Today I’m thirty-two, in good health, and no longer afraid that the cancer will return. All this makes it possible for me to look back at my illness as an experience that I wouldn’t have wanted to miss out on. But I don’t feel right saying that—cancer is not something to be grateful for. Not ever. The absence of people I dearly loved reminds me of that every day.
Chantal passed away soon after my cancer went into remission, in 2007. It was our cancer that brought us together and connected us until the end. I was in complete awe of her courage facing death. Up until her very last day Chantal was full of joie de vivre and her own incredible sense of humor. She would surprise me with each visit. Either she’d ask about what I had been up to and joke that she had just come back from a long run along the river, or she’d be singing lame Dutch pop music. Even when she was fully paralyzed, she’d always look forward to her bath at six P.M. each evening, which the nurses would fill with rose petals and bath oil. I hated to see her dying; I hated the fact that I had been given a second chance when she hadn’t; I hated our cancer. I think I started to hate life, too, when a year later, against all expectations, Jurriaan’s cancer returned. He died at the age of twenty-nine. I can’t tell you how close to death I felt myself when I lost him. He was such a special and talented person. And also, he still was my dream guy. Some people tried to console me by saying that “God takes the best among us first.” That just made me even more angry. Fuck God, was all I could think.
If there’s one silver lining to all this suffering, it is that it has brought out a piece of peace in me. My cancer put me more in touch with life. It took away my constant questioning of what life was about and replaced it with the knowledge that life is about love. I have never laughed as wholeheartedly as when I was ill or when sitting next to Chantal’s bed in her final days. I don’t mean just having a laugh, but those really good belly laughs that bring you to tears and make you feel alive. My illness taught me to embrace life and that actually just means to embrace joy and laughter. Suddenly I had all the time in the world; every minute was mine. I didn’t have to waste a single moment on things or people I disliked.
Although cancer takes over your life, we still have the power and ability to turn it into something good—or at least something that is not all bad. This is something that my wigs taught me. They helped me understand that although the cancer was overwhelming, there was still space to create my own parallel reality: in my case, a girl without baggage or drama who just wanted to have some fun. My cancer was always there, when I woke up in the morning, when I fell asleep with tears in my eyes at night. But thanks to my wigs, there were more and more moments when I could say: “Now this is my time, cancer. I’ll see you again tonight, but for right now I’m going to go out and live.” I truly believe that in the deepest despair we can find refuge and comfort in our minds. Call it escapism or something else; all I know is that it helped me.
This experience taught me to not take things for granted. But now that cancer has become a thing of the past, an experience I survived, I again have days when I struggle with life, days when I take for granted that I walk the planet and forget that once I wasn’t even sure I would make it until tomorrow, let alone to age thirty-two. For example, after all I’ve been through I should celebrate every extra birthday I’m given. But back to the living I’m also back to being a woman who doesn’t want to age.
On difficult days, it does help me to think about Jurriaan and Chantal and all the others who were less fortunate than me. Somehow they console me, as much as they did when they were alive. At the very least, I owe them something.
When I think back to what I’ve gone through what strikes me most is that my experience is not so much about cancer but about life, and living it. If you change one letter the word “live” becomes “love.” If there’s any message I’d like to pass on, this is it.
Thank you for reading my story.
Sophie
Paris, June 2015