Sunday 17th March, 4am
The 4am ghasts. Here's a moment that makes sleep ever more elusive:
I read a “cancer diary” yesterday. Deathtounclejoey.com. Rhianna pulls no punches, so I guess she's a girl after my own heart. But it means the blows hurt. Shall I write one here?
“30% of early stage breast cancer survivors will have a relapse....the average survival at that point is less than 3 years”
Since J died, there has been a spoken and unspoken deal between me and the kids. I'm the survivor. I'm their rock. I'm not allowed to get ill. I've been asked to promise. Fudged that one, but was confident enough to be confident. Of course I was: what are the fucking odds that both fit, strong parents will have cancer at relatively young ages?
This is going to crack their worlds. My 18 year old daughter Y had a nervous breakdown that started a year after J's death. She's only just recovering; doing so, SO well. Her OCD demon (we called him Kristos) still lingers, mewling a little like the vanquished Voldemort on a white Kings Cross station floor. This news will give Kristos massive fuel, just as she is starting to beat her wings.
My (just) 15-year old son M is blossoming, doing well at school, a great bunch of mates, some messy teenage parties just starting (give me strength, there are 10 mates staying over at ours as I write, in various stages of fug around the house), sport, boxing and gym. Where will his unformed brain take him with this news?
We will find out later. Whether we want to or not, because of the cancelled wedding date, we have to let our world know this news. I mean, I'm still willing to try the phrase “cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances” but 250 people who we are either related to or are close friends are going to demand a little more detail than that.
And that means I need to start with the kids and my parents. Oh god oh god oh god.
Y is currently travelling, having fun and freedom on her year off. She organised her trip herself, a best friend from home has just flown out to join her, and it makes me feel sick to my core to spoil it. Can I give her another three weeks without this knowledge? She'll be angry with me, but can't I just let her exist in that relatively secure world for a little longer?
But then I'm telling M today. We have a ski trip in a couple of weeks, I didn't go on the last one (S took M and his own daughter T with him for half term. Lovely, beautiful man), and the one last year I was ill for the whole week (covid). So M's been challenging me to tell him quite how much I'm looking forward to finally going skiing with him. We thought of telling him that I've had a work thing come in which is so important that I can't come on the trip....but I don't want him living with that as my priority as a mother, even for a few weeks. It doesn't sit right. But he will have to not tell his sister. I just don't know if this will work.
And finally, I'm telling my parents later today. Oh god oh god oh god. My father is an oncological anaesthetist who ran the intensive care of two of the major cancer hospitals in the world for thirty odd years before he retired. He knows the score. It may kill him.
I'm anticipating both my parents deciding to jump immediately on a plane. They live as far away as it is possible to live. I don't take it personally (but to be clear, they left me!). But of course they have lives that can't be shut down in an instant. I have to persuade them that I am well looked after here (I am), and that at least one of them must travel to meet Y at the end of her trip with her home friend, and be there for when I tell her. That buys me a few weeks.
Oh, and S hired us a photographer, arriving at 12. To take photos of us together now, before treatment starts. Poor photographer man, his job will be to find and capture the last remnants of our lightness, our intense joy in each other that isn't stained with our new knowledge. It's still there, but the stain is spreading fast through everything. I'd better wash my hair.
Enough for one day? And it hasn't even begun. Hence no sleep...