Green fuse

I’ve been spending a lot of time at Plot 44, a place where I find a lot of solace, which has been much needed in the last few months. Because it’s five months now since Rach died, and her memory is still very much with me;  I hear her voice and I think about conversations we’ve had, and ones we’ll never now have. I’ve spent time making films to remember her, planted the Wollemi Pine for her, written her name on stone. For Rach.

One of the things that I am most happy about is that I took the opportunity to perform Rachel’s ‘celebration of life’ service in New Jersey. In those awful first 48 hours after I found out Rach had died, I had several Skype conversations with Gayle Sulik and when the possibility of me doing the service came up I wasn’t really sure if I could. I mean, how could I do that in my own grief? But to be asked by Rachel’s husband to do this, for her, it felt too important not to do it. And I’ve been to funerals which were OK, but not really ‘great’. I didn’t feel they ‘celebrated’ the person, they were too plain, too impersonal, and it felt wrong at those times that there wasn’t a good ‘send off’.

At the beginning of this year I’d been thinking about training to become a celebrant to perform funerals – services for life celebrations after death – in fact, exactly the sort of service we had for Rach. I’d even talked to Rach about it, she thought it was a great idea. I didn’t imagine for a moment that the first funeral I’d do would be hers.

The shit filter

All in all I think I’ve done OK with this social media thing. I mean given that just over two years ago I didn’t know what Facebook was. Really. I emerged into 2010 from three years in ‘hosptial-land’ (thanks to breast cancer for that) and was plunged back into the ‘real’ world, and when I first heard the socially accepted end of conversation line, ‘Find me on Facebook.’ I said, ‘What’s Facebook?’

Well times move on and now I comfortably use Facebook, Twitter less so (and could somebody tell me what LinkedIn is for?), but I recognise that there are things about this social media stuff that means that I can stay in touch with people, find new friends who share my interests…. all good stuff. But it’s not all good. I mean, there’s just so much STUFF out there. How do you find the good or relevant stuff?

I recently read an article in The Word magazine (no I don’t read it but Ronnie does), and he’d told me about ‘frictionless sharing’. Mark Zukerberg, creator of Facebook, coined this phrase, and the concept is discussed in an article by Eamonn Forde:

“If everything we consume is being shared socially… does anything actually stand out? Sharing just becomes about quantity rather than quality.”

Exactly my feeling too.

Celebrating life

I write a lot about flowers and plants, about gardening on Plot 44, of scenic walks and happy times; about celebrating life, and especially gardening – so much so that I now have another blog where you can follow my gardening activities – Plot 44. But one of the realities of being alive, is that we will face death. We all die. And my experience as a cancer patient means that I’ve thought about death a lot.

And these last few months I am in grief for the death of my friend Rachel, who died of secondary breast cancer age 41, in February 2012. Whose ‘celebration of life’ service I structured and delivered with my friend Gayle Sulik in New Jersey, and the memory of that is a ‘good’ memory. It felt so right to do that for her.

3 February 2012, out on the shining shore on our regular Friday walk, which as it turned out was a few days before Rach died, and the last ‘normal’ Friday for a while.

Just before Rachel died I had, after much thought and reflecting on how breast cancer had changed my life and how I wanted to use that deep reflection, decided to apply for a training course to become qualified as officiant to perform services for life celebrations after death. (This is just one organisation, there are several who offer training). Celebrants are trained to perform unique services to mark the lives of people when they die, without religion, in a way that focuses sincerely and affectionately on the person who has died. Back in 1999 when my father died we had this type of ceremony, and it’s stayed with me as a ‘good’ memory, a happy day, a celebration as well as a time to say goodbye. Now, because of my experience with breast cancer, I’ve become comfortable talking about death, and illness. I am not afraid to have deep conversations, I am comfortable with ‘difficult’ subjects.

I talked to Rach about this, in what was to become our last Skype together. Rach thought it was a great idea. The hurdle for me though, is that I don’t have enough money to pay for the course fees. ‘No worries,’ said Rach, ‘you can just ask people to chip in. I’d chip in for you, you’d be great.’

Oh Rach

The Skyping begins. Rachel interviewing Sarah for her Can Do Women blog, January 2011

Still Ronnie, standing in while Sarah is New Jersey.

Is it still too soon? I want to write Rachel something lovely. Something as good as anything I’ve ever written. (Something as beautiful as her friend Chemobabe’s eulogy, or as world-changingly essential as Gayle’s) She deserves at least that. But I can’t, yet. I need to take the fact and my feelings about her death to the park, to the cathedral, to the river – to my sacred places. I need to tell them about her. And my sense of loss. Until I’ve done that I won’t find the words, my words, for my friend Rachel.

So, for now, here is a very short poem.

End of life

Ronnie reviews a book on a subject all of us with a cancer diagnosis have most likely thought about.

“Death, to paraphrase Steve Jobs, may very well be what makes life so valuable, may well be ‘life’s change agent’. But we still don’t like to talk about it.

It’s a few of months back. Sarah, Fiona Shaw and I are all at the magnificent British Medical Association building in London (Designed by Edwin Lutyens, no less). The formal part of the event is over, Sarah has her ‘Highly Commended’ status for her book, and now it’s drinks and mingling in the crowded hall. But I notice a couple of women there with a large space around them. I remember them winning a special award for their book and go over to congratulate them, wondering why other people aren’t doing the same. ‘This is always happening to us,’ they laughingly explain, when I get to them. ‘People, even the medical people this room is full of, are terrified of our specialist subject. They can barely even say the word. The word Death.’

The two women are Mary Jordan and Judy Carole Kauffmann,  authors of the book ‘End of Life – the essential guide to caring’. Sarah and I have both read the book now, and both think it’s well worth recommending. Here’s why: