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One
It began one July morning in 1975.
We were spending the summer at our English home,
Dairy
Cottage, in a village near London which dates back to the
eleventh century. At twenty-three, our very independent daugh-
ter Jane had settled nearby, in an old cottage where farm work-
ers had once lived.
That morning Rosemary walked through the beautiful
English
countryside to call on Jane. It was a peaceful scene, and she
stopped to enjoy the sights and sounds of the fields.
When she came into the cottage, she found Jane already
up,
padding about the old, uneven floors in bare feet; she never wore
shoes at home. Then Jane held up her right foot to be inspected.
"What do you think of that, Mum?"
Her tone was so casual that Rosemary looked down
with a
smile, assuming Jane was in one of her joking moods. Her smile
faded at what she saw. There was an ugly, puffy, black-purple
lump about the size of a small coin just above her middle toe.
"Looks a bit strange," Rosemary said. "Have you had
it long?"
Jane hesitated, then replied slowly, "I'm not sure. It was just
a mole before it began to grow."
Rosemary, always sensitive to her daughter's feelings,
was
aware then of the deep concern under Jane's calm front. "I think
you should see Dr. Sullivan," she said gently.
She expected an argument, but Jane blurted out, "He
says
I'll have to go to the hospital to have it taken off."
Rosemary studied the expressive, attractive
face, sometimes
that of a sophisticated woman, sometimes still that of a young
girl. It wasn't like Jane to consult the family- doctor without
saying anything. She looked again at the black-purple spot. It
couldn't be anything to worry about, surely, such a small spot,
a long way from the vital parts of the body—heart, lungs,
eyes . . .
"I had a blemish like that near my ear, remember?"
she said.
"They just nicked it off in a minute or two."
"Would you mind coming with me when I go?" Jane asked.
" Hospitals are such a bore."
That, too, wasn't like Jane. Since she had grown
up, she al-
ways asserted her independence. Rosemary began to worry.
At the hospital, Jane went in alone to see the doctor.
She had
been irritated at having to wait nearly an hour before her turn
came. She was bitterly critical of a badly organised system that
wasted so much of people's time. She went in at last very angry.
She came out in tears.
"He says I must have two days in the hospital."
The little seed of fear began to grow. "Did he say
anything
else?"
"They'll take tests." She looked at Rosemary with
frightened
eyes. "When I asked him if he thought it was cancer, he said that
was a word he didn't use."
Cancer. They had both considered the same possibility.
Jane didn't say anything more, but that night she wrote in her
diary: "The fact that I've got a 'growth' that could presumably
be cancerous terrifies me. For a short time I had a really horrible
thought of me dying and how I would come to terms with the
prospect of it happening soon. It's very unlikely to be anything
even vaguely serious."
When she was admitted to the local hospital a week
later,
Jane was appalled to find she would have to stay there for a
week after the operation. They would cut out the black spot,
they told her, and take an area of skin from her thigh to graft
over the wound. It would be ten days before the test results were
known.
Skin grafts are painful, Jane discovered, and operations
on the
foot especially painful. She hadn't been warned, she complained;
but in spite of the pain, she refused to take the Valium that was
part of her medication. She didn't want to be tranquillized. She
wrote in her diary: "It's amazing (not really!) how, when one is
treated like a child, one begins to feel and react like one. I want
to revolt against the pettiness of this existence and the way one
is treated as an object."
She had been told she would have to stay in for a
week after
the operation. The next day she reported angrily to us: "Now
they say ten days. Why can't they make up their minds?" Al-
ways the news was bad. Finally the doctor told her that another
operation might be necessary if the test results were "nasty."
Jane's friends worked hard with us to help her pass the boring
and anxious hours, but her spirits were often low. She feared the
news would be bad—and so did we.
On the tenth day we were in the garden trying to
enjoy the
sunshine when the phone rang. It wasn't Jane, but the woman in
the next bed. "Jane's too upset to talk," she said. There was a
pause, then she added: "The doctor's just told her that the
growth was malignant. It's cancer."
We hurried over to the hospital. By then, Jane was
calmer.
She'd been half expecting it, she told us. "I can come out to-
morrow to fatten up for the next op." The news was not all
grim; there was reason for hope. It was skin cancer, and might
not recur. Her chances were no worse than those of anybody
else—no worse than the likelihood of her getting it in the first
place.
"Of course," the ward sister* told us, "no doctor
can sign a
blank cheque for health . . ."
"Of course not," we agreed.
The next consultation with the specialists yielded
better news.
Another operation wouldn't be necessary after all—a sufficiently
large area of tissue had already been removed. There was no
need to go further.
The anxiety began to subside and everyone felt a
sense of anti-
climax. We'd made a terrible fuss about nothing very much. All
that was necessary was to help Jane build up her strength.
She came home to recover. Now, knowing that it would
pass,
she could cope with the pain. If she had any further worries
about the cancer reappearing, she kept them to herself.
Richard, who was in Boston, urged us to find out everything
we could about what kind of cancer it was. His American fi-
ancee, Joan, had a relative who'd suffered from a severe form of
skin cancer. Perhaps this was similar; we should get as many
details as possible. But we brushed him aside. What the doctors
had said sounded good to us. Why worry unnecessarily?
We had always tended to worry too much over Jane. From
her childhood on she'd been vulnerable, in spite of her determi-
nation to "go it alone"—or perhaps because of it. Signs of her
strength of mind were apparent early in life. The baby who
cried so loudly, and so often, grew into the child who questioned
authority, who insisted on doing things her own way, preferring
to make her own mistakes.
As a girl growing up in England, she had retreated
into writing
poetry whose tragic intensity contrasted strangely with her
mild, neat appearance. But her will power wasn't equalled by a
strong constitution, and she would often expect her body to do
more than it could. She needed to be protected from herself.
Jane might have got what she wanted by smiling and being
charming; she had the looks for it. More importantly, she had
whatever it is that attracts others, the quality that turns heads in
the street. When she was an infant, strangers wanted to hold the
pretty baby; later they would try to get the toddler to smile that
sudden, beaming smile. But Jane became sparing with her smiles;
she would inherit her generation's fear of "phoniness" to an in-
tense degree.
As she grew older, the pattern was the same. She
began to
look below the surface and reject what came too easily. School
days are hard for the non-conformist, the questioner. Idealists are
inevitably frustrated as they pursue their dreams; perfectionists
always disappoint themselves by not meeting their own stand-
ards. Jane never believed in her own successes; she only recog-
nised the failures. She tried to express her realities in her poems,
but rarely showed them to anyone. Like all children, she played
and fought and made jokes when life was good, but she also
suffered deep fits of depression during which nobody could
reach her. As she grew older, she tried harder to overcome these
brooding moods, but never quite succeeded. These were times
of despair about the world, coupled with great self-doubt, times
when any criticism of her seemed overwhelming and any en-
couragement was resented as an attempt at consolation. As with all
of us, Jane's reactions varied as the different sides of her charac-
ter were called upon to face particular situations. She wasn't one
to give up or to circumvent. The easy road, the majority view,
were not for her; and vet the impression this conveys of a stern,
unwavering realist is too strong. Her decisions weren't always so
sharply defined, so absolute. She dithered, she agonized, often
she changed her mind. Always there were questions, and then she
would question the answers she was given. Not afraid of being
different, she never thought of herself as a strong person in spite
of her definite opinions.
In her teens these opinions became even firmer, and
she learned
to keep the self-doubts hidden. She dropped poetry for politics.
She became a committed rebel, perpetually at war with her
father, whose liberal views she found too mild. Victor hoped she
would recognise that he was taking her seriously by arguing
with her as adult to adult, but their discussions were often
disastrous. She had no patience with his professionally polished,
ordered and informed brand of argument, and usually stamped
off in a rage rather than await the conclusion of the argument.
Sometimes her sense of humour came to the rescue and she
would manage to have the last word with a well-timed exit line.
It was the period when student agitation over Vietnam and other
issues was attracting world-wide attention. Jane came back from
the most recent demonstration bursting with righteous indigna-
tion and a secret delight that she found hard to conceal. She had
even been trampled by a police horse! Three young American
girls were staying with the family, and Victor said angrily:
"Jane, on no account are you to take those girls to the next left-
wing demo!" Jane answered sweetly: "Dad, I shall only be
showing our American guests the sights of London."
When Jane graduated with a degree in social work, she decided that
teaching was the profession that would give her a
chance to work at the three things she wanted to do most—con-
tribute to the struggle for a better world, spend a Jot of time
with children, and travel. Although she never lost her awareness
of social problems, she soon grew disillusioned with politics and
concentrated on a more private life. She became a vegetarian
long before it was popular or even accepted. She studied our diet
scientifically, struggling to convert us to a more healthy way of
eating. She gave up smoking, repeatedly. She began to garden
seriously. Now she didn't listen only to the music of the counter-
culture, of rebellion and freedom. She discovered that she could
listen to the classics without feeling she was betraying her gen-
eration.
Jane wanted love. but when it came, she found it
hard to accept
completely, difficult to give up her freedom absolutely—and
so she would drive her lover away, only to wish him back when
loneliness set in. Finally she decided that she had to prove to
herself she could survive alone, that she couldn't call herself
tree while she depended on another's company.
Her relationship with Victor had never recovered
completely
from the difficult years of her adolescence. She tried to make
things up with him, but there were many setbacks. It was too
easy for them to misunderstand each other. The years of puppy fat
and its attendant miseries were over for Jane; she had learned
to keep her figure under control. Yet although beginning to
realise she was attractive, she was still vulnerable beneath the
surface poise. In spite of her firm opinions and a sturdy, non-
conformist sense of independence, she could also collapse in con-
fusion and uncertainty.
We knew that Jane's experience of cancer would increase
this
vulnerability. We were relieved to learn that the disease was not
of the deadly variety, but then came a new cause for anxiety:
Jane wasn't getting her strength back. The summer was over and
we had to go back to America. Jane tried to return to her old
routine, but the journey to the school and the job of teaching
were tiring. She was ill with a number of minor ailments that
winter. Often she couldn't carry out in class the work she'd pre-
pared so thoroughly the day before. It would be better to work
at a school nearer home. She decided to give up her job and look
for another.
But the timing was wrong. There were twenty thousand
un-
employed teachers in England that year. The spring passed, we
came home for another summer, and still she'd found nothing.
The constant rejections had affected her self-confidence; she
grew seriously worried about her future. At last she was ac-
cepted for the job of teaching the children of three middle-class
families in Greece—not the kind of work her social conscience
demanded, but by now anything was welcome. And she liked
Greece.
After months of worry and indecision, Jane found
relief in
action. She terminated the lease on her cottage. She harvested
her vegetable crop and disposed of potatoes, onions, carrots,
beets, and homemade wine. She sorted and re-sorted her posses-
sions, regretting that she had so many belongings when life
should be kept simple. She packed, stored and gave away. She
complained of chaos, but worked in an orderly way, making
neat lists of tasks to be done. It was sad to leave a place where
she'd often been happy nnd had gained the confidence to live
alone. But it was time for a new life.
She flew off to Athens on a dark, wet night in September
after
a celebration dinner with us. That evening we were happy and
relaxed together. She and Victor were closer than they'd been
for years.
Jane was good at keeping in touch by letter. We learned
she
was settling down in Greece, making friends, and longing for
the summer when she would visit the islands and spend time in
the mountains. She sounded happy—a new Jane—and we dared to
hope she had completely recovered.
Then one February weekend we were on a hiking trip
in the
Virginia hills. Rosemary had gone to have coffee with friends
when Victor suddenly burst in on them and began to talk com-
pulsively, almost incoherently. They couldn't grasp what he was
saying . . . something about Jane and cancer?
"I've booked you on the plane home tonight," he said.
That got through. It was as if the word "cancer"
was a ham-
mer blow that had smashed the pattern of our lives into little
pieces. Victor hadn't spoken directly to Jane. Richard's fiancee,
Joan, had taken Jane's phone call and passed a message on to
Richard, who had tracked us down with some difficulty. But
Jane hadn't yet been able to share her feelings with any of her
immediate family. We tried desperately to phone her in Greece
over and over again, but there was no reply.
We drove back to Washington through the waning light
of a
sunlit but bitterly cold day. The mountains in the distance were
a deep blue, but we hardly noticed them. Our thoughts were far
away.
Halfway to the city we tried to phone Jane again
from a
booth in a vacant car lot. While we waited, the wind whipped a
plastic cup round and round in circles. Time seemed to stand
still in that lonely spot. At last we heard Jane's voice, crackling
over the long, long distance between Greece and America.
"I'm on my way to England. You don't have to come," she
said at first. But when she heard that Rosemary had already de-
cided to meet her in England, the relief flooded her voice. "Ter-
rific!" She added more cheerfully, "See you tomorrow, then."
In Washington Rosemary tried to pack, to leave the house in
order. But the familiar objects felt strange in this context of
utter disorganization and chaos. The pattern of life seemed lost.
The news was certainly bad. A week before, Jane had woken
up to find a lump in her groin. Her first thought was that this
was the place the doctors always looked when she went for a
checkup. She remembered there had been days in the past few
weeks when she'd felt really ill, and decided to see the local doc-
tor. He told her there was nothing to worry about—something
was wrong, but it wasn't a return of the cancer. A few days later
she checked with another doctor. This time the response was
very different. "Go back to England immediately, to the hospital
where they operated on you."
Rosemary reached London first. Dairy Cottage had
been
rented to tenants until the end of May, so she had arranged to
stay with friends in town. But she rang the family doctor in the
country and described what had happened.
"Bring Jane straight here from the airport," he told
her. "If
the plane's late, I'll wait in the surgery." Julian Sullivan, a calm,
unflappable man, was businesslike but sympathetic on the phone.
And Jane liked him—that would be a help.
She arrived at London Airport dressed in blue )eans and a
bright Indian waistcoat with a scarf knotted, pirate-fashion,
round her head. She looked so happy to be home again that, for
a moment, the nightmare was almost forgotten. But her confi-
dence soon started slipping away.
When we reached the doctor's small waiting room in
the vil-
lage near Dairy Cottage, we were told to go straight in. "Will
you come with me, Mum?" Jane asked. "I might need a bit of
support."
Yet she faced him cheerfully enough. Here was someone
she
had come to like and trust over the many years he had looked
after the family. She knew, too, that he would be frank with her.
Dr. Sullivan, in a neat dark suit, shook hands, smiling at her,
his eyes warm. "Let's see what we can do for you, Jane," he
said.
The examination took only a moment. The small white
lump
in Jane's groin was plainly visible. Dr. Sullivan didn't try to hide
his concern. It looked like a tumour in the lymphatic gland, and
would have to come out, he told her.
"I've already booked you a bed in the local hospital,"
he
added. "You must be there by nine o'clock tomorrow morning."
"Could it be malignant?" Jane asked, her nervousness begin-
ning to show, though she still half-hoped that she was wrong.
Yes, he said, it probably was, but of course he couldn't be sure,
If she had it cut out, would that cure it?
No, other tumours might grow and they would have
to be re-
moved, too.
Jane swore, then burst into tears. Rosemary and the
doctor
watched her helplessly. With shaking hands, she lit a cigarette
and puffed furiously. Then she crushed it out in the spotless
wash basin and, realising what she'd done, began to apologise.
"There's nothing to apologise for, Jane," Dr. Sullivan said
gently. "I know how you feel. I had a lump removed a few years
ago. It is a big shock." He gave her time to pull herself together
while he talked reassuringly. But as she walked back through the
waiting room, the other patients looked sympathetically at her.
"Let's get out of here," she said.
We drove back through the darkness and rush-hour
traffic
along the familiar road to London. There had been so many rides
along this road in the past, to theatres, parties, boating trips; to
school, exams. Never had any journey been under such a shadow
as this one.
That night there was a reunion in the friends' house
where we
were staying, all of us laughing and talking over a good supper
eaten with the wine that Jane had brought from Greece. She
spoke a little of cancer, but managed to keen the nightmare well
in the background until it was time for bed. There the fears were
waiting for her. The pain of another operation, the threat of
more lumps appearing . . .
Jane took some Valium and managed to sleep.
By nine-thirty the next morning we were at the hospital wait-
ing for X-rays to be taken. She was in good spirits, and trying to
count her blessings. She was glad to be home, she had contacted
some friends and was looking forward to further reunions. She
knew she would get the best treatment and that cancer patients
had priority. All her treatments would be free under the Na-
tional Health Service.
After Jane had been X-rayed, she walked to a little
room to
wait for the operation.
The surgeon was a small, fierce-looking man, with
no warmth
or comfort in his eyes, who did not seem capable of the God-like
task of cutting into living flesh. When he came out of Jane's
room after his pre-operative examination, urgent, tense, he glared
at Rosemary. "And who are you?"
She wanted to snap back but decided not to make cracks
at the
surgeon who was about to cut into her daughter. She said merely
that she was Jane's mother.
His manner didn't change. He told her tersely he
would oper-
ate that afternoon to remove the lymph gland. He seemed to re-
gard the human body purely as a machine that had to be put right.
Mechanics don't have to be polite to the machines they repair.
What did it matter as long as he mended Jane's body?
When Rosemary telephoned the hospital later that evening,
she was told that the operation had been successful and Jane
was comfortable. Such reports are always superficial. Rosemary
wondered what her daughter's real state of mind and body
might be. It was a relief that the operation was over, but the
threat remained.
Jane had a single room in the small, modern hospital,
and
Rosemary found her the next day sitting up bright-eyed and
cheerful. The pain was masked by her relief that the sinister
lump was gone. In the days that followed she tried not to worry
about the future. She complained only of the pain. Lymph glands
drain fluid from the body, and nobody had warned her that,
when this gland was removed from her groin, her right leg
would become swollen and heavy with liquid. It was many days
before an understanding nurse raised the foot of the bed for her,
easing the pressure.
There were supposed to be only two visitors at a
time in her
room, but Jane often presided over a group of five or six friends
clustered round the bed. The long visiting hours and the com-
panionship of the nurses helped to keep her worries at bay, but
there were many times when she was alone. She wrote in her diary:
"I don't want to have cancer. I don't want pain and I don't
want to die for a long time. . . . The awful thing is not know-
ing even if they've dealt with this one, but . . . there seems to
be a very high chance of others. And if I'm going to have to
spend a large part of the rest of my life in pain and in the hospital,
I think I'd prefer to die quickly.
"The first birds have started to sing. Very beautiful.
I think
I'll just lie back and listen."
Next day she wrote:
"I spent quite a lot of time yesterday wondering whether I
would have the courage to kill myself if it looked as if the in-
definite future was going to be spent in this way. And of course
I came to no conclusion."
Late in the evening of the tenth day the surgeon
told Jane the
bad news that the tumour had been malignant. All her fears had
been confirmed. Rosemary was about to leave the hospital, but
the ward sister called her back and said she didn't have to keep
to the official visiting hours that evening. So she was able to
comfort Jane and stay with her until she could cope. Sleeping
pills would help her through the night.
Jane wrote: "I'm not really sure what my reaction
is. On the
surface I'm very calm, very philosophical. I'm also aware that
many people with cancer are cured completely. Also that very
many do die."
And the next day:
"Fear is always worst at night. Right now I feel
awful . . .
I'm waiting for the drugs, because I'm just scared I'll get the
horrors if I try to sleep without them."
A few days later, Rosemary was going through the
daily rou-
tine of watering the plants and bulbs that stood on the long
windowsill by the hospital bed, nipping off the dead blooms,
when Jane said casually: "By the way, Mum, I've found out the
name of the cancer I've got. It's melanoma."
Rosemary's hand froze.
Melanoma. The word had touched a chord in her memory.
"Melanomas can have your leg off in a week," someone had
once said. At the time it meant nothing to her. She was to find
out that melanoma could be a killer, fast-moving and hard to
treat. But it wasn't always fatal. And while it could be very pain-
ful, that was not always the case.
She phoned Victor and Richard on the other side of
the At-
lantic. In Boston, Richard called Joan at work. Her family had
had experience of this deadly cancer. "Joan," he said, "it's mel-
anoma," and put down the phone and wept.
Rosemary had promised to tell Jane the truth, but
now she
was hesitant. It wasn't easy to determine the precise truth. The
right moment to reveal bad news has a habit of receding, and
besides, there seemed to be so many views of Jane's chances.
Every different opinion tended to increase the doubt and con-
fusion. It was like appearing in court expecting a death sentence
and discovering the judge didn't want to commit himself.
Behind Jane's back, we tried to get a clear medical prediction
about the future, but without success. Richard was convinced
Jane would receive more up-to-date treatment in America. Vic-
tor, with his usual thoroughness and persistence, began to investi-
gate the possibilities of treatment in American hospitals. But
Jane wanted to be near her friends. She showed no interest in
leaving England, only in leaving the hospital.
After ten days she was discharged and referred to
a specialist
in a different London hospital for further tests. On the evening
she came home, Richard phoned from Boston, wanting to know
if she was aware of the danger.
"She realises it's serious," said Rosemary cautiously,
certain
that Jane could hear her.
"But does she realise how serious?"
Rosemary lowered her voice slightly, but not enough
to make
Jane think she didn't want her to hear. "I don't know." It was a
pretty ambiguous answer, the best she could do.
"Have you told her there's a strong probability she
might
die? " Richard burst out.
"Not exactly . . ."
"She ought to be told," Richard said emphatically.
"She'd
want to know." He sounded sure, positive. "Shall I tell her?"
"No." Not now, Rosemary thought, but merely said:
"Jane's
home from the hospital, but it'll take her a while to get to the
phone, she's still weak." Richard would surely pick up the mes-
sage that her first night out of the hospital wasn't the time to make
such a disclosure. She was exhausted but seemed happy. Let her
enjoy it, at least for a short time. Damn the future. After all,
Rosemary consoled herself, none of the physicians Victor and
Richard consulted had even seen Jane—and Jane's doctors didn't
speak of death. When Richard spoke directly to Jane on the
phone, he talked of other things.
Hope was our official attitude: Rosemary's friends
supported
her attempts to keep Jane's spirits up, but it was clear that at
times she felt very alone, and Victor and Richard weren't yet
free to come over.
A few nights before Jane's return from the hospital,
Teresa had
phoned from America and asked simply, "Do you want me to
come?" Teresa was almost a daughter to Rosemary, almost a
sister to Jane. She was Rosemary's most successful pottery stu-
dent, now established in her own right in America. Her presence
would help enormously, but Rosemary felt she couldn't ask
Teresa to drop everything and leave her husband, her own work.
"It's all right, really," she told her. "I can cope."
But as soon as Teresa rang off, Rosemary wished she'd
said,
"Yes, please come." She badly needed a full-time helper, with no
other commitments, to share the burden.
Then the phone rang again. Rosemary answered unwillingly,
dreading yet another family call, more pressure to take Jane to
America for treatment there.
"Rosemary? Teresa here. I'm flying on Wednesday.
Don't
bother to meet me, I'll make my own way . . ."
* In Britain, the word "sister" denotes one of the senior ranks in the
nursing
profession.
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