cuts, the drying impact of daily tasks, the cold, or the chalk. Their brittle nails tell tales too. Yet, they’re far from ancient. Instead, they offer a snapshot, a momentary notation on the timeline of my existence.

At the age of ten, there’s a 1 in 10,000 risk of not reaching your 11th birthday. Statistically speaking, this makes it the safest age in the Western world. However, from there, the odds start to shift. By one’s mid-30s, the risk of not getting to celebrate the next birthday escalates to 1 in 1,000. And by 90, 1 in 6. That’s life and death at the roll of a dice.

For those of us with cystic fibrosis, the statistics shift, hinting at a significantly shortened lifespan. Yet, regardless of these odds, the cells within us are still subject to the eight-year doubling time of our mortality rate. We continue to accumulate senescent cells; we still face the inevitability of ageing. Nonetheless, as long as my body allows, I’ll embrace the gusty, snow-filled darkness and ski. And when the day comes that I can no longer ski, I’ll journey back through my memories, revisiting all my best runs in my mind.

Sidenote: Word has it that clinical trials are on the horizon, aiming to introduce drugs that might purge senescent cells and potentially counteract ageing. But who knows where I read or heard about it so take it with a grain of salt. It’s an interesting idea to entertain though.