Lone Twin

Michelle Diener

Description

'It's hard to cry with sadness while you're laughing with love' This is the story of a much-loved young woman, who died much too early, and the way that she lived her life in the fullest way she knew, right until the very end. This is the story of my sister Nicole's journey with breast cancer, from her diagnosis to her death. But the story goes beyond that, in the same way that Nicole took everything beyond the ordinary. It's also a story of how she managed to live her life, really live it, in the most expansive definition of the word, the whole way through, right up until her last heartbeat. A woman who turned the intrusion of cancer into her life into something that she used to expand her, that made her bigger in so many ways. It's the story of a woman who looked for the lesson and the gift in every moment, and not only treasured it, but used it to create more. It's the story of what it's like to be the sister of a woman who carried this off. It's the story of how you get through it as an outsider, how you help, how you hinder, and how you come out the other side. Living life with a sister with cancer was a challenging but enriching experience - it changed the way I live my life. I hope reading our story gives you something too.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Memoir

Informations

• Publié par: Brown Dog Books
• Date de parution: 02 juin 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785451935
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

First published 2018
Copyright © Michelle Diener 2018
The right of Michelle Diener to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the copyright holder.
Published under licence by Brown Dog Books and The Self-Publishing Partnership, 7 Green Park Station, Bath BA1 1JB
www.selfpublishingpartnership.co.uk
ISBN printed book: 978-1-78545-192-8 ISBN e-book: 978-1-78545-193-5
Cover design by Kevin Rylands Internal design by Andrew Easton
Printed and bound in the UK
To Liam and Chucka
You two, you boys and your stinky boy ways, are the shining proof that she knew what she was doing .
‘But there’s a story behind everything. How a picture got on a wall. How a scar got on your face. Sometimes the stories are simple, and sometimes they are hard and heartbreaking. But behind all your stories is always your mother’s story, because hers is where yours begin.’
Mitch Albom, For One More Day
CONTENTS
Shrinking
The day the hill got harder
In the beginning
■ A storm in a B-cup
■ The bearer of bad news
■ Two peas in a pod
■ Fitting your own oxygen mask first
■ The ironing pile
■ Currents and tidal waves
■ Out of the blue
■ Goodbye lovely breast
■ And then there was one
■ Battle scars
■ Blooming lovely
■ Home to heal
Here we go again
■ Onwards against oestrogen
Gathering the gifts
■ Protection
■ Expanding knowledge
■ Meaningful work
■ The courage to question
■ Enhanced self-esteem
■ Personal freedom
■ Independence
■ Reinvention
■ Simplicity
Here we go again, again
■ Ooommmm
■ C’est la vie
■ Out damn spot
■ Picking up the pieces
■ Food, glorious food
■ Feathering your own nest
■ The gift of motherhood
■ The gift of gratitude
■ The gift of sisterhood
■ Nature’s dispensary
■ Common threads
■ Laughter
■ Comforting rituals
The beginning of the end
■ Emotional release
■ Forewarning
■ Embracing technology
■ Recognising your own limits
■ Size 6
■ The week of the headache
■ Mystical margheritas
■ First encounters
■ Without words
The point of no return
■ Room 8
■ Eerie silence
Looking towards a new normal
■ Limbo
■ The power of touch
■ Now’s a good time for a funeral plan
■ I don’t have a thing to wear
■ The big day
■ Cakes and a cuppa
■ Lost for words
■ Moving towards acceptance
The circles of life
■ Birth and death and everything in between
■ Letter to the little ones, by Auntie Nicole
■ Welcome to the world, by Auntie Nicole
■ Nicole’s obituary
SHRINKING
For the first few days after she died, her house was full to overflowing.
Full of people – they filed in and filled every chair and sat on the carpet until it was standing room only, their cars turning the back yard into a parking lot.
Full of food – the kitchen was crammed with sweet comforting morsels and hearty casseroles from the kitchens of helpful friends and relatives.
Full of sorrow – rubbish bins spilled over with tear-sodden wads of balled up tissues as grieving hearts burst with the force of the pain.
Full of memories – piles of photos appeared everywhere, as though we all feared not seeing her face before us would mean she wasn’t coming back, as we slowly realised that the two-dimensional photos of her would, from now on, be our substitute for a 3D person.
Full of love.
Gradually, once the funeral had come and gone, and some time had passed, people stopped dropping in as often, as they got back on with their own lives. Like a seaside village at the end of the summer tourist season, the house emptied out its visitors, and the permanent residents took stock of what remained after the recent deluge had passed – what they found was a gaping hole in the very fabric of the home’s heart.
Then, slowly, her presence in the house became less too, in so many little ways. The car that was her zippy blue pride and joy sat idle, covered with dust, no dainty hatted head at the wheel. The pot plants on the veranda began to look bedraggled from thirst and abandonment. The wooden outdoor table where she liked to sit quietly and enjoy a cup of tea on a sunny day (and the place we all gathered so often to share so much) gradually became covered with mysterious objects of boyhood, dumped by boys returning home from their day, instead of scented candles and pretty coasters.
Some time back, she had gone out to the family farm and salvaged an old water trough that the sheep no longer drank from, and painted it to use as a tub for growing bulbs. Each winter she would dig the soil over to kill the weeds and plant bulbs on top of the previous year’s bulbs – usually freesias and irises, always daffodils – and look forward to the brightness of their display each spring. The year that breathing had become a chore, and she didn’t have the energy for anything that made her puff, I helped her with the bulb planting ritual. She pretended to be the lady of the manor, waving her hands about gracefully from her garden chair, while she sipped her tea and directed her staff to dig and plant. Her charade made it light-hearted folly, but we both knew she’d rather have the energy to be doing it herself.
She never saw the results of that year’s plantings. As spring came and the sun warmed the earth in the tub, the bulbs emerged and flowered – but by then she was pushing up daisies.
A big round metal tub sat in the porch by the back door, to store her boys’ array of boots and shoes. She had such high hopes for that metal tub – the plan was that her boys would take their muddy boots off by the back door before they came inside the house, and put them, tidily, inside the tub (it never quite worked, but the thought was there).
When she painted the back porch, she painted the tub too, in the same colours; such was her need for order. It was cream and blue, like a giant slice of baked blueberry cheesecake. The tub is still by the back door, and the boots still go in and out of the bucket, more or less. As the seasons change and her boys reach for different boots, the order of the footwear changes over – dusty summer shoes on top, then muddy winter shoes on top, then back to dusty again. Her shoes don’t rotate with the seasons, now her shoes lie permanently on the bottom of the tub. That’s where they’ll always stay, because she won’t be walking our way anytime soon.
The starkest reminder that she was no longer the mistress of the house was the green canvas swing that hung under her back veranda, suspended by a length of rope. The swing had two separate parts, a seat and a foot-rest. She loved that swing; she found the rocking motion soothing and flopped into it whenever she had a spare minute. She loved to rest on a summer’s evening and swing gently in the warm breeze, with the smell of ripe wheat on the air. I remember noticing over time how the seat rested higher and higher off the ground when she sat in it. The length of the rope wasn’t changing, but her body was getting lighter seemingly by the day, and it began to make a much smaller dent in the canvas seat.
And then, when she was gone, the wind pushed the swing one way and the foot-rest the other, spinning round and round, to and fro like a ship without a rudder. Without someone to give it purpose and shape, the swing became just a piece of dusty green canvas, tossed around by the fickle winds.
That swing mirrored perfectly the directionless turmoil we all felt on the inside without her in our lives.
Bit by bit, as he was able to face it, her husband gave away some of her treasures to people he thought would value them. When I moved away to live in colder climes, he gave me one of her scarves to take with me – a wearable hug to wrap myself in, as close as I could ever get to the real thing. When the day came to empty out her wardrobe, he gathered her family around and they all sorted through her clothes and shoes (so many shoes!), her coats and hats and scarves and jewellery and handbags. The practical family members took things they thought they might use, others took favourite items as keepsakes. I took nothing; I had everything I needed from her in my heart. I heard someone on the radio say once that when he was given the task of sorting through his best friend’s belongings after her death, and choosing what he wanted to keep, he didn’t keep a thing. ‘The only thing I wanted was her rose-tinted glasses,’ he said.
What a great line, I wish I’d said that.
Dear Nicole ,
Luv – I can’t believe it – after all that, cancer won!! What more could you possibly have done?
I’ve just written your obituary – what a thing! Writing that reminded me of the letters you wrote to my first baby all those years ago. Except I was writing the final full-stop at the end of a story, and your letters were the first capital letter at the start of a brand-new story .
I’ve been talking to you out aloud just like normal, ever since that morning in the hospital when you left us – I’ve been waving my arms and gesturing and asking you questions as though you’re right there beside me, because I swear I can see you still – but you’re not answering back. I thought I should write some things down instead, get it all out of my head, to see if that helps my brain process that you’re not going to be answering me ever again. Before someone has me put away and I end up in a padded cell. You’re actually really gone. I don’t have a clue what to do with that .
I just feel incredulous right now (good word huh?). What the hell?
I’m going to write a story about you; that might help me I think. I’ll sit down and write every Thursday lunchtime, in that couple of hours we had together each week, between your v