When the worst was over...

That Wednesday of the second surgery- wretched, wretched.

I have referred in an earlier post to an elephant in the room. At the time, it was Annie and how she was responding to this whole episode. She remains well; an astonishing young woman, who thrives and sparkles and looks forward to conquering her own universe one day, despite schoolwork woes and the caddish behaviour of a young man or two.

Many readers who have known me longest will know that there is another elephant- one that has been around longer than even the teen, and considering what you know of my upbringing, I’m a little surprised that no one has asked after it.

I was born on a Sunday, almost exactly 45 years ago. The next Sunday, I was in church. I was raised in the kind of household where one missed church only if one was dead or dying- and even dead, there was at least one more service to get to before six feet of soil prevented further attendance. While my folks never actively insisted that it be so, I recall the faith of my childhood to be predominantly based on rules and fear. There were a lot of ‘thou shalt nots’, which seemed to include a fairly arbitrary collection of things that increased as I grew older and discovered boys. I remember the fear most clearly, however. My youth rallies and camps were the sort liberally sprinkled with films about the end times and encroaching Armageddon, designed to scare the Hell out of us. I was generally convinced that the four horsemen of the Apocalypse knew where I  lived, and were likely to come clomping up Union Street at any time, with a vendetta up their sleeves with my name on it. Eventually I out-grew the fear, about the time I realised that I was basically a liberal, and that if there was a God, He probably didn’t actively have it in for a skinny nine-year old way down on the South Shore of Nova Scotia. The fish He was frying were probably bigger. He also probably had a far better sense of humour than people gave Him credit for, as was evidenced by the ridiculousness of most of those people so devoid of humour. Relinquishing the fear made me sleep much easier at night. It did not require me to relinquish faith.

I do not intend to bang drums or blow trumpets about faith here. It was never my style, not really, despite the frequent sanctimony of my youth, and my attendance at obscure little denomintional colleges, where I learned much about just how ridiculous the humourless people are, and showed an early inclination for seeking out comrades most likely to bang their heads repeatedly against the status quo. My faith has been consistently quiet. A big, quiet elephant.

And this last twelve months, it has been rocked to the core, as quiet and inoffensive as it has tried to be. Trust and love have been given and squandered. Loneliness and ill health have arrived; at times they have been overwhelming. ‘Nuff sed. It was what it was.

I will not rail here now- though I have many times, off piste and on. You are all likely to know the code: who ‘Cosmos’ is, and who I rant and rave at when I shake my futile fist at the skies. You might also know what I have come to think of Grace, in its many quiet guises.

When I was teaching GCSE English, I used to teach a poem called ‘Blessing’ by Imtiaz Dharker- deceptive and uplifting, but only momentarily- about the bursting of a water pipe in the middle of a slum in India. Fleeting relief arrives, and is greeted with dancing. Just one short line sticks in my head now as I think of the first night after the hysterectomy, as I lay aching on that slab of a bed:


‘the voice of a kindly god.’

I have hurled a thousand prayers at the sky in this last year, and I won’t list any of them here. The sky has frequently remained silent, as is its wont. But Grace has many new guises- the nurse dancing into the room, singing my name and brandishing an unrequested ice pack for my head; my mother’s hands rubbing cream into my swollen feet, colleagues helping my brother get into mischief while he was here, the same brother understanding the love I bear him through our years of easy silence. Grace also arrived during the long night after that awful second surgery, disguised as a simple text message from a tender soul who was listening out, miles away. Say what you will, it sounded like the voice of a kindly god when I read it:

Sleep, sweet girl. I am here.

This is not to say that I thought a god was speaking. Just that I felt then, during the worst of it, that there was someone standing vigil. It mattered.

Tonight I sit here in the flat on my own, pondering the next steps. I have been back to the hospital for my post-op check, you see, and while people were basically pleased by the outcome of the surgery and are (apparently) rather impressed by my powers of recuperation- {Yes, Maggie, I did don my wooly tights and discharge myself two days after the hysterectomy, and am planning a separate entry to cover the oddities of that last morning in hospital, drainage tube removal and an eyebrow-raising exchange with my surgeon}- while they were basically pleased, it turns out that some cancer cells remain. They lurk and simmer, waiting the first chance they get to turn into something seething and nasty. So, having had advice from the first hospital that was, in my disappointed state, rather unfathomable: (‘You mean I’m not done yet???’) I sought a second opinion from another. They agreed with the surgeon from the first- I need to have more surgery, and to have more tissue removed. When this will happen, I do not yet know. I need to go back and discuss it again with the professionals.

I am weary, disgruntled and a little depressed again. It would have pleased me immensely to have been able to draw a line underneath the whole episode. I have things to do, universes to conquer, new prospects to explore and adventures to embark upon! I look well, feel better and more positive overall than I have since arriving in Korea. However, the saga seems set to continue further.

So, the girl heaves a deep breath, adjusts the seat belt, and heads again into the ring. She’s ain’t done, but neither is she dead yet. She’s still here, mixing her metaphors.

And in her corner: kindly voices.