Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER
She didn’t want to die, she was wasn’t yet fifty. We’d had enough of death in our lives thank you very much. The specialist was kind but blunt – “there’s nothing we can do for you, sorry, you have about three to six months”. How many times had he sat in that chair that week and said the same thing to the same incredulous looks?
Her face as she turned to look at us. We were squashed into that clinic room perched on the examination table and hospital chairs, all expectant and equally as shocked. She searched our faces one by one, as if to say – is he having a fucking joke here, is he for real? Her look of puzzlement, of horror and disbelief forever etched in my mind. Me piping up like a gobshite, “if it’s localised why can’t you just cut the tumour out”, very simple solution I thought – even without my medical degree. He just kept saying “I’m sorry”.
We sat in a park afterwards, trying to make sense of what we had just heard and witnessed, how and what she would tell her thirteen-year-old daughter. She was trying to work out what the next step was. Of course, her next step was to proclaim, among other things – “I’m fighting this, no way am I going to die, no way is this true… it’s not fair, it’s fucked… I’m not finished… I’m getting a second opinion… can you believe what he just said… no, no way can I believe that doctor”. And we were all in total agreeance, “what the fuck would that doctor know anyway, he doesn’t know you”.
The palpitations, the dry mouth, the deep drilling fear to my core, as we sat there shaking our heads in disbelief. Then somehow getting home safely through the Adelaide traffic, back to her waiting daughter. Her daughter’s face when she heard the diagnosis, as they sat together embracing on the couch in their little home. The declarations from mother to her child, “It’s OK…I’m fighting this… they don’t know what a tough bitch I am”. The believing and disbelieving frightened eyes of her girl ripped at our already broken hearts.
My sister was dead six months later. Towards the end she surprised herself by her total acceptance of her approaching death. Physically she was a shadow of herself, “tough bitch” was still evident but a slightly mellowed version. She knew her daughter would be alright, she had prepared her well for life. In her last weeks and days she advised us “to live…. to love”, repeatedly telling us “…allyou need in this life is connection with others and love… all the other shit is a waste of time, none of it matters”.
She wanted to die at home, away from hard hospital chairs in dreary waiting rooms, sick people in wheelchairs, with those cancer turbans and wigs, the inevitable poking and prodding and the pointless toxic chemotherapy. She worried she would become aggressive or difficult to care for if the cancer went to her brain or the drugs addled her mind. She had seen many difficult and distressing deaths in her work caring for the elderly and dying. She was an easy person to stay close to and care for right up until her last breath.
She got her wish, she died at home, with dignity, without pain, on her lounge, her daughter by her side, surrounded by those who loved her, and in the background, the sound of her dog’s annoying click clacking nails on the wooden floor.