A New Year

The little gifts I brought back from America were a big hit. I kept the crying to a minimum even though I was thinking: After I’m gone, every time they smell that cookie dough car freshener they’ll think of me. Alex’s present to me was an iPad2. I never expected it. I couldn’t even speak. It made me sad that he felt it necessary to buy me such an expensive gift. I couldn’t help recognizing the compensation that was attached to it. But I threw that away. This was Christmas. It was supposed to be full of unexpected things. I was excited and looking forward to learning how to use it. My present to him was a coffee maker. I rejected the smaller machines and bought the two-cup espresso/cappuccino/latte maker with the steamed milk and boiling water attachments. I was overcompensating for his loss. He had tears in his eyes when he opened it. We threw our arms around each other and hugged. In that hug was every emotion. We were sad and happy, thankful and scared. We didn’t know how many more Christmas hugs were ahead of us, but for now this hug said it all.

      The following week involved doctor’s visits again but interwoven with the practicalities of my disease were the beautiful moments I got to spend with my family around the Christmas tree. I tried to spend New Year’s Eve in a light-hearted mood as well but found it difficult. Now that I had reached my goal of living through Christmas I was back in unknown territory. A brand new year stretched ahead of me like a blank canvass. I didn’t know how much of it I would get to fill before I died. I recorded the important dates in my new 2012 diary but as I wrote down each birthday and holiday I wondered if I would be turning these pages myself. I had to snap out of it. It wasn’t fair to ruin New Year’s so I suggested we play a few games of bingo. I asked the girls what their resolutions were. Abby said hers was to do well at school. I argued that resolutions were supposed to be something new, a change, like giving up smoking or swapping careers, not something you would normally do anyway. I don’t know why I felt the need to be confrontational. It upset Abby and it sabotaged the evening. At midnight we lit some fireworks. Alex had bought them for Guy Fawkes Day while I was in America and saved some for this night. We weren’t sure if it was strictly legal to set them off in January but I figured my “situation” warranted special dispensation. We blasted five or six rockets into the sky then we called out Happy New Year. But in spite of our good intentions, my ridiculous disagreement with Abby earlier meant it was all a little strained.  To break the tension I started a debate on whether we would pronounce 2012 as “two thousand and twelve” or “twenty twelve”. I liked twenty twelve. I hoped it would like me.

      At 2am I took a sleeping pill and made my own New Year’s resolution. I would make it through the year. I would sit around the Christmas tree again, and I would fire another rocket to welcome twenty-thirteen.

Not Going to Die Today

On another floor of Sky City, fathers and mothers abandoned their children and gambled that they could make Christmas better this year. Only they would make it worse. My daughters had never walked through the casino floor before, but now they were both over 21, they flashed their ID’s and we took a stroll. It was only 2pm but the lighting was barely adequate. The sounds of slot machines and the slap of cards on poker tables mixed with the flushing sound of tap beer made me uneasy. In the scope of existence who were the more pathetic specimens? The gamblers who spent their days in the dark hoping they would be lucky? Or the cancer victim watching them, who could walk away from these tables but whose bad luck was part of her every breath? In Aotea Square in central Auckland we listened to Charlotte’s choir sing. Watching their youthful energy and listening to their sweet voices reach the high notes on Silent Night, made me feel luckier in that moment than the gamblers. At least I was living now. In the dark world of the gamblers, I wondered if they could say the same.

      To keep the Christmas theme going we went to Smales Farm in Takapuna which used to always have a laser light show and Christmas light display. We expected a crowd and were surprised when there were no cars parked nearby. Then we discovered why. This year there were just a few half-lit trees. It was disappointing. A lot of the trees weren’t lit at all because their power boxes needed re-setting after a rain storm tripped them. Alex went around and opened the boxes and reset the lights so the whole place came to life. It was our own little Christmas miracle. I’m sure whoever got the electricity bill would have wanted us to enjoy the moment.

      Then we drove to Northcross church and got in the line to go through the outdoor display. It was so lovely and heartwarming with the big “Welcome to Bethlehem” sign at the entrance. We tuned our radio to the station they advertised and Christmas songs filled the car. As we drove in, we were greeted by two guys dressed up as a donkey and a shepherd herding a real sheep. All the “characters” in the “village”, an innkeeper, a blacksmith, a baker, pretended to sell us their goods and wished us a Merry Christmas. At the end of the drive-through there was the holy family in the manger. I’m not a religious person but the whole display inexplicably warmed me like never before. I waved to Joseph and Mary and yelled “Merry Christmas” out of the open car window. I was almost moved to tears.

      My emotions were like a bag of mixed nuts in the days before Christmas. It was my favourite holiday and I wanted so much to be cheerful. As it got closer and I hadn’t drawn my last breath, I tried to be optimistic. My family helped a lot with hugs and laughter. I took encouragement wherever I could grab it. At the local blood lab the technician gave me a huge lift. She saw my lab slip which requested a weekly blood test. I figured it was optimistic.

      “I’ll be seeing you every week then,” she said as she handed the slip back to me.

She was expecting to see me again! Not only that, she expected to see me for weeks to come. Rationally I knew she was only making bloodsucker to patient idle conversation. She wasn’t a doctor so she wasn’t qualified to know if she would be seeing me for weeks to come. But I shut that out of my head. She said she “would be seeing me every week” and it sounded sincere. I felt like giving her a hug.

      On Saturday December 24^th Alex and I planned the cooking regime for dinner. We always did our traditional hot turkey dinner on Christmas Eve. It worked for us for a few reasons. Christmas day in New Zealand could be really hot and for us it spoiled the enjoyment of over- indulging in a hot turkey meal. Also, we had no relatives in New Zealand so no stray aunties or homeless cousins would be showing up at our door. Generally our Christmas Eve was free for cooking. Third, it meant all the cooking and washing up was finished with, so Christmas day we were free to play with our new presents and eat yummy leftovers. By 3pm I could start smelling the turkey roasting. It was wonderful. It was more than wonderful. I thought I would be six-feet under by now. At the very least I thought I would be chained to a bedpan while being violently ill from the chemo drugs. Instead I was wrapping presents, having a Christmas Eve glass of wine and looking forward to a beautiful turkey dinner.

      Christmas Day I awoke with the smile of someone who has just remembered they won a million dollar lotto prize the night before. I was alive. I took a deep breath and then another one. I lay in bed a little longer. I was not going to die today. My family would not have to weep every Christmas from now on. In fact I was better than alive. I was full of turkey, my whole family was together and we were about to open presents.

Great Diversions

As with small children who misbehave, distraction was the key to managing my temperament. So a couple of days before Christmas I asked my daughters if they wanted to go shopping and get a coffee. With a big heart I told them I would treat them to an expensive Frappuccino at Starbucks. My large white chocolate icy drink had a mound of whipped cream on top and looked delicious. I decided to take the plastic top off the cup and delve into the high calorie cream first. The cup slipped out from under the lid and the whole thing tipped over. The grande frappuccino went sliding across our little cafeteria table like a mini-avalanche and dripped on to the tiled floor. My face flamed. As I was now attributing every physical fluff-up to my cancer, I cursed it for making me so clumsy. The girls bless them, jumped into action. Abby asked for another frappuccino (which they provided free of charge, thanks S-bucks) and Charlotte helped me clean up the sticky mess. But the best thing they did was laugh. They didn’t act embarrassed or horrified. Instead they thought their mother was hysterical. So I laughed too. They were angels. But, at a new table with my new frappuccino, I wondered what else I was in for. Was the clumsiness an indication of future cancer-induced pratfalls? A good friend’s husband died from cancer several years earlier. She told me she knew he was getting near the end when he couldn’t remember how to drive. Was knocking over the frappuccino the beginning of a bigger fall into an Alzheimer’s like state of oblivion?

      We got home about 5pm and Alex was already home. It was very early for him. I knew he was finding it hard to concentrate at work, poor thing. He was wrapping presents. I had a feeling he had over-spent on me to compensate for my appalling state of health. But I wasn’t going to complain. If it made him feel better to spoil me this Christmas, then that was fine. 

      Although my daughters and Christmas shopping were great diversions, I was on edge. Each day brought me closer to the end. It was like I could hear a clock ticking my life away. Two days before Christmas the phone rang and I jumped. Was it the hospital? Did they find something else? Should I answer it and really spoil Christmas? I took my chances. With trembling hands I picked up the phone and offered a weak “hello?” Whatever it was I would deal with it.

      It turned out to be Godfreys telling me the vacuum cleaner bags I had ordered were ready. My fear was beginning to rule my life.

      I received a letter from North Shore hospital telling me I had an MRI scheduled for December 29^th  which was in about a week’s time. I couldn’t help a bit of gallows humour:

      “I guess they think I’m going to live that long”.

      As the days passed I became consumed with my personal tragedy. My family had to endure every difficult moment. The stress had gathered and made tight knots between my neck and shoulders. Charlotte gave me a neck massage. Abby listened to my every rant. Alex kept my wine glass topped up.

      To continue distracting me from my illness, the girls suggested we go into Auckland to the department store Smith and Caugheys to see the Christmas window display. Little elves and fake snow surprisingly did help me to forget. We walked up the hill to Sky City by the Sky Tower. There was a huge Christmas tree in the foyer, decorated with ribbons and balls. We paused and I was lost in thought. I pictured the anticipation of girls and boys running from their bedrooms to their own Christmas trees to open presents. I remembered the looks on my own daughters’ faces when they discovered Santa had been. I remember Abby being so excited opening a present at age five, she actually screamed in a pitch that got dogs barking. When I asked her what was inside the wrapping, she said: “I don’t know!” It didn’t matter. It was Christmas and everything was magic.

Days Away From Christmas

No major public holiday is a good time to die. But Christmas had to be the worst time to kick the bucket.

      If I died over Christmas my family would be saddled with the memory every year. It would take away from their joy of opening presents and the gusto with which they normally attacked the turkey and cranberry sauce. Maybe I was overstating my worth, but I didn’t want to be a lingering nuisance. I wanted to die on a plain old nothing special day. I wanted my demise to fall on a rainy mid-winter Saturday when everybody was indoors with nothing to do. They would have played all their computer games and watched their favorite DVDs. They would have grown weary of Facebook and twitter. They would be just on the verge of complaining how utterly bored they were when a delicate and dignified groan from the back room would fill the air. Mom was conveniently dead and whoosh, there was something to do after all.

      My father died on July 4^th  2006 in the USA. I will always remember the day he died because it was Independence Day. If I had to die on a holiday it would be a more obscure one, maybe Labour Day. That way in years to come my family, while enjoying the day off from work, might bring up amusing anecdotes about me over a sausage sizzle.

      But these choices are seldom ours to make. I had received my awful diagnosis on December 16^th. Days away from Christmas I was worried that I would deteriorate quickly. I thought I might be horribly sick over the holiday and I was led to believe this Christmas might very well be my last. It was difficult to sing Christmas carols and enjoy a tender peck under the mistletoe when I was thinking this way.

      So what do you do when its Christmas and you have a couple of weeks to live? I wanted to get high. I hadn’t smoked pot in years. Hidden in our bedroom somewhere was a jar with a small bit of pot in it from a decade ago. It was concealed as soon as the children were old enough to understand what it was. I unscrewed the top from the mayonnaise jar and shook it. The crumpled brown clump shifted across the bottom of the glass. The drug was so old that adding a bit of orange peel or chunk of apple was not going to rehydrate it. I looked at it sadly. It represented my youth and my reckless fun side. I wanted to experience that again. In my last week of life I didn’t want to do anything really risky like bungy jumping or sky diving. It seemed stupidly ironic but I was scared of activities that might kill me. I just wanted to do something a little daring. Then my rational-self kicked in. Would smoking weed interfere with my medication? Would it cut short what little time I had left? Sadly I surmised that I would never smoke pot again. I put the jar back where I found it. Alex might need it one day.

Ignorance is Bliss

It seemed that none of my friends or acquaintances was suspicious that I was hiding the biggest secret of my life and I was glad of that. I felt that I had burdened enough people with the truth– my family overseas and my family in New Zealand, Alex’s co-workers and our friends the Smiths. One day Charlotte said:

      “I understand why you don’t want to tell anyone. Whenever I’m at the Smiths they want to know how you are. It’s all they talk about.”

         Although deception is a bumpy path it was the right one for me. I was not the type who required a support group to unload on, a website dedicated to my unfortunate circumstances or a cupcake with the letter “C” on it. I didn’t want to be the person everyone talked about. Instead I had my family if I wanted to talk about it and I had my friends to help me forget about it if only for an hour or two. It was a good combination.

      Ignorance is bliss and it was easy to fool everyone while I looked “normal”. Two weeks after my first high dose chemotherapy on May 7^th 2012, my head looked like a comical comb-over. Two weeks after the second high dose of chemotherapy in July, my head was a cue ball except for a couple of determined strands. I didn’t know how I was going to maintain any semblance of normality with no hair. So I retreated. My socialising went down to zero. I didn’t call anyone and I didn’t arrange anything. I never initiated contact. It didn’t bother me. I preferred not having any obligations or having to make any excuses. It was my disease, and it was enough of a weight around my neck without the added burden of how it affected others.

      There was another reason to lay low beside the fact that I looked the part of a dying woman. To be honest, when you think you are about to breathe your last, everyday conversation has limited interest. While I looked the part of a healthy woman I enjoyed taking part in chats about family, children, pets, jobs, even the weather. But when I looked in the mirror and saw this strange woman looking back at me, I walked through a door exiting my previous life. I no longer gave a shit about the weather, the latest iPhone or Angelina Jolie. Listening to complaints about unappreciative family members or difficult salespeople made me want to scream. It’s a cliché, but when you have your health you have everything, including the ability to listen to banal conversation. So it was better that I hid away. I had nothing good to say.