These entries begin two days after Anna’s funeral and cremation. They are based on text messages, email and journal entries. Anna and Conal had been together since 1978.
December 22:
IT has been nearly six months since Anna died. She is – of course – still dead. The rest of us are alive and slowly rebuilding our lives. Anna’s ashes are still downstairs on a small table one half of her remains will be interred here in Australia (Anna’s second home), the other urn is accompanied by paperwork which will allow us to take the ashes out of the country, onto a plane and on to Dublin.
2016 has been a real bucket of pus for me. And for a lot of other people too.
Well, it means that I will be happy to deliver a swift kick up the arse to the year on New Year’s Eve.
Fuck you, 2016. And fuck the horse you rode in on too. And – he said spitting on the ground – may all bad luck go with you.
The events of 2016 were bad enough, but 12 months I had such great hopes for 2016. Anna and I would have been within sight of being Emptynesters.
Anna had planned to return to her studies (after recovering from breast cancer, in 2015). And we had a holiday in Tasmania to look forward to in mid-January. Anna was in remission from Lung Cancer (2014), she’d beaten breast cancer and her hair was growing back.
What could possibly go wrong? Just about everything.
I am not going into details. The discovery of two golf ball-sized tumours in Anna’s brain was the start of an emotional roller-coaster ride that killed Anna and left the rest of us feeling sick, unsure of our bearings and wandering around in a daze.
Yesterday I was backing up emails/letters I had written in the first half of 2016 and which charted the final stages of Anna’s Cancer Journey. (God, how I hate the expression, Cancer Journey.)
In hindsight, I see the letters filled with hope. Full of confidence. Anna was doing so well. Anna was making progress. We knew that if anybody could have beaten Brain Cancer, it was Anna. Three teams of medicos had given her “days, not weeks, to live”.
We all gathered in her hospital room, to say farewell Anna. We knew she was dying, the doctors had said so. Yet here was Anna sitting up in bed talking to us and eating a McDonald’s breakfast. She obviously didn’t get the memo that she was about to join the choir invisible and was determined to keep living.
(Late January was the worst time for me. We had gone from a great holiday in Hobart to death’s door in a matter of days. The full impact of losing Anna began to hit me. And hit me hard. I knew how sick she was. Anna didn’t. I had break the bad news to people. In one of the darker moments during this time I sat down and wrote about my anger, my despair, my loss, how unjust it was. How unfair it was. Just when it seemed Anna was out of the woods. It all came out. It was cathartic. I was starting to ‘let go’ of Anna. Preparing for the end.)
And then it changed – in February, Anna got better.
The drugs worked. The radiotherapy worked. There were days when it seemed that somebody was opening my head and rearranging the various parts of my brain.
Everything that I held true in my life, was now being turned upside down. These were real Mind Fucks Days.
With very little medical assistance, Anna learned to walk again (having lost that power in January). She graduated from university, pushed away the wheelchair and enjoyed her final 150 days with us. Most of which were spent at home, with her family, going out for coffee and cake and having fun. We took photos. We took lots of photos. And the occasional video. And a few taped conversations.
There wasn’t a night when we didn’t kiss good night and tell each other “Love you. Thank You for today”.
There were moments – many moments – to remember her by. For example, when Anna met the head of the Cancer Clinic he asked: “Anna, you are still with us? I thought you were in the hospice?”
Anna’s indignant reply: “I never went there. I’m living at home. I’ve graduated from university and I’m enjoying life. Thank you”. And walked away indigently.
We had been told in February that Anna’s health would improve, she would plateau and then slowly go downhill.
It all happened quickly.
On Tuesday, June 23rd, Anna and I had coffee and cake with Daughter and got in a walk.
On Wednesday, everywhere in Anna’s body was sore and she was admitted to hospital. Saturday night Anna was still eating, drinking and talking to us. It started on the Sunday, she was sleeping, on painkillers, drifting in and out. Monday we couldn’t get food/water into her. Tuesday night she died.
On the morning before she died, I woke up thinking: “I wouldn’t be surprised if I walked into the hospital ward this morning to find Anna sitting up demanding decent coffee, complaining that the doctors ‘Had got it wrong again’ and that she’d be home tomorrow”.
Again, it was not to be.
