...and what a week of moments they were.... There are times in life when you find yourself in the middle of a moment, and you knowingly acknowledge that you'll remember it for the rest of your life. Last week was...well...a week full of them. I'm not even sure where to begin, there were so many magical moments, in the school, at the gigs, watching 3 musicians attempting to practise hurling with malteasers as a sliotar-hell, even in the car en route from one place to another there were some magical moments! Where to start with the music...? It's probably best described with the little adage - music is the language we use when words don't work. There were so many breathtaking moments, so many funny moments, so many lovely moments, that it's hard to isolate just one.... Liane's version of God Bless The Child, The Impossible Gents tribute to JT, the kids jamming away throughout the week, and those lovely little moments of wandering into a class to find a beautiful jam or chord progression happening....just...bliss. I think it's pretty fair to say that music is one of the most important things in my life-when I was a kid, before I got guitar lessons, I would pick up my brother's guitar and try and write songs. (ok, they were usually crap and all played on one or two strings, but I enjoyed them!) As a teenager, it's fairly safe to say that music kept me going when I felt everything else was failing around me. In my 20s & 30s, there has been very little that has bet the buzz of live music, of witnessing a moment of magic between musicians and the crowd, when the right notes hit the heart at the right time and between the crowd, the stage, the gig, it somehow feels like the universe has created a moment of unity between all that can never be repeated....and yet it feels all the sweeter for that! Between everything recently, life's been pretty annoying. More surgery on the knee, more stomach problems, generally, a lot more pain. But I've to try and stay off the painkillers, as they exacerbate the stomach issues. Which isn't so fun. Last week was agony a lot of the time. And yet, sometimes, a series of notes, a voice, a face, a thoughtful lunch, would just lift my soul enough to get through to the next period of pain free time. The company was also rather brilliant, between the lovely Lieve, my co-conspirator in many a shooting scenario, and the talented Kris & Dominika, I was able to actually chill out and enjoy a lot of the music as it happened; unlike previous years. For those of you who have no idea of what I'm on about, it was the Sligo Jazz Project. While it is all about jazz in one respect, it's all about life in another. There's a love, a philosophy, a feeling from the week that I've not quite found elsewhere in life. Quote of the week from our guest of honour Chuck Rainey "it is, what it is...." ; something which I think many of us have stolen as a life adage. Everything was what it was-the non-stop musical madness, the fleeting moments of closeness and peace and quiet. The faculty, the returning students, the new students, all combined to leave a feeling of pure love-love of music, love of people, love of life.....just....love. Between watching the progress of the returning students, being majorly impressed by the new students and the fun with the faculty, (I know I've mentioned it before, but you've not seen fellas playing hurling until you've seen it being played with malteasers- a memory that will always make me smile when I'm over that side of town!) Despite the week finishing majorly sleep-deprived, with a dead laptop, banjaxed memory card, microphones & all round sheer exhaustion, it was still something rather wonderful and special....roll on next year!
Here is a tune for a Thursday And here are some words I've written because I needed to get them out of me.
Because it never really leaves your
mind. It's never really gone. Every time you see the word cancer, you
remember. You remember the sick to your gut feeling. You remember
staring at the boiling pasta in the water and calmly and surreally
taking it off the hob as your Mum tried to break news gently. You
remember pacing in the garden on a June evening as dusk falls with a
drizzle, the uncut grass soaking through your converse as your Mum keeps
talking without having the words to explain the unknown. You can't
accept that your biggest brother, the vegan, the clean-living,
never-smoking, country-living tee-totaller, probably has cancer.
You
remember the fucked biopsies, the talk of potential treatments and the
unknowns, the fact that it's cancer but one that's unknown to those
attempting to treat it. Without knowing it's identity, they can't fight
it. Echoes of a guerrilla war-how can you fight the enemy when you don't
know him from a friend?
You
remember him having to go through more surgery because of "human
error"; a biopsy taken from the wrong spot. He seems to get weaker every
day. You listen over the phone as another big brother's love radiates
through his swearing, his shouting, his sheer vehement rage at the
incompetency and the cancer, this all echoes down the phone as you sit
in your office, wishing he were there beside you-this brother doesn't
ever really do losing his temper.
Your
heart breaks when you get the texts from your Mum. "V.Weak today" "Not
sure abou wanting chemo" "We doing ok. Dad in garden. V. upset because
he can't fix this." "Bairbre v.quiet with us, but upstairs singing
now!"
You
lie in a hospital bed with a new kneecap on the same day your brother
starts his first chemo. Your Dad travels across the country by train and
luas to see his youngest kid in a hospital bed hours after leaving his
eldest in another hospital bed. Your Aunt, his little sister-in-law
reassures him that all will be ok, and despite the fact that he's gotten
weaker by the day since diagnosis, and despite that the fact that if
chemo doesn't work, he'll be gone in a few weeks, you all believe in her words, because you need to.
You
watch on crutches from the kitchen as he's carried from your parents
car by them both, he's barely strong enough to stand on a dry windy
August evening. It's his first time out of the hospital since that
evening in June and his wails and cries, your Mothers tears and your
fathers broken hearted face as the trio slowly make their way to the front door
ensure that this moment will never leave your soul. Your sister stands
beside you staring quietly and you've never hated the weakness in your
knee more because you can't help them carry him. His cries echo through
the house and you phone your little big brother to come out to the house
because you feel he needs to be there.
The
sorrow lifts a little later in the evening when he gets enough
strength to be helped into the kitchen. You sit as a family while Mum
makes tea, and his little sister makes a chicken sandwich. Then the
hitherto vegan suddenly feels like he could try some chicken. The only
problem is the last piece of chicken in the house is in his sister's
sandwich...and she doesn't do sharing. Eventually, she's persuaded to
give him a little and, slightly begrudgingly, she hands some over. You
all crack up with laughter and it's in this moment more than anything,
you realise how lucky you are with the family you got.
The
treatment progresses and while he seems to get weaker, you know it's
working. Friends and neighbours and strangers you don't know but who
know him stop and ask after him. Prayers are said, candles are lit,
stars and seas and waves are wished upon and the rest of life carries
on. Suddenly it's Christmas, chemo is kinda done and, although
weakened, you sit down to a Christmas dinner that has never been filled
with more strength, more thankfulness, more laughter, more love for one another.
His
treatment talks of moves from chemo to maintenance, he has long stents
placed inside to help his body to try and recover from the battering the
cancer and the chemo gave it that sometimes leave him in pain. But he's
smiling more. And walking outdoors more. And generally, being able to
look toward a little bit of life more. Yes, it's an incurable cancer,
but the first round is over and he's won it. He may not feel it, but he
has.
In
the midst of this, your Aunt, your Dad's little sister-in-law, your
Godmother gets a diagnosis that sickens everyone to the core again.
Another form of fast-moving unidentifable cancer. It's attacking her
faster than anyone could imagine, Doctors included and all of a sudden,
you're all talking again about tests and chemo, about markers and cells
and treatments and alternatives. You all call the cancer every name
under the sun, she occasionally calls it "the israeli army" , a
constantly attacking force with little regard for human life. Her
husband quips that she'll always support the underdog.
Her
chemo stops almost as soon as it starts-the cancer is everywhere, and
although one area responds a little, the rest don't. It's made harder by
the fact the Doctor is so excited by the result that he told her the
good news before he himself found out the bad news. One Monday in April,
she's told that they'll decide for definite about the chemo on Friday,
to see whether she's strong enough to continue with it or whether it
should stop and let her have some quality of life before she dies. Friday comes and she's the one comforting the
Doctor after he tells her there's no more that can be done for her;
telling him she appreciates how hard it must be for him to deal with it
too. She hopes to make it to June for a wedding.
It's
Good Friday, April 18 2014 and you spend all day with the phone glued
to you, waiting for the news, good or bad. The longer the day goes on,
the more sure you are of the news, so much so that when your brother
who's working near her that day calls you, you don't answer the
phone, you just watch it ring on your bed. You walk outside to a silent
dark garden listening to a voicemail that's full of half spoken
sentences and pauses and deep sighs and you sink to your knees and cry
and wail until you can't breathe. You call him, you call them, you call
home and you sit on the ground in the dark and wonder how much time
you'll have with her.
Enough
time to see her, to spend time with her, to laugh, to cry, to hug, to
be loved by her. Her last few days three weeks later take everyone by
surprise. There's no final official goodbye, instead almost every
conversation is peppered with subtle love, her quip to her big brother
about smelling the turf fire from him, her reassurance that she wasn't
dead yet when her breathing had shallowed and she had seemed to be
leaving us. She doesn't admit to how much in pain she is and so, when
she takes that last injection that she knows will ease the path across
for her, it still takes us by surprise
She
passes just after 9pm on a dry May Tuesday evening at home in her
bedroom with Leonard Cohen's voice a constant companion, in the arms of
her soulmate and with her big sisters beside her. Her siblings surround
her, her in-laws were her sisters & brothers too.....love emanates
from every corner of the room and
you watch as she opens her eyes and looks around before her eyes stop
moving. In an instant her face is at peace and your hearts are broken.
Her funeral is equally beautiful and heartbreaking, a wicker casket, so
light to lift you felt she might not be there, covered in flowers from
her garden. She turns heads everywhere as the hearse passes by, no
different in death as in life, two ladies in Dublin slow their walk as
they voice their appreciation of her flowers and her casket, unaware you can all hear their
every word.
Her
colleagues from the hospice help in every way they can, but this is a
different death for them too. Her memory and her love live on, in the
stories from strangers at the funeral home, in little gifts she had
given over the years before she passed and mostly, in the love and
support that is shared amongst all who loved her-and especially in her
husband, who holds and shares hers and their memories, so that even
though she is physically gone, her words, her kindness of spirit and
tales of her past are not lost to us. He is your link to her and you his
link to her, a link that even death that cannot break.
These
words, while intensely personal to me and my family, are just one story
of family dealing with cancer. My brother's cancer is "incurable but
manageable", so we know at some point, hopefully far off into the future, there will be more rounds with
it, with chemo, with everything that it entails, the hospital stays, the
texts, the calls, the constant worry and then either the relief or the
heartbreak of a round finishing for whatever reason.
In the meantime, it's never really gone away. Every time you
hear the word, every time there's a new diagnosis, every time you think
of the family and friends you've already lost to the fucker of a
disease, you're thinking of "incurable but manageable".
Every
time there's an ad urging people to "fight back against cancer " you
wonder what idiot thinks that the majority wouldn't "fight back". Even
though you find yourself saying it, you hate the phrase "fighting a
battle" or hearing that someone "lost the battle" because it implies
that if only someone had fought harder, they might have won. Which is
bull. When cancer decides it wants you done, you're done.
The
closest to a positive ending I can bring this is to say that cancer
reaffirms faith in family, in friends, in the kindness of strangers, in
life and in love. For me, it has reaffirmed my belief that sometimes
bad shit happens to good people for no reason. It
has made me appreciate every day I get with those I love, even though I
might not always show it. It has reminded me, that while cancer can
kill off those you love, it cannot kill off their love for you-that
remains even after they do not. It cannot kill the memories of the happy
times, of the bad times (for they are what make the good times seem so
good) and in the end, the life, the laughter, the love remains-that
love, like life itself, is incurable but manageable.
