THE FARM, JUNE 2012
As predicted, David is hit hard by the second round of chemotherapy in early June. His skin’s colour and texture change, turning grey and waxy. His hair and beard begin falling out in clumps on the pillow and in the shower. Descended from the Scottish Picts, tribal Celtic warriors, he has always been pleased with his hairiness. His beard in particular has always been luxuriant and over the decades it has turned grey and then eventually silver. He keeps his hair and beard neatly trimmed and fastidiously tended. He is, like many men, quite vain about his appearance.
Chemotherapy drugs attack and destroy rapidly dividing cells, targeting the tumours but also affecting hair follicles, which are also very active structures that divide to produce the hair growth. David doesn’t just lose his beard and the hair on his head – his eyebrows, eyelashes and body hair is shed over several weeks. He doesn’t want to interfere in this process or to tidy himself up. It’s as though the dramatic change in external appearance is a metaphor for what’s happening inside his body. We just observe it and don’t really discuss it. I pick up the clumps of hair in the shower and change the bedding every couple of days.
He also feels lethargic and apathetic, however the nausea drugs are effective enough for him to continue eating. His appetite’s robust but his tastebuds have changed, leaving a metallic sensation in the mouth. I counter this by making our meals richer and tastier, often very spicy. The intense flavours and heat of the chilli somehow counterbalance the metallic taste. Our food is deliberately high in fats and carbohydrates, with lots of vegetables from the garden to help maintain his weight.
During these chemo months there’s a lot of comfort eating and drinking. Never much of a drinker, David is now having an aperitif gin and tonic before lunch and again before our evening meal. I guzzle wine at lunchtime and again at night. We often sleep in the afternoon then go for a walk if the weather is pleasant. It’s so convivial; the rhythm of the days is gentle and we feel no pressure or anxiety. We are lulled into a sense that everything will just continue like this: the two of us at the farm, enjoying each other’s company, sometimes going to town to see a film and always looking forward to weekend visits from friends and family.
Looking back, it’s curious that during this time death was never discussed. We know it’s there as a constant, but we push it to the periphery of our daily routine. When someone is alive and sitting beside you on the sofa and you are talking, you don’t really want to initiate a conversation about what life will look like when they are no longer around. We do a lot of reminiscing, about the lovely times when the children were young, but also the bad times that are inevitable in any long-term relationship. In particular we talk a lot about the chapter, more than ten years before, when I lost the plot and fell in love with another man in France, and wrote about it with David’s blessing in Last Tango in Toulouse.
David seems to take comfort in going over this major event in our lives. Pulling it all apart, putting it all back together. For me, the memories of this experience are mostly traumatic, so reliving them in conversation is sometimes painful. David seems to need to clarify it again and again, while I’d prefer to lay it all to rest. It denotes the differences between us – I’m more head-in-the-sand; he’s more of a confronter.
It’s also puzzling that in spite of my frequent outrageous behaviour during that time, David did not lay any blame at my feet. In his eyes, none of this was my fault or even my responsibility. Instead he blamed himself for emotional neglect and physical absence in the years leading up to the affair; he blamed the other man for taking advantage of my vulnerability; he blamed menopause, midlife crisis, empty nest syndrome. Just not me. He has always enjoyed the naughty side of my nature and he saw this as just another example of my tendency to be a bit badly behaved. A bit wild.
A psychologist would probably have a field day analysing this relationship twist. Was it because the ‘good’ part of me far outweighed my ‘bad’ or negative attributes? Did he vicariously enjoy my need for adventure? Certainly, he’d taken delight and nurtured my desire to do things that were edgy, maybe even risky. I’d always been full of big ideas and bold enthusiasms and he’d unquestioningly supported them. He never thwarted my need for a ‘larger than life’ life. If I wanted to give birth in the front room instead of going to hospital . . . go for it! If I wanted to take treks into the Himalayas, completely out of communication range . . . fantastic! If I wanted to live alone for six months in a remote French village . . . do it! Make a documentary about a French restaurant . . . why not? He was the one who made all these things possible. He was my enabler.
I knew I was adventurous and energetic, full of drive with high expectations of myself. I suspect that’s what David found attractive and was willing to support. He was also, quite obviously, prepared to accept the downside and the consequences of his wife’s fearless lifestyle. It wasn’t until well after his death that I truly recognised and was deeply grateful for the gift of tolerance he’d given me.