amy and the beast

Amy wrote to appreciate something I had written and I replied. In her acknowledgement of  that, she mentioned  a test for  breast cancer,

which was confirmed as cancer in both breasts within 48 hours.  She wrote again – short, un selfpitying  emails, often referencing books of contemplation..  She wrote me a couple of lines in the morning and I wrote back.   Seems like little enough to do for someone facing the beast.

In the journey to her operation I learned a bit about her – one of several children, all adopted, a schizophrenic sister, a disapproving brother, a son she adored and he killed himself which is repudiation, rage and more questions asked than answered.

She had been a nurse, had retrained to become an academic, had a therapist, was an active communicating Baptist. She treasured her friends, was grateful for the kindness

of the medical personnel she had to deal with, took this class, walked when the weather permitted and went to that evening for breast cancer survivors.

Somewhere in there she saw by chance the grandsons her son’s partner has kept from her and she and the boys cleared the air.   There was no miracle reconciliation, just something painful eased.

I had to be honest with her early on, that the tone of some of the stuff she sent me was not for me. We worked round and through, so that she could be she and I, I and we could still brush against each other in a mixture of acknowledgement, reassurance and communication as animals do. 

And she came up against people unmanned by what she was facing, whether the cancer, or its form, or the operation – some of whom gave up and backed off, those who got stuck in a kind of mourning that was much more about them than her, and those who came through. 

She wrote some time later that she couldn’t depend on these people, she didn’t want to  – she was  enquiring for a convalescent bed.  The young woman who ran that part of the service had been a pupil, Amy had forgotten that, and she came for tea.  Wrote Amy “She told me what a tough time she had had recently, I responded, we wept and we had tea.  She will do everything she can for me.”  And I wrote  “Well done for facing the beast and tying a ribbon round its neck.”

She emailed after the operation, I was so touched.  And she has her bed allocated.  And I thought about the beast.

The thread of loneliness is what links a lot of my experiences with people, because I have long known loneliness in myself.  Just as I have long known that shyness won’t stop you functioning, even functioning well, it’s just always to be negotiated.   And the beast is not just the cancer, it’s about the fact that the people you’ve felt closest to can’t get past the convention of what they say, to reach out or in or past the monster, so that you know the washing will be done or the groceries dropped off, or that they are  outgunned by the enormity  but still care and if you would just give them a steer …  As a cruelly ill friend long ago remarked “I seem to spend a lot of time making other people feel better about my illness.”    The beast is the difference between the courage to try to communicate (and implicitly you may fail) and the inability to find that courage. 

I remember a Japanese film about a man with what he called The Crab, the beast of his cancer.  We all have beasts, the beast of perfection so that you don’t want the saucer with a chip or the friend with a gimp foot.  Yes, we could have a whole discussion about the nature of friendship –

but people have different beasts.      

What Amy couldn’t know is that I was feeling old and tired, scared of being boring and disappointed that several people I thought of relevant, didn’t find me so any more. I couldn’t fight Amy’s beast for her and she didn’t know about mine.   Looking at her beast let me go shopping for a ribbon for mine.