Ep.3: The Gift
When you get handed a cancer diagnosis, with it there comes a gift. It’s a free gift with every diagnosis and it’s up to you when and if you want to take it, unwrap it and use it. For me the gift became apparent very soon. My gift is a super-power. Which is funny when I think about it because not that long ago on a sunny summer afternoon in the garden my daughter B asked ‘mum if you had a super-power which one would it be?’. And though I thought I’d listed all the possible powers in my head and picked what I thought to be the best – flying, of course – this one wasn’t on my list at all. And yet the ink was hardly dry on my diagnosis before I realised just what a super-power I’d been handed. Cancer’s gift to you is the instant ability to realise what is important and what isn’t. It’s the ability to make decisions with utter clarity and certainty based on what matters and what doesn’t. All our lives we search for the ability to weigh up the push and pull of our lives, the demands on our time, the anxiety and stress of day to day living. Not anymore. Now I know. Now I can.
5 days before my diagnosis we sold my house. We hadn’t even been looking to move, not really, but then in a bored moment between Christmas and New Year we drifted out to view a house I’d seen online and suddenly we were a frenzy of financial decisions and hurried conversations, adding, subtracting, stressing, could we/should we? We took a collective breath and made an offer on this, our dream place and to our astonishment it was accepted and so started the next whirlwind of de-cluttering and sorting and photographing and, as it turned out, instantly selling my place.
Job done. They say house moving is one of the most stressful things you can do and I’m sure in my past life that would have been true. I’ve even muttered before that I’d never move again and perhaps that’s why I’ve clung to the same walls for 14 years but, but, add to a house move a sprinkling of cancer diagnosis and magically none of it matters. None of it has raised even a bead of sweat on my brow. No anxiety, no concerns over pedantic solicitors and their ridiculously over inflated bills. I float above it all saying phrases like ‘it’ll be fine, it’ll all come good’. I email soothing words to our buyer and to the man we’re buying from. Smooth every ruffled feather.
With cancer you not only have the instant ability to recognise what matters and what doesn’t but those things which do matter feel sharper and shinier. The dial is turned up on everything around you. The world is more beautiful, your partner more loving, your every waking moment just more precious. I’ve stopped whining about making the packed lunches because I’m making them out of sheer love. I’ve stopped feeling frustrated about cooking endless dinners at the end of endless long days because I’m cooking them for people I love. I can sense the edge being smoothed off my words when I ask B to do something for the 4th time in a row because I’m talking to my beautiful, amazing daughter and I don’t really care anymore that she hasn’t done her piano practise or has left a dirty cup. I still love her beyond description. I don’t care if the bed is still a mess after David has made it because it doesn’t matter and it has no bearing on my love for him. None of the day to day nonsense we puff up to assume relevance in our lives is relevant, none of it makes me love them more or less, so it doesn’t get to be important any more.
So the paradox is that while I’m utterly broken-hearted and heavy with dread that I’m carrying this cancer in my breast, my movements through this world feel lighter, free-er, less troubled. So that is cancer’s gift to me. And if I can use that gift to live every day better, happier, more grateful for what I have and who I have in my life than before then maybe, if I have fewer days left to live, they will be days where I live more than I ever have in the past.