This is a letter to my father who has terminal leukaemia. I use this space to tend to my grief and to immortalise who he is. By writing this I recognise that we will never be able to say everything we wish to say. Death just doesn’t work like that. I hope it brings all those in grief comfort. We are never in this alone.
Dear Dad,
Writing seems harder now. When there is less hope, every word feels as if it is being pulled screaming from my heart, painfully etched into my skin to last forever. Tattooed in this grief. I shall never be the same.
The world is waking, I listen to the calls as they rise and fall. The seagulls drowning out the garden birds with their tempestuous shouts. The blackbird still sings, the wren hops between the bush and the trees. Although sleep evades me now, I feel I tap into a source of magic. I feel the depths of darkness and hear the shaking of fences as the cats take their night-time adventures. I can sense the point of transition as the first robin sings. A corner of the sky becomes lighter. I become attuned to those moments between sleep and waking, night and day. A liminal space I exist in, where there can be no rebuttal of spirit. There can be no fear now. Of life or death. In a way they have both lost meaning. When death comes for me you’ll be waiting for me so I cannot hold a cent of dread. It will not be possible.
My knees still feel sore. I was surprised to see how much they were bruised. After the call I had no control of my body. Falling to the floor in pray, begging for a different outcome, uttering words of desperation I could not even control. The leukaemia is back. 60% leukemic cells they said. And in that moment there were no options. As I scrambled off the floor in the seconds of peace that arrived, I found myself collapsed on the floor again. Praying. How is it that such an emotion causes us to speak to God even if we have flatly refused such a deity previously? No wonder my knees are bruised.
When you told the doctor of your intention not to have anymore chemotherapy, he wept. A man who sees this everyday. Hardened to the choices made by others, yet you still brought him to tears. The nurses and the support workers, the catering staff, the Invincibles. They all sobbed. You have no idea how much you are loved. Even those who have known you for less than a year realise they have met someone exceptional. The girls used to laugh at your insistence at helping rid the ward of spiders, making your buckets of tea in the staff room and sharing jokes with them at lunch. A few weeks they said, possibly months. A lack of acceptance of this timeline drove me to call the medical team. This could not be it. Through the sobs I was able to ask the questions I needed the answers to. In your devastation, you had not heard the possibilities. We do have options. Yes we are between a rock and a hard place, there is not a cure but we could try for more time. There are risks. It’s more toxic. You may get weaker. But the hope built slowly like a marble in my pocket. I gathered all the information crumb by crumb.
You originally said you were at peace with death but the day I arrived I could see you had aged so much in the 24 hours since I had left you. Resigned. You were frightened, you didn’t want to die. As I offered up the options, the possibilities for extension I could see the light return to your eyes, the colour to your cheeks. You listened, we did the crossword, we sipped some tea. Eventually, as you gazed out the window you smiled where there is life there is hope. So here we are, ready to start a new round of treatment, more aggressive than before. The house seems more silent now. When your chemo ended, we entered a bubble where we believed the cancer had gone. That life was back to normal. In the last 6 months the house has been full of jokes and laughter. Sad days too but days filled with a hope of more time. The silence we have now is one of anticipation. You are in hospital for the next month as this particular toxin takes hold. The silence is heavy. It is as if we are acutely aware that our time is finite. Every hair on our body, every cell is stood to attention, listening. Ready.
That evening as I cooked your dinner, a lamb and mint suet pudding from the local butchers, you collected my washing from the line. Anna, Anna, come quick. I ran barefoot into the garden, across the damp grass, the mud leaving imprints on my soles. There she is. A huge queen bee sat on my pyjamas. The palm of a hand would have only just encased her. Her sting almost half the length of her body. A beauty. I almost put my hand right round her you say. What a disaster that would have been, considering both of us are allergic to bee stings. As we tried to shake her off, she refused to let go of the green cotton to which she clung. Exhausted. She could not move. I had seen a few bees like this before, the effort of crawling out of hibernation in search of food, a colony and a place to set up shop sapping all available energy. The fight of winter gone. The light of spring flickering at the corners of time. Despite being terrified of her capacity to render me literally speechless, I was determined to save her. What is it with this family and bloody bees you exclaim. There’s almost excitement in your tone, not a trace of annoyance. Your eyes glitter as we dance around on the grass, hopping up and down not sure of what to do. We cannot get too close, but without us touching her she will not move.
Both of us have almost been sent through the veil by a bee. When I was no more than 10 years old, I woke up in the middle of the night with no spaces in between my fingers. Swollen from the ankles up, caused by a trapped bee in the sheets. For you, your luck was even worse, being stung on the tongue a few years previous by a roaming bee near a bush, who flew in as you chewed the cud with mum. That one really wanted to ensure it did the job right. Although these two incidences might seem like a coincidence, it seems as if bees have always followed our family around. We have had a great grandmother die from eating a jam sandwich harbouring a bee, stinging her directly in the throat, and the time in Peru, in the midst of the jungle, when I was stung by an Amazonian cousin of our British bees. I don’t think I ever told you my colleague told me to just watch the water, as it cascaded down mountains nearby. I am sure he was convinced that this was curtains for me. And finally, the time I returned to my flat, on a spring day in April to find a few bees buzzing to get out the window. Confused as to how they entered the flat, I took a wander, and as I opened the bathroom door, was aghast to find my white tiled floor no longer visible but covered in a swarm of honey bees. I later found out that they had charged down the chimney in search of a suitable haven to nest but found nothing but cobwebs and spiders, driving them to the nearest pool of light which happened to be my bathroom. Leaving the flat with just the clothes on my back I had to call the ‘bee man’ to return them all to safety. It has been a long standing joke that bees follow us everywhere. Mum would buy bee bed covers, hanging pictures, and bee themed mugs and saucers. Keep your enemies close was the implication as we believed them to be our nemesis.
But as we stood in the garden, in the fading light of a March day, this bee seemed like a sign from the Gods. A reminder of how close we are every day to life and death, and how narrow that tight rope is that we have to walk. We gathered her into a glass and placed her lightly down into the undergrowth. I ran to the kitchen to grab a saucer, squeezing out a tablespoon of honey, praying she would pick up the scent as we softly laid it out nearby. As we watched her hobble across the vines, making her way through the overgrown grass, we held our breath. She toppled onto the saucer, pausing for a moment, taking in the liquid gold before her, before hungrily devouring what she could. We left her to enjoy her meal and to finish cooking ours, excitedly chattering about bee hibernation, bee colonies, and the life she may build. She’s lifted my spirits. A rescue mission is just what I needed. Your eyes roll less these days, when I tell you it is a sign of our ancestors, I witter on, some say that a bee totem animal is here to remind us of determination, persistence and resilience, that all we need to do is get our heads down and face this new storm head on. You smile, shuffling out into the garden to check she is now on her way and clear away the remnants of our encounter. The next day, we tell the story of the bee to all the nurses, to relatives that call. Buoyed by a sign that somehow all this has meaning and maybe, just maybe, the universe is here to help.
So perhaps the bee is no longer our nemesis, and in fact never has been. And as we brought life to her she will bring life to us.
Here are to more bee sightings Dad. But let’s stay away from those jam sandwiches just in case.
Lots of love Dad. Always.
Anna xx
Such brilliant, vivid, generous words as ever, thank you
I very vividly remember my dad being given this diagnosis. He didn’t tell me for a few weeks because I had exams and my parents didn’t want me to have to resit. So they just kept quiet for weeks, to help me. There aren’t any words really. The grief became incredibly heavy, actually physically heavy. I’m just sending you a big hug and I’m sure, I know, that the depth of love you have between you will bring him so much comfort.x