A week after the ceremony John had called in, as he often did, on his way to
work. %26ldquo;Ive got a funny taste in my mouth . . . and a bit of a pain just
here.%26rdquo; He pointed to his breastbone. %26ldquo;Indigestion,%26rdquo; I said. Impossible to
think it was anything else in a superfit 6ft 2in man who relished playing
five-a-side and was never ill. The next day he saw the doctor; two days
later he had a hospital appointment.
I knew then something was wrong: the National Health Service moves swiftly
only when there is something amiss and then it is usually cancer. There was
a round of consultations and tests. On June 29 Johns wife Janet rang me
from the hospital: %26ldquo;Were coming over on our way home.%26rdquo;
I knew from the tone of her voice that it was bad news and immediately I
snapped into emergency mode. We would find the best place in Britain,
Europe, America if necessary. I knew doctors through my charity work they
would advise me. Money would be no object.
When John walked through the door, I said: %26ldquo;Dont worry, darling. This can be
fixed well take you to the best doctors.%26rdquo; For the first and only time I
saw his lip tremble: %26ldquo;Theres nothing they can do. You have to understand
that. Theres nothing to be done.%26rdquo;
I looked at Janet, the most devoted of wives, expecting her to back me up. She
shook her head. John had a tumour in his gullet and the cancer had spread to
his lung. They had been advised that it was terminal. I argued but they were
calmly determined: there was only one acceptable option no chemotherapy,
no radiotherapy, just the best possible use of what time remained. %26ldquo;How much
time?%26rdquo; I asked but they had chosen not to know.
Back then I thought this foolish, although I later came to realise that they
were absolutely right. Instead of ticking away the remaining days we would
move from one objective, one achievement, to another, all the while keeping
the home as happy as possible for Sarah and Laura, their daughters of 14 and
nine.
The next few weeks were the most painful of my life. I had confronted cancer
before: my first husband, Alex, had died of lung cancer but until the last
second of his life we had clung to the hope of recovery. Now I was being
forced to face a reality that I could not bear. Without hope there seemed
nothing to hang on to.
The first few days were a blur as we made arrangements to close down the
driving school that John owned and to reimburse clients who had booked
courses. He had revelled in being his own boss after spending nine happy
years in the Royal Navy; now his working life was over. It was
heart-wrenching to watch the dismantling of a business he had painstakingly
built.
His four brothers rallied round; David and Peter, who both live in the south,
crisscrossed the country in their attempts to help. I feared most for the
effect that Johns illness would have on Philip so close to him in age as
almost to be a twin but he was amazing, silently doing every task that
presented. Mark put himself in charge of Domino, Johns dalmatian, taking
him on the long walks he had enjoyed with his master but which John now
increasingly breathless was unable to manage. Domino couldnt understand
why life had suddenly changed. Neither could the rest of us. Mark exploded
in anger. %26ldquo;They were so happy,%26rdquo; he said. %26ldquo;It isnt fair.%26rdquo; But it was that
very happiness which consoled me. With Janet and the girls, John had indeed
known supreme happiness. That is not given to everyone.
I found myself faced with the dilemma of whether or not to mention what John
was going through. I work on the ITV programme This Morning and I am
connected with a number of charities, so I meet people crowds of them
every day. But now, when they asked the ritual %26ldquo;How are you?%26rdquo;, I would
hesitate.
How was I? Well, I was distraught, but you cant admit that to casual
acquaintances or people youve just met. If I unburdened myself and told the
truth, I knew I would feel a fool. If I said nothing or answered with the
conventional %26ldquo;Fine, thank you,%26rdquo; I would feel a fraud. I couldnt win. So at
first I told nobody what was happening. But, eventually, I did occasionally
try to explain and a most peculiar thing happened. As soon as I had told
someone I would be engulfed by shame. Why had I told such an unforgivable
lie? It was the same feeling you get in childhood when you have told a fib
about your fathers job or about where you are going on holiday, and then
you suddenly realise that you are bound to be found out.
Except that this wasnt a lie; it was a terrible truth so why did
I feel guilty when I spoke of Johns illness? The mind, I discovered, can
play tricks on you when you are under stress.
And the reactions of some people saddened me. John like David, Philip
and Peter is my stepson, while Mark is the child of my first
marriage. When I said: %26ldquo;One of the boys is seriously ill,%26rdquo; there would be a
swift intake of breath and then: %26ldquo;Which one?%26rdquo; When I said %26ldquo;John%26rdquo;, they would
reply %26ldquo;Oh%26rdquo; in a relieved tone of voice. As long as it wasnt my %26ldquo;own%26rdquo; son,
the news wasnt as bad as it might have been. But I had been Johns
stepmother for 32 years. Had they no conception of how love can grow?
Only one thing was easier than I had feared. I had wondered from that first
moment how I would talk to my son without breaking down. That worry was
without foundation. He made it so.
It is a strange feeling when your child holds you up rather than the other way
round. The boy I had reared was now a man and a brave one. When I arrived at
his house or Janet brought him to see me, I would kiss him, something I had
not usually done since hed grown up. He would accept that and then begin to
tell me something about his beloved Sunderland football club, or the
weather, or what the children had done at school. The ice broken, I could
prattle away. As he grew weaker I would sometimes murmur %26ldquo;I love you%26rdquo; as we
kissed goodbye, but that was all. Neither of us could afford to display
emotion. If he cried, he cried alone or with Janet, who sustained him.
I was still working; but without my colleagues Fern Britton and Phillip
Schofield I couldnt have managed it. They were incredibly kind, but it was
more than that.
Being a presenter on live television is akin to being a trapeze artist: you
need to be sure of a safe pair of hands if you fall and need catching. I was
more in need of that certainty than ever now and in Fern and Phil I had the
safest hands in the business.
The warmth of the phone room, the nerve centre of This Morning, closed around
me. The make-up department lifted my spirits. Tim the floor manager would
take my arm if I stumbled in the studio. Cups of tea appeared every five
minutes. I was being watched over and it helped.
Two weeks after Id received the news about John, This Morning ended for its
summer break. As usual, we were going out with a bang. It was sunny. We were
out on the Embankment and crowds were gathering to watch the filming.
I was supposed to be keeping score for some wacky races and I did my best, but
I cant remember what else was in the programme. Eventually it was time for
the rousing finale. I felt seriously weird, almost as though I was watching
myself take part in a charade, but at last it was over and I could go home.
Back at Johns house a helpful Macmillan nurse had arrived, but the NHS
appeared to have washed its hands of him. He was prescribed pain relief,
which Janet administered every few hours, and I could see the anxiety in his
eyes. Would the drugs kick in before the pain intensified? There was no
other treatment; only widely spaced appointments to chart the progress of
the disease.
We agreed that John and his family needed a break. So we found a hotel in
Yorkshire with a swimming pool for the children and off they went. That week
the summer weather went berserk. Gales, sheeting rain . . . I sat thinking
of them, penned in the hotel with their thoughts, and I wept. Sometimes it
can seem that the gods are against you.
Soon after their return I arrived to find John sitting in the living room.
%26ldquo;See whats next door,%26rdquo; he said, gesturing towards the dining room. He
sounded quite pleased and I went to look without a trace of apprehension. It
was a wheelchair. The boy who had once played football every week was now
reduced to a wheelchair and he was taking it better than me. %26ldquo;Very
nice,%26rdquo; I said, coming back into the room. I couldnt think of anything else
to say.
He was growing rapidly weaker, something I had not expected so soon. I started
to be fearful about how his life would end. It did not help that when I told
people the diagnosis, they would shake their heads in despair. Some would
even purse their lips and say: %26ldquo;Oh dear, is that what it is? Its a terrible
end.%26rdquo;
I tried to be sensible but terror was overcoming me. Then one day I had a
telephone call from Andrew Cant, the professor who heads the Bubble Unit
which exists to save children born without an immune system who would
otherwise die in the first year of life. As president of the charitable
foundation that supports it, I had always admired Andrews medical skills.
Now he was ringing to ask if there was anything he could do.
%26ldquo;Im frightened,%26rdquo; I told him. %26ldquo;Im worried about how it will end.%26rdquo; There was a
pause and then he said, very quietly but firmly: %26ldquo;I would be very
disappointed in my own profession if they didnt make sure that it ends
peacefully.%26rdquo; Coming from a physician I didnt know, I might not have
believed those words. Coming from Andrew, they could be trusted completely.
Meanwhile, my distress was compounded by the quagmire of form-filling into
which Janet had been plunged. Applications for the benefits to which they
were entitled were so complicated that you wondered how anyone, even with a
PhD, ever completed them. Five weeks went by without a penny forthcoming,
even though Johns income had ceased on the day he was diagnosed.
At one stage Janet was told by the social security office: %26ldquo;The trouble is,
hes not on our system.%26rdquo; What a crazy world it is when the fact that you
have never previously missed a days work in your life renders you
disadvantaged.
John was surrounded by a loving family that was reasonably affluent and ready
to help, if necessary. He had been provident with money. But what if he had
not been? How do you feed two children for five weeks on thin air while the
applications are stalled in the system? There must be a better way.
Another short break was planned, this time to the shores of Loch Lomond. The
family car was packed with wheelchair, medical supplies and the oxygen
cylinders that now accompanied John everywhere. After they had left, I held
my breath and watched the clock until the call came. It was John, ringing
from the balcony above the pool. %26ldquo;The girls are in there already,%26rdquo; he said.
He sounded really happy.
At around this point I started feeling physically weak. The legs that had
allowed me to sprint across Kings Cross station to be first in the taxi
queue had difficulty carrying me across a room. I felt old and fragile. The
effects of ageing had never previously crossed my consciousness; now they
appeared to have come upon me almost overnight.
I was dithery. It was harder to concentrate. Letters were pouring in, some
congratulating me on the freedom or the MBE, others commiserating with me
over Johns illness. I watched them mount up but made no move to acknowledge
them. What could I say: %26ldquo;Yes, its great about the MBE
did you know that my son is dying?%26rdquo;
For years I had received letters from bereaved parents, all saying that this
was a bereavement like no other. I had only half-believed them. Now I knew
they spoke the truth. Losing your parents is heartbreaking, but it is also
in the natural order of things. Losing a partner is devastating for, in
addition to the agony, you also lose your way of life. But there is a subtle
difference about losing that next link in the chain, the child you have
nurtured and brought to adulthood.
I had not given birth to John, but I couldnt have loved him more if I had
and now I was losing him. However, I knew I couldnt give way. The family
needed me to be strong; they didnt need someone obsessed with her own pain.
So I kept smiling, and I kept working which was my only escape.
Things then took a turn for the worse. John was having difficulty swallowing,
which distressed him. %26ldquo;I cant even swallow my own saliva,%26rdquo; he told me. They
took him into hospital and a stent was placed in his throat. The operation
was effective, the medical and nursing care impeccable, but my anxiety for
him was mixed with rage.
Someone visiting a patient with terminal cancer should not have to worry about
finding change for car parking, as Janet continually had to do, or worry
about being clamped if the ticket expired. And it was a disgrace that John
was kept waiting on a trolley in a corridor for five hours without
pain relief or food because there was no bed, and might have stayed
there even longer if Janet had not demanded action. It certainly would not
have been tolerated in the days when I worked in the NHS as a medical
secretary.
Watching Janet surmount every obstacle was proof that a loving marriage can
conquer everything. At one stage, I said to my husband Bryan: %26ldquo;If John said
he wanted to scale Everest, she would strap him to her back and start
climbing.%26rdquo; She had always been quiet and pleasant, even self-effacing. Now
that she needed to be forceful, she was unstoppable.
The summer was coming to an end and one more expedition to Loch Lomond was
planned. I know now that Janet and John used their time in Scotland to plan
for a future when he would no longer be there. He had always had a passion
for detail and Im sure he derived pleasure from working out how best to
protect his loved ones with a plan that he knew Janet would execute. When
they came home, it was obvious that there would be no more excursions.
As always, we arranged to hold our annual summer family day, when we all come
together and a picture is taken of the entire clan. Now, of course, there
was an added significance: it would be the last photograph with John.
When the time came for it to be taken, he insisted on getting out of the
wheelchair. Slowly and carefully, he made his way into the garden and stood
beside me. I smiled for the photographer, but I felt as though my heart
would break.
Word came that my investiture was to take place on November 2. I could take
three guests: my husband, of course, but who should the other two be? Could
John manage it? When I asked him, he shook his head: %26ldquo;I want to come, but
what if I cant make it at the last minute? Youll have wasted the ticket.%26rdquo;
Thinking about the protocol, the police checks, all the red tape that
surrounds royalty, I wasnt at all sure the palace would tolerate a
last-minute switch. But when I rang the relevant office, expecting a
refusal, I was told: %26ldquo;Of course we can change the ticket, if we have to, but
lets hope we dont. Well arrange for you to come in by another entrance to
accommodate the wheelchair.%26rdquo;
I rang John to tell him it was all arranged. The next moment the phone rang
again. It was the palace. %26ldquo;Ive been talking to my colleagues. . .%26rdquo; Clearly,
protocol had won; that first kind response had been overruled. But the voice
continued: %26ldquo;We think you should bring another son, anyway. Were sending
another ticket.%26rdquo; When I put down the phone, I cried. Kindness ruins your
self-control.
London hotels and trains had been booked to accommodate Johns chair. Janet
had arranged for oxygen to be delivered to the hotel; everything was in
place. The day before our planned departure, she rang me: %26ldquo;I dont think he
can make it.%26rdquo; Philip, Mark, Bryan and I went down by train later that day. I
watched the landscape unrolling the remnants of summer crops, the
ploughing and replanting. The cycle of life is sometimes hard to accept.
We reached the courtyard of the palace as a car roared in, with Princess Anne
at the wheel. Later I would learn that the Queen had gone down with sciatica
and the princess had been hastily summoned to take her place. As we
proceeded to the room where the investiture would take place, two officials
came up to me separately and whispered: %26ldquo;Did your son manage to make it?%26rdquo;
They had remembered.
I had always thought Princess Anne aloof, but as I walked towards her and made
my curtsy, she smiled at me: %26ldquo;Strange to see you here and not on television.
And 34 chari-ties! You obviously share my chronic inability to say %26lsquo;No.%26rdquo; I
could only marvel. Called in at a minutes notice and still she had mastered
her brief.
Soon after the investiture there was a rapid deterioration. Again there seemed
to be little help from the NHS. Increasingly I was feeling that from the
moment the diagnosis was made, John had been written off.
Now he no longer got out of bed, but he still smiled when you arrived and
listened attentively to any scrap of news. The children were quieter: they
knew he was very ill but nobody broached the subject of death. My view was
that children cope better with the fact of death than the anticipation of
it. I havent changed my mind.
One day Janet rang me: %26ldquo;He wants to go into hospital.%26rdquo; An hour later she rang
again. A bed had been found for him in a hospice where I had worked as a
girl.
I drove over and found him installed in a room, admiring the television at the
foot of his bed. Technology had always fascinated him; one of his favourite
teases was about my inability to master anything that had more than on and
off switches. He tried out the new television, decided it was a good one and
settled back on his pillows. The room was quiet and peaceful, a cocoon
against the outside world. Nurses came and went but there was no sense of
bustle. Janet whispered in my ear: %26ldquo;This is paradise.%26rdquo;
%26ldquo;Ill bring Domino in to see you tomorrow,%26rdquo; I said. When I rang a few hours
later, John was resting. Everything was fine. I went to bed, but I was still
awake when the phone rang. The nurses thought I should come. John was
unconscious now and Janet needed support.
I was there in 20 minutes. He looked as though he was sleeping and she was
holding his hand and murmuring to him. I took his other hand and so we
stayed, through the night, while his breathing slowed.
When he was a boy, he had begged me to stop him biting his nails. I painted
them with some foul-tasting liquid, but he developed a liking for it. You
could always rely on John to defy the norm. Now, the hand I held was the
hand of a 44-year-old man, its nails unbitten, but he seemed to have shrunk
in the bed, only the length of his legs a reminder of the tall man he had
been.
He died just before 6am. And it was the untroubled end that Professor Cant had
prophesied.
I kissed him then and tiptoed away. The nurses who had come and gone so
quietly through the night, bearing cups of tea, easing pillows,
administering drugs, were waiting in the corridor. %26ldquo;Hes gone,%26rdquo; I said and
they put their arms around me. If I had the power, I would build a hospice
on every corner.
Arm in arm, Janet and I went out into the hospice grounds. It was November 22
and still dark, but the birds were already singing in the trees. We didnt
speak. What was there to say?
Two nights later I kept a promise to attend the launch of a scheme to help
prevent suicide in young men. Bryan begged me to send my apologies but I
thought it was important to go. When you lose someone you love, you need to
know that they were important, that their death mattered.
Like the parents who were behind the scheme, I had lost a son although
my wound was a clean cut while suicide can leave a jagged edge. I was
supposed to do the consoling that evening. In the event, it was those
mothers and fathers who consoled me.
Slowly life returned to a kind of normality. On This Morning, I had to deliver
my usual Christmas message, trying to offer something to people whose
Christmas, for one reason or another, could not be merry. I had done it 18
times before. This time I would know exactly how it felt to be on the other
side of the camera. I managed. Then came the usual finale. A band was
playing, we were all swaying along to the music. As my legs give way, I felt
Phillip Schofields arm come round me and we swayed together till the
credits rolled.
At home I prepared for a Christmas that I was dreading, but which the children
needed to happen. We laughed and cried and Christmas came and went. New year
was harder. My mind was up to tricks, filling me with the notion that I
would be leaving John behind in the old year. I wanted to cling to 2006 as
long as I could.
At last the chimes rang out: it was over and suddenly I knew that nothing
not even the passage of time can take away memories. I will always
see Johns face at the kitchen window upside-down because he
was hanging from the roof the young sailor home from the sea, the
beaming bridegroom, the loving father, the clever man who would patiently
explain for me the intricacies of Sky+. Those pictures are safe in my head
and will be there for ever.
A year on, I am back to normal physically although I tire more easily. I cry
sometimes and have to avoid some music because it stirs memories. I
sometimes find myself saying: %26ldquo;I must tell John about that.%26rdquo; The family are
gradually taking up their lives again and, when we meet, there is the old
jollity. But nobody forgets.
Extracted from Agony? Dont Get Me Started . . . by Denise Robertson,
published by Max Press at %26pound;7.99. Copies can be ordered for %26pound;7.59 including
postage from The Sunday Times BooksFirst on 0870 165 8585
