I remember Dennis Potter, also diagnosed with a terminal illness, saying in his last television interview (at around the 5:16 mark in the video below) how he delighted in the vivid “nowness” of the blossoms in the plum tree outside his window:

“It is the whitest, frothiest, blossomest blossom that there ever could be,” he said. “Things are both more trivial than they ever were and more important than they ever were.”

youtu.be/XpnyPl8-ZcQ?t=…