Beth was diagnosed when our son, Elliot, was seven.
Ben waited in reception with Elliot while we discussed Beth’s treatment plan with her consultant, Dr Kelly Jackson. He kept our son company while we talked through cold hard alternatives with the doctor who was to be our guide through this horrific new reality. People like to imagine cancer patients as brave fighters, but I know from bitter experience some of them are just as scared and emotionally traumatized as one might imagine them to be. Beth and I spent many tearful nights trying to rationalize the ill fortune that had touched us out of so many billions. We wanted to understand why it was our fate to suffer, but of course there are no good answers to those kind of questions, so over time you learn it’s pointless to dwell on the why, and simply get on with the how.
We tried not to live in the negative, but faced with such uncertainty it is impossible not to explore every outcome. We pictured life without her and as her condition worsened, we discussed the things she wanted of me if she was taken from our family. She was worried about Elliot and wanted my assurance he’d be raised to be a happy, loving, kind, considerate man. She wasn’t concerned with ambition or attainment. For her the only measure of success in life is happiness. She made me promise I’d do my best to make that my priority, and of course I gave my word. It pains me to know I broke that promise, and not a day goes by that I don’t regret my failure. I did the one thing that would guarantee Elliot would never be happy. I left him, and it is my eternal shame that I can’t reach out to him and explain why. I can seek absolution in this book, but he will never read it. You might hate me, you might pity me, but your thoughts amount to nothing when all I want is my son’s forgiveness.
The leadership team at the university were good, and gave me all the time I needed to support Beth. Ben was with us day and night, running errands, looking after Elliot, constantly mothering us as though we were his children. He was without a doubt the best friend we could have had, which is one of the reasons why the truth was so hard to deal with. If he hadn’t lied to us –
I can hardly bring myself to imagine the alternative.
We raised money for a new T-Cell therapy from America, and I’ll never forget the night we held a candlelit vigil outside Longhaven. Hundreds of people came, and most of the university staff, many students, and much of Leek turned out to support us and share what they could afford. I was so emotional I could hardly talk, and Ben had to tell everyone what the night meant to us. He spoke in touching terms about Beth, and I could see the love shining in his eyes. Over the next few weeks, we made the $250,000 target.
She lived eighteen months longer than the original prognosis, but finally she was taken from us.
Ben and I were with her the night she died. She had a private room in the Royal Stoke Hospital, and we took turns to sit vigil. Towards the end, neither of us could bear to leave, so one would sleep in a chair in the corner of the room, while the other sat with Beth and held her hand.
I was sleeping when Ben woke me to say Dr Jackson thought it was nearly time. I’ve written millions of words, but I still cannot find a way to describe the emptiness that spread from my core and engulfed me. Those words don’t do it justice. None can. It is a visceral experience beyond the confines of language. These words on the page are intended to evoke emotion. They connect my brain to yours, but sometimes they aren’t enough and I have to ask you to reach for experience, to trawl the depths of memory to understand how it felt.
If you’ve lost someone you love, you will know. If not, I envy you your innocence. It is an anguish so deep, so primitive, it burns, but this animalistic sense of loss is combined with a consciousness that understands the notion of time and can conceptualize the permanent absence that will blight the rest of our lives. It is our unique curse to grieve for what was and lament what might have been. All those shared moments never to be realized. A son motherless. A husband robbed of the light by which he steered.
I went to her bed, and Ben and Dr Jackson stepped back to give me the pretence of privacy. Beth was on the edge of consciousness, but I like to think she knew it was me who held her hand at the end. Her fingers were as light as dry twigs and her skin was paper white, almost translucent. Blue veins lurked beneath the surface, transporting broken blood back to her ailing heart with each erratic beat. We’d been warned to expect Cheyne–Stokes breathing, and her breaths grew shallower and shallower with each rise and fall of her emaciated chest, and then finally she took the breath we’d been warned about. A long draw that was different from all the rest – deep, raw, and final, as though her body was saying goodbye.
And then she stopped.
She was gone.
I cried.
I wept like never before.
I wanted whatever foulness had taken her to reach out and take me too. I had known death was coming, but it is one thing to imagine something so profound, quite another to live it. Ben and Dr Jackson led me out. I don’t really remember much beyond that. They took me somewhere. Words were spoken, but I didn’t hear them.
My beloved Beth was gone.
She died as I held her hand.
That’s all I really remember of that night.