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,
This last week my car has been my nemesis. Not only is it starting to imitate Triggers broom with changes to gaskets, tyres, brakes and gears, externally appearing the same, but internally requiring complete new works, it has also gone from being my place of solace to a cave of grief. Gingerly I have stepped into the car, taken a breath, almost a glance of hope or desperation in the rear view mirror that today will not be the day, before collapsing in sobs that close my throat and rock my body. In these moments I feel as if every cell in my body is screaming. Sometimes I go into complete denial. You look so well sometimes, that I tell myself you’re the miracle. You’re the 1% that will be cured. You have, after all, always been lucky. However, these last two weeks we have been living by numbers. Numbers that on the outside do not look good but we are being told could have a thousand meanings.
72 red blood cells, 20 platelets, varying neutrophils and some progenitor something or other appearing for the first time on the bingo card threatening to change our winning streak. This drug extends peoples life by 2 years, if you did the stem cell you’d be in the hospital for at least 3 months, 1 year on immunosuppressant drugs if it worked. No life you say. On and on the numbers go, until all our heads spin and we are paralysed in speech. The numbers mean that we are endlessly buried in a mathematics we don’t quite understand, and all the while the sand slips through our fingers. I am sick of it. And as we visited Nan’s memorial for Mother’s Day you lay a hand on your own fathers plaque filled with the love from a kiss. My sunglasses keep the sadness from spilling out in front of you. We ran our hands over our ancestors names as you call out the ages they died; 63, 63, 62, 65. All men. All so young.
Numbers are ruling our lives, and I long to escape it. So I have dived head first into the lottery, spending almost £50 in one week, gambling not by vegas standards, but enough for me to be dreaming of a better life, where a new home, and a garden full of herbs will help alchemise a cure for you. The irony really, as I find myself staring at the 6 balls and its bonus, calculating how many people have won, and how close I’ve been, before doing it all over again. More numbers. I understand more now how others may get addicted to such things, alcohol, lovers, chasing the races. I am burying my head, only to be facing the exact same emotion I am running away from, but packaged in a different way.
You said to me at the weekend, do you know how often you speak about money? For someone so spiritual, it’s really got you by the scruff of the neck. My spiritual self needed a shower, how could this be, that I have become so wrapped up in something I know deep down I do not care about? I am attempting to escape the inevitable. That I will lose my dad and eventually both my parents. Whether we have 6 months, 2 years or another 10 as we hear in those magical anecdotal stories from others, the time will come. And every moment my body steps into this realisation it is as if I’m staring down a long dark tunnel. I feel fear for you, devastation for me, and know that in some way I will die too.
Yesterday, we found out one of your chemo buddies had passed. And as we sat in the garden for the first time this year, the sun warming our faces, the spring birds singing their joyful tunes of love, life seemed sharper. Once she relapsed she had passed quickly. She had told her son and daughter that it felt like she was going on a very exclusive all inclusive and she wasn’t scared. It seems to have helped them. She was such a wonderful and courageous woman. And as your WhatsApp group filled with stories of love and grief, the other invincibles, as you all call yourselves, all fell into your own tunnel.
I read an article recently about dying from a medical professional who had worked for many years in a hospice. She wrote that in the moment when someone dies they will not know, it as if they fall into a dreamless sleep. I wonder if this really is true, but the idea of an all inclusive holiday and an unknown passing bring me a small amount of comfort in these times. You seem to be relatively calm these days, death doesn’t scare me you say. I just worry about leaving mum.
Sitting quietly every day this week, praying in my own way, has led me to one conclusion. If I must know number, let it be happy ones. Often I’ll talk to others about how we can change our energy (something that many, even you, used to laugh at). We all know those people that if we enter a room with them our sadness plummets, they make us see the world has shades of grey, as if we are Dorothy in the old wooden house before the tornado comes. Last night we watched Bob Mortimer as he talked about his friends Pork Chop Larry and Gary Cheeseman and we laughed our heads off. This is how it needs to be. If I am to be ruled by numbers let them be happy ones.
12 is the number of times you have taken me out on my bike on a busy road as a child. No helmet, cycling for miles as if reliving your childhood when streets were quiet, passing the fields, and heading for the village. 5 is the number of times I have seen you cry with joy at seeing me return from a far off place. 1924 sunday roasts, 6 cats, 18 bass, 1 tooth lost. These numbers have been acting as a life line to me. Not only gripping onto them tightly in an attempt to tell myself I have you for a bit longer, but also as a way to remember. Even the happy numbers cannot contain the panic that moves in from all sides. This grief rips through my brain. The dense fog, like an oncoming avalanche, making its way to every crook and crevice, removing all memories of you, your laugh, our jokes, Saturdays together as a child; all are wiped in one fail sweep, and I grasp and I cling. My face screws up with the effort of remembering, and all I can find is number. A wonderful spiritual teacher of mine has been asking me repeatedly what am I clinging onto with a claw like grip, that I refuse to let go of. As I cling, she says, it gives no room for a change of energy, for happiness or joy to seep in amongst the sadness, for grief or possibility to grow. I know she is right.
Escaping the numbers, taking the moments, we wake up and we thank God we have another day together. We live moment to moment, not number to number. Those moments we have sat on our favourite bench by the sea, it is almost as if someone has taken a broom, and swept all the dust and dirt out of our heads. Nothing matters but the sounds of the kittiwakes returning for their summer of nesting, the roll and crash of the waves as the winds whip around us, our coats pulled in tighter, the taste of the coffee, with its milky sweetness. This is our moment of stillness.
One of the invincibles, has stopped having bone marrow tests, “I don’t need a bone marrow test to tell me I have fucking cancer”. We all laugh, yet still we await your bone marrow test results on Monday. I flip between hope, and a spiritual knowing to pure fear as I start to count the numbers again. I will still pray to every God that will hear me. Today, it’s just us three, and even in the rain we’ll take our walk down to the sea and drink our coffees. You’ll make the Mother’s Day meal, with all the versions of potato and roasted veg you can fit in the oven. We will laugh and cry, and tell one another we love each other as we wait for our next life line that will give us more days together.
I love you so much Dad. Let’s have a beautiful day. No numbers. Just us.
Love always.
Anna xxx
Those numbers can be strangely comforting or entirely otherwise, but I hope the 6 days since you wrote this have been good ones. Thank you for sharing and so beautifully
Sending you love! Saved it for my community piece on love grief and loss that I’m compiling currently to be posted in a few weeks. X