THE FARM, 2012
The chemotherapy continues, with David spending a full day at the clinic every three weeks. During this treatment he deteriorates physically but seems to grow stronger mentally, having had some time to adjust to his predicament. The human spirit is remarkable. All the fear, anger, negativity and denial has been overtaken by a drive to stay alive for as long as possible. Those worrying emotions still exist, buried somewhere below the surface, but he has managed to find an appreciation of his life just as it is. For me, it’s a huge relief.
Friends and family are a constant. Childhood pals from his days in New Zealand, a cousin and her husband we haven’t seen for years, actors, writers, directors, composers, comedians . . . So many celebratory lunches and dinners, wonderful memories are stirred up and thrashed over. It’s a nonstop party.
He really needs to stay connected to his work colleagues, and a staunch band of long-term film industry friends stay in regular communication. Emails, phone calls and visits. They also come for lunch, and David is more vocal, opinionated and expansive than ever. One Melbourne filmmaking friend has been doing a recorded oral history with him, over the phone. Once a week he sits up in bed with coffee and the newspapers, talking for hours. In every sense these conversations are helping him unpack his life, to make sense of it. I’m well aware that my own writing is a form of therapy, helping me to gain insight and understanding into the events of my life. In the same way David tells anecdotes and stories that bring back memories and emotions, both good and bad.
And yet, we still don’t talk about death except in a cavalier or dismissive way. We don’t seem capable of having that fundamental conversation about the inevitability of dying. We are clinging to the notion that there’s still plenty of time. I’m not sure whether this procrastination is avoidance or a reluctance to put our fears into words. When I do, very rarely, think about David dying it’s always a slow, drawn out process. I imagine myself sitting at his bedside, holding his hand, talking calmly and telling him I love him. Even inside my own head I refuse to project myself forward to that time when I will be alone. It seems disloyal – a betrayal – to visualise a world without him. I refuse to do it. We are living in the present and coping the best we can.
Every now and again David’s anger or fear will bubble up. He’s resentful about having missed this year’s Cannes Festival and gets frustrated when he reads about it in various film journals. If a prominent person dies, especially ‘after a long battle with cancer’, he feels it keenly. He’s concerned about pain management at the end of his life, although he doesn’t ask questions about it during medical visits. It just niggles away at him. Several times he mumbles bitterly ‘the best thing that could happen would be to crash my car into a tree on the way into town’. I brush these melodramatic mutterings aside, reminding him that he’d probably end in hospital with hideous injuries as well as cancer. Obviously, neither of us is coming to grips with the future.
Then everything changes. Chemo finishes and almost immediately David starts to regain a sense of wellbeing. His skin colour brightens, his hair and beard rapidly regrow and the metallic taste in his mouth fades away. Energy returns and he’s sleeping much better and laughing a lot. We live in this state of buoyant limbo for five or six weeks while waiting to have a follow-up full body scan to measure the effectiveness of the chemo treatment. We resume going to a movie once or twice a week, a pleasure we’d had to forgo as he’d been too unwell to enjoy it, and have lunch in town. Our combined sense of relief is palpable, having survived two gruelling rounds of medical intervention.
The oncologist is delighted with the test results and tells us that the primary tumour in the oesophagus is, to all intents and purposes, no longer apparent. He adds that the ‘hot spots’ that indicated the spread of the cancer cells have also been knocked right back by the chemo. He isn’t saying that the cancer has gone, he’s saying that it has taken a severe beating.
Medically, the word ‘remission’ is only applied to patients who have been cancer-free for five years. What we are offered is a ‘period of remission’ while the body recovers strength after the assault of the therapy. Hopefully then the return of the cancer will be very, very slow. David feel positive and believes that the burst of life and energy he’s experiencing reflects the effectiveness of the treatment. To him the benefit of what’s been happening internally is now apparent externally.
We excitedly phone everyone with our good news and we celebrate, just the two of us. The toxic drugs are now well out of his system and we can pick up the threads of our lives and our relationship. Making love in the mornings, it feels weirdly as though nothing has happened. It must have been a bad dream. I feel safe again; I start planning a trek in the Himalayas for next year and David returns to working on his beloved film projects.
Then, five days after the euphoria of our good news, everything changes yet again. Ken phones to say that Margaret has been overwhelmed by a massive infection from an ulcer on her lower back. She’s dying. I pack my bags and leave the following afternoon for Vancouver Island.