Sunday 20rh May 2012
Growing up as we did in uncertain circumstances, my mother had a few sayings that made light of the situation. When as a small boy I asked, "What's for dinner?" the answer always was, "roast duck and green peas." Now as roast duck had never ever appeared on my plate, I had nothing to go on; but as for the peas being "green," that really flummoxed me. "Aren't peas always green?" that voice in my head kept asking, but I never confided in my mother over this conundrum, because my inclination, from a very early age, when confronted with something that I didn't understand, was to try to find the answer myself.
And I was just the same at school. When the teacher first told us that a noun was: "the name of a person place or a thing," I fell behind in class, when it was pointed out that some things that I thought were nouns, were not. What bothered me, was the concerting of nouns with "things." Now whether or not I was especially bright, and the rest of my classmates were bluffing, or I was in some sense deficient, I will leave you to decide; but, from where I sat at my desk, any idea that came into my head was, "a thing," which made it well-nigh impossible to conceive of anything that wasn't a noun. And I was just as bad, when my ear was glued to the wireless, listening to serious voices telling me that strike breakers had been, "sent to Coventry." At moments like these I would come away perplexed, wondering what it was about Coventry that caused people to be sent there; and I never thought to ask for an explanation, for to wonder was more important than to know.
All of that said, and in the context of my nose, when we come to look back, Saturday the 19th of May will mean different thing to different people, and especially if their forte was sport. A day if you like of extremes of emotion. Happily, for those who are running in the relay that will carry the Olympic flame from Lands End in Cornwall to the Olympic Stadium in East London, there will be no losers. But spare a thought for the players and fans of Ulster, (Rugby) who were thumped 42-14 by Leinster, in what was an all Irish, Heineken, European Cup Final; and for Hibernian, (football) beaten 6-1 by their Edinburgh city rivals Hearts, in the Scottish FA Cup Final. And Blackpool, who failed to secure promotion back to the Premier League. I have nothing whatever against the people of West Ham, but I have a soft spot for "the seasiders", whose manager Ian Holloway was a refreshing voice when they were last in the Premier League. And what of Bayem Munich and their fans, who could, and should have won the prise that went instead to Chelsea: the European Champions League Final; and all the more hurtful, as they lost at their own stadium in Munich. As a spectacle the match offered little until the 84th minute, when Buyem scored, only for Didier Drogba in the dying seconds to make it 1-1. And the thirty minutes of extra time was just as forgettable. But again Buyem who appeared to be winning the penalty shoot-out, lost, to that talisman, Drogba.
Now sincere apologies if you are not interested in football, but as I am, and I missed all but the last of these showcase events, it fits the bill, for I will remember the 19th May as the date in which the second, and hopefully final stage of reconstructive surgery on my nose, took place. I say "hopefully final," because when Dr Moncrieff spoke to me before the operation, he held out the prospect of further surgery: when the bulge in the graft would have to be paired down. But afterwards, he seemed well pleased with his work, and inclined to the view that further surgery wouldn't be necessary. So my hope is, that when we meet again, that will still be the case.
In my previous blog I wrote, I hope, with precision and skill, as well as a degree of humour, about my pre and post operative experiences: of the general anaesthetic and the subtle way in which the anaesthetist went about knocking me out. And I told of the unexpected pleasure when I found myself wrapped in a thermal blanket. Well this time it was different. As I lay on the operating table, with a wry smile, and an apology, I confirmed to the nurse, (seemingly for the umpteenth time,) that I was who I was supposed to be. At that moment my sense of the ironic, came from the fact that I was wearing two name tags, one on my left wrist and the other on my right ankle; and my apology was in recognition of the seriousness of the processes that were underway, as will be apparent from this, a story that I know to be true, because it happened to me
In 2001. after an appendectomy, I had a longish stay in hospital, and when I had got to the point where I was no longer in need of careful attentions, but was not quite ready to go home, they moved me into a private room. I had not been lying there long and marvelling at my good fortune, when a geeky nurse (professorial looking and bespectacled,) appeared at the side of my bed. In her hand she had a large syringe and asked rhetorically: "You are Mr Hall?" Well I never found out what was in the syringe, nor did I complain. Without doubt I had at least one name tag, almost certainly on my wrist, but as this strange creature had wanted to hear directly from the horses mouth, I was thankful that I knew who I was, and could tell her so.
Well returning to the operating theatre, they were busy fixing me up to the heart and blood pressure monitors, the oxygen supply, and other things, when one of the nurses turned and asked if I was alright. In the circumstances it was an entirely reasonable question to ask, but as I was not sure that her asking it, was a coincidence, in reassuring her, I felt the need to explain that I had just been engaged in what was - a very private moment.
As for the post operative experience in the recovery room, I wasn't at all happy with myself: my mouth was dry, my throat uncomfortable, and I was struggling to cough and felt agitated; and there was no thermal blanket to keep me company, just ice cubes, for which I was mighty grateful. Now I don't want to speculate as to why I felt so different this time around, or to imply that in an age of cost-cutting, there was something less that the best in the treatment I received. To begin with, I have no professional knowledge to go on; and that apart, this operation was quite different from the original more extensive surgery. So the processes surrounding it may justifiably have been different; and help to explain why I felt so rough, and was missing that thermal blanket.
Now in telling my story there is a sense in which I feel that I am cheating, with the dramatic headline, "CANCER", for however concerning mine was, it was never life threatening. And even if I accept, that when one thing goes badly wrong, it might be the catalyst for worse to come, I still feel uneasy, because I know that for many, cancer is a deeply distressing, and all too frequently, fatal condition.
On Thursday last, at the local Parish Church, we attended the funeral of Charlotte, a loved family friend, who died after a six year battle with the disease; and adding to the sadness, was the fact that her death came just a few days after her sixtieth birthday. Through most of her illness she shared her experiences with her many friends, only in the latter stages did she leave us to come to our own conclusions, as she opted out of her regular engagements, and left the door open as to whether or not she would or would not turn up on a particular day. All of us understood that she would not recover, but what took us aback, was the speed of her decline at the end. And something of her courage and commitment to her friends, is reflected in her coming here to dinner with her husband Richard, just a month before she died. She ate little and stayed for a long time, and rightly or wrongly, as we thought about how long they had stayed, we interpreted it as Charlotte's way of thanking us for our friendship and of saying goodbye.
Until she discovered her own cancer, Charlotte had lived a full and healthy life, during which, and though she had lived in different places, she had made and kept many friendships, a truth affectionately confirmed, when Jenny, after the funeral, asked of someone whom she knew to be a friend, where she met Charlotte. Just one word said it all, "Everywhere!" She had a passion for the outdoors; for walking, not just here at home, but in far away exotic locations, and this aspect of her life was reflected in the funeral service that was a celebration of her life. The small church was packed, and though the vicar reminded us that it was a place in which prayers had been said for a thousand years, my experience of life, told me, that at this poignant moment, believers, non believers and skeptics, were well represented.
Well as a believer with his own share of uncertainty, allow me to tell you of something unexpected that came from Charlotte's funeral. Among her chosen hymns was Lord of the Dance. I was familiar with it, but, believing it to belong to what is sometimes called the "happy-clappy" movement, I never thought to take it seriously. But now I was experiencing it differently, as a hymn deeply rooted in the Gospels, and one that confronts the world as it appears to us, in particular the dichotomy between the presence and absence of God in the world; an absence, that for many, quite literally, "beggars belief". And in terms of these seeming contradictions there was something majestic, powerful, and challenging, in the Dance, that I hadn't noticed before.
Though the hymn is well known, it is still under copyright, so I quote it only in part, but in a way that I hope will help to reinforce the point.
For me, there was a particular ring of truth in those opening lines that remind us: that it was fishermen, and not the acclaimed religious leaders, "the scribe and the pharisee" (who were expecting the Messiah,) who responded to Christ. And there was a deeper truth in those lines that address the vexed question of suffering:
"I danced on the Sabbath and I cured the lame.
The holy people said it was a shame.
They whipped and they stripped and they hung me on high;
They left me there on the cross to die."
Here, I was being reminded of the truth, that God incarnate subjected himself to the worst excesses in the human condition: to a barbaric form of execution, in which, (even by our standards,) there was no justice; whatever, and that, to that extent at least, we can know the mind of God.
Nor had I spotted until now, in the hymn's happy refrain, that there is an invitation and subtly expressed message of hope:
"Dance, then, wherever you may be;
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he,
And I'll lead you all, wherever you may be,
And I'll lead you all in the Dance, said he."
The point being, "wherever" [in your life] "you may be."
Now in wanting to make the point that however inconvenient or taxing, my cancer was as nothing compared to what it might have been; I want to tell you also, that when I first went in to hospital, I brought with me, the "Wishing you well again soon" message, that Charlotte posted through the letterbox less than three weeks before she died.
And now that I can once again wear my reading glasses, for me, the dance does go on. So, it is back to the poetry of Yeats, to Dante's Divine Comedy, and the late historian Alan Bullock's vast study of the "Parallel Lives" of Hitler and Stalin, and to books of poetry that I have yet to read, and in the hope that all this endeavour, will, at some point in the future, feed in to another book of poems. And on the subject of published poems, I must tell you that mine had nothing to do with UNESCO recently declaring Norwich to be a city of literature. As I understand it, the award is given in perpetuity, and it is the first city in England to receive it. And right now we are in the midst of the Norfolk & Norwich Festival, that some are claiming will soon be on a par with that of Edinburgh. So myself and Jenny will be cultured out when it is over. Recently it was the Berlin Symphony Orchestra and Julian Lloyd Webber accompanying them on his 17c Cello. And last night at the Theatre Royal, we were warmly applauding an Afro Cubism eleven piece band; that as you would expect, was musicianship of the highest order, with dancing in the isles.
Wednesday 14th June 2012
So far so good & the sheen comes from Bio Oil which I will be using for the next couple of months
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© Cormac McCloskey
