With words written on his hands as memory cues, Tragically Hip frontman Gord Downie admits that despite his fading memory, he feels fortunate in the midst of battling terminal brain cancer.

“I got lucky if it has to be terminal… It’s given me this long kind of way to do things I’ve always wanted to do,” he said in an exclusive interview with Peter Mansbridge on CBC’s The National, Thursday night. “It’s just the door where you can say, “Its cool man. You can go.”

In an interview with long pauses and few words, Downie says he is learning to deal with his illness, despite forgetting people’s names and lyrics that used to be his “forte.”

“I have ‘Peter’ written on my hand,” he told Mansbridge whom he’s known for 25 years. “And I say that just to be up front, because I might call you Doug… I can’t remember hardly anything.”

Although he kept a positive tone in the interview, Downie admitted that despite keeping busy with several projects, he’s scared to leave his family behind.

“I don’t want to die cause my youngest son is 10,” he said. “I want my kids to be good. I want them to be safe and have a great long life.”

Downie revealed his cancer earlier this year. Over the summer, he and the Hip put on a 15-show tour that ended with a live broadcast concert that drew millions of viewers.

On Tuesday, Downie is to release Secret Path, a new solo album with an accompanying graphic novel inspired by the tragedy of Canada’s residential school system.

The project, “helps my heart a little bit,” he said. “This is all I want to do. Nothing else matters to me.”

Downie is scheduled to perform at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa on Tuesday and Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto on Oct. 21.

Secret Path tells the story of a 12-year-old First Nations boy in Ontario named Chanie Wenjack, who died in 1966 after running away from the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School near Kenora, Ont.

An animated film on the story — accompanied by documentary footage of Downie tracing Chanie’s steps with the Wenjack family — will be broadcast on CBC on Oct. 23.

The interview marks the first time he’s discussed his condition publicly.

When Mansbridge asks him if he’s “resigned to the direction this is heading,” he says, “Yes, I am. I really am.”

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As the interview wrapped up, Downie shared a kiss on the lips with Mansbridge to say goodbye.

With files from The Canadian Press.