Robert Jeffcutt

The second anniversary of my brother Robert's death has just passed.

He got cancer in the soft palate at the back of his throat. The initial symptoms were toothache, but the true cause wasn't spotted by the dentist. The cancer was aggressive and by the time it was diagnosed it had grown substantially.

Rob was given a heavy programme of radiotherapy. This progressively destroyed his ability to swallow. Before long he was only able to eat and drink through a peg into his stomach. Despite this radical treatment, the tumour wasn't killed off quickly enough and the cancer spread.

Rob was a very fit and energetic man. He wasn't fazed by anything. Whatever the challenge, he was prepared to take it on - from running a marathon to rebuilding a house. The depredations and indignities of his treatment were huge, but he remained calm and cheerful with his characteristically silly sense of humour.

Rob was only 56 when he died. I miss him a lot.

Birdsong

in memory of Robert Jeffcutt (1954-2010)


A songthrush warbles,
the syringe-driver whirrs
and blossom flutters from the cherry tree
my brother pruned last year:
soughing, he doesn't notice.

I reach down, clasp his skinny arm
and haul him yelping into the hazel.
Trade winds take our sails and atop the mizzen
we voyage to the lagoons of Hispaniola,
munching nuts and squawking like parrots.

At the new house we square-up, hollering.
My fist bashes his nozzy - give in!
Defiant, he shakes side-to-side
and a bright slick trickles from one nostril,
a red question mark.

The face of my father,
the hands of my mother.
I gather the covers and stroke his hair:
hawthorn and cow-parsley bedeck the way,
you're singing with the skylark.



Paul Jeffcutt (2010)

The Unnamable

I don't know,
I'll never know,
in the silence you don't know.

You must go on,
I can't go on,
I'll go on.



Samuel Beckett (1954)

Vulnerability and the Carapace

Cancer strips you down and makes you vulnerable.

Not only have you been exposed to the physical pain of surgery and the indignities of hospital treatment, but you also have been laid bare by intense emotions - anxiety and the fear of death. No wonder you're left feeling raw and unprotected, afraid of the next blow.

Before the 'big C', I often felt indestructible and only intermittently thought about my own mortality. Since then, I've often felt rather fragile and find myself very sensitive to stress.

In astrology cancer is a crab. And a crab has a hard shell on the outside and a soft body on the inside. For a crab to develop it has to discard its existing shell and grow a new, larger carapace.

Before the 'big C', my defensive protection was so strong that my vulnerability was kept safe from threat. But I had also reached my limits.

Last year, my old carapace was discarded. I now see that it couldn't fit me anymore.

I'm sidling forward, sensing my way through the challenges. I know that I've grown in so very many ways. I have to trust that I'm also developing a new protective shell.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean -
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down -
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver (1990)

The Searchlight of Inadequacy

There's no hiding place with cancer. It shines an intense, unyielding light - onto and into you.

This light marks you out from those who do not have it (see post of 17 April). And this light exposes you.

There's no hiding place for your inadequacies. They slump there, awkward and blinking. Despite your best efforts, you can't seem to avoid tripping over them.

And when you're under real threat, there doesn't seem much point in kidding yourself (or others) about them anymore.

All survivors talk about the great change that cancer brings to themselves and their lives. Especially how they became able to think and do things that previously were impossible for them - from saying sorry, to winning the Tour de France.

Owning up to inadequacies that you've hidden for many years is a very big step.

A big step towards release.

A Stranger in Your Own Life

You didn't book the trip and you didn't pay the ferryman, but you were taken across anyway. On the other side you found everything you knew. Your house, your family, your friends and acquaintances, your everyday activities. You recognised them all. The light was stark and piercing.

But it all seemed different. More mundane than you remembered, somewhat shabby and trivial. You smiled and played the good soldier. But things you previously enjoyed were now peculiar, even troublesome. You were full of questions and doubts.

You smiled again and tried harder. After all, you were doing your best to be normal and do normal things. But this remained unsatisfying and oddly out of reach.

You put it down to the illness. And the rehabilitation from the ordeal of treatment.

You were right. But it wasn't just a phase you were going through. You had crossed a real divide. You couldn't go back to the life you had lived before. The stranger was you.