about saying goodbye to Simon Gray

I'm in a rising panic. I've reached the last book of the Smoking Diaries, number 4, called, appropriately, Coda and I can see that the last page is coming up and I don't want to get there. So today, in the expectation of finishing Coda (and what after all can come after a Coda?) I went to the library and got out about 7 plays and two more memoirs by Simon. This last book has been a painful read. Deliberately avoiding listening to a prognosis, Simon and Victoria are plodding along with his cancer until some silly doctor blurts out that he has a year max. The book takes a funny turn after that - this is why I am finding it so fascinating - one can read as if in real time Simon's shock and inability to focus on his writing. Nothing means anything. How could it with his death sentence staring at him. In the end, it wasn't the cancer that killed him, despite the awful treatment (why do people persist in having it?). He died of an aneuryism. Coda becomes almost unbearably poignant with this knowledge. At each stage, there is some wishful projection into an imagined future - will I make my next birthday, is this my last swim in Greece? Oh dear. I am writing this to stave off reading the last few pages.