IT’S THE longest Thursday of my life. I am thinking of Good Friday. Every year, I play Jesus Christ Superstar on the sixth day of Holy Week, from start to finish. I see the 1970 rock opera as one in which the brilliant lyric and prose of Tim Rice is brought to life by the music of Andrew Lloyd Webber, not the other way round. It is one of my all-time top five albums. It turned me as a Catholic and Christian and made the whole story of Jesus that much more believable. In my eyes, he became a revolutionary, a non-violent activist and leader who railed against the injustices of the state and religion of his time. Thinking of Good Friday and the crucifixion gave me a bit of perspective on my condition. A man died on the cross. I have cancer.
Still, there are moments when I just don’t want to contemplate the fight ahead. Perspective doesn’t guarantee protection, and it certainly doesn’t offer self-preservation. I know I will have to rise up to what lies before me, “man up” as they say in Australia, but there is no floor to the depth of sadness and despair. Take this cup away from me.
I hid the cancer from Helen for a few months. I also never told anyone of the horrible thing I had kept locked away in my mind for years. I may have said it to Helen and Sara not long ago. I’m not sure. Committing it to this book in words marks the first time I am going public. In a sick, twisted, hated and vulgar replay cycle, the thought that I would fall victim to some form of cancer has visited almost daily, over several years. It would come at the worst times possible — in the shower, just before sleep descends, getting lost in Amitav Ghosh, on my daily late-morning walks. Where the thought keeps coming from, I cannot tell, but it has visited with regularity, I would hang my head down in the shower, pray for the water to wash away the recurring thought. I have known this bastard thing will one day come knocking on my door, but with its arrival, I cannot believe it’s happening.
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| Post-surgery in the highlands of Thailand, 2019. |
Then, it rises out of the deep, dark well, fighting to climb over the edge — I have to be strong. This is my fight. Nobody else can do this for me. There are children here. Your children. Your wife. You have a reason to fight. You have purpose. I accept the fact of the trajectory of the vile expectation that began its course several years back. I am back in survival mode. Again, I remind myself: It’s OK that you’re terrified. It’s normal. It’s human. Use the fear. Turn it into energy. Fight. Do something about it. Wallowing in fear and sadness is no help at all.
Back home with Helen, Ben and Sara, I feel like I am watching myself. I’m thinking, I should be in shock, locked away in my room upstairs. Instead, a peace keeps resurfacing, breaking through the waves of despair. There is the strangest relief as my imagination becomes more and more tangible. I can feel what I am thinking. The fear, the despair that can demolish a soul, diminishes. I capture and revisit the thought that I have always expected this, feared the imminent visit, and I find solace in the idea that cancer is no longer a threat. I don’t have to live in fear, doubt and not knowing any more. I’m staring the illness in the face. You’ve arrived, you’re here, let’s get on with it. Now, at last, I can fight. Suspending disbelief is so hard as these thoughts swirl. I’m accepting it. The peace builds. What IS this?
Helen’s phone rings. It’s David, calling from his flat in Pinner, London. I can hear him on the phone-speaker, because it’s FaceTime, his preferred mode of keeping in touch. “Dad called. I just saw the ‘missed call’. We were both asleep.” He’s referring to Natalie, his fiancée. I want to tell him not to worry. Helen starts to tell him, and then decides it’s better to pass the phone to me.“Look, I’m really sorry to tell you like this, but you have to know. I’ve just been to see Magar. He thinks I have cancer. It’s the pancreas. He says it’s been found very early, and I’m lucky. Right now, I’m just holding on to that. There really is not much more I can tell you. Look, I can’t talk much more.” Then, I really believe it as I add, “The one thought I want to leave you with before I hand you back to Mum is this, I will be OK. OK? You heard me? I will be OK. Well… bye for now.”
*****
Hindsight is 20-20. Looking back now, it’s so clear. I had surrendered. Powerless in the face of this most unwelcome visitor, I give up to a higher power. It is not a matter of choosing what to do, how to do it. There is no choice in the matter. I have totally lost control of my life, of how to live. It doesn't matter. I am going through the motions, a puppet on a string, no longer in charge.
Surrender is a place full of comfort, the embrace of an assurance that, no matter what may soon unfold, I will be OK. I have come a thousand miles in the blink of an eye. In the old place, I retreat into fatalism every time things don’t work out as I have wanted. It’s easier — blame it all on something else. Cut all comms. Leave me alone. You don’t understand.
Instead. There is no thinking about it. It just happens. I become a new person and I am in a new place. I have fallen, and my life has fallen into the hands of God. I do not need to ask, What do I do? What is your plan? It’s a master-servant thing, total surrender. Surrender into freedom, peace, turn myself into nothing, and at the same time, a sense of self bigger than anything I have ever felt.
“What IS this?” is still ringing, but it is a calmer voice. The cold is going, the insides that were shaking are slowly settling down. All those prayers you learn by rote when you’re raised a Catholic flare into life. I see myself as a microdot in a grand design I no longer have to wonder about.
Not having to wonder is wondrous. In reducing myself to this tiny pinpoint in a universe, I am bigger than I have ever been. I give up and I am free. I put my life in the hands of God and it doesn't matter anymore that I have no control over it. We say, God moves in mysterious ways. Well, God also speaks in mysterious ways. Thing is, you don’t have to be able to hear a voice. All of it comes down to one thing. Belief. And in believing, a tremendous weight is lifted off my shoulders.
The burden is mine no longer. There is fear beyond the sadness, and that’s OK. Death becomes the next big production that follows birth. When I die, God will walk with me. I know that, and it is a comforting truth. Ashes to ashes. No big deal. It happens, man. You’ve seen it before. The dice has rolled. This time it’s you. You saw it coming. Now it’s here. Accept it.
In the midst of the worst predicament I have ever had to face, everything is taken out of my hands, and the belief that it will be all right, no matter what, is an indescribable relief. It just fills me up and gives me the strength to put one foot in front of the other. Move on.
I am a character in a play, and a teleprompter tells me what to do, how to do it, what to say. It is a new stage. I am just reading my lines.
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| Stratford-upon-Avon, December 2012 |
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