Ep.4: Welcome to the club
Before the MRI I went to visit the Maggies Centre with my friend Deirdre. Me and Maggies. 2 weeks ago I hadn’t stepped inside a Maggies Centre apart from when I was recording a programme about cancer. I talked to experts and heard people’s stories and experiences and no doubt nodded in what I thought was an appropriately empathetic I’ll-never-be-one-of-you-guys way. Now I’m here because I’ve joined the club. Nothing prepares you for joining this club.
Maggies is beautiful, from the elegant sweep of the ceiling to the plump, squashy cushions, thoughtful pastels, tasteful artwork and smell of fresh coffee. It wraps around you the minute you step through the door. We’re greeted by a volunteer who smiles and immediately makes us tea. Tea, the universal signal to sit and talk. Permission to remain. I stutter out something about my diagnosis to validate my right to be there. Feel like I need to justify my membership of this exclusive but not exclusive club. After all cancer, as I now discover, excludes no one. Doesn’t matter how fit, fanatical about food or fearless you are, cancer is more than happy to set up home in part of your body.
We sit and drink tea and I soak up the gentle, library like air. There's a reverence here, a church like respect for your pain. Rain hammers at the large windows under a slate, bruised sky. I too feel bruised. I can’t believe that I’m here. I have cancer. It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve silently mouthed those words this past week, they still feel awkward and hard edged. Pam, a generous, gentle spoken antipodean sits opposite me. It’s her job to discover why we’re here and what we might need. Again I stutter about my shiny, just out of the packet, week-old, new born diagnosis. I’m almost apologetic. I feel less qualified to be here by virtue of its newness. Is it wrong to have gone and walked through the doors so soon? Is that normal? Actually I tried to come here at the weekend. I psych'd myself up to come here, tried the locked door then sat and wept in the car feeling I’d failed somehow.
Pam points me to their programme of activities. My eyes flicker over a variety of support groups and stress busting workshops, I quickly skip over the will writing session and linger with thoughts of creative writing and mindfulness, I try to picture a room full of us – because we are now an ‘us’ – wrestling to find a form of words to capture this extraordinary horror. Tapping the paper lightly with the tips of my fingers I push it to one side and ask Pam what I really want to know, how do I tell B, how do I tell my daughter? And this is when I fold, this is when I curl and crease. I can’t do it. I can’t turn her world upside down the way mine has just been turned upside down. I can’t hurt her, can’t watch her face crumple the way I watched David’s. And Pam assures me I will find the right time and the right words but I have to tell her the truth. And that truth is that I’m about to introduce her into a club I wish she didn’t belong to, a club of children who’s parents have cancer and once again I’m appalled at the situation I find myself in.