Remembering Rach: Written on stone

May, my favourite month in this country. Spring arrives. We walk, as usual, on Fridays. One Friday we go a bit further than usual, driving to Anglesey to walk on the beach to the island of Llanddwyn. Ronnie’s written about it on the Friday walks series, with photos.

It’s a beautiful place. Magical. When you arrive at the car park in Newborough you can’t see the beach, it’s behind the sand dunes. But when you walk through them and then see the view open up in front of you, it still feels like the first time I came here. An intake of breath, it’s so absolutely beautiful. And on this day it’s nearly high tide. It’s captivating.

11 May 2012, the beach at Newborough, Anglesey.

And, for me, almost as captivating as the view, is the fact that this is a beach covered in pebbles.

I immediately start picking up stones, selecting from the range of greys. Ronnie joins me and I say, ‘I need 23 stones, like this one.’

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.

Losing Rachel

Rachel and her dog Newman

My friend Rachel died on 6 February this year. From metastatic breast cancer. She was 41. She will be greatly missed by her beloved husband Anthony, her family, her friends, her dog and the thousands of people who read her sharp, angry and witty words on her blog where she challenged mainstream breast cancer culture: The Cancer Culture Chronicles. She was my friend. In fact, she was one of my closest friends, found in the blogosphere and we became close despite the 3,500 miles that separated us. Her death came too soon, I was not ready for this and the grief has been profound.

In the grief of Rach I’ve been remembering other things. Sort of introspectively remembering my life since my breast cancer diagnosis, things that happened.

So not right

February 2012. Flying to New Jersey to say goodbye to Rach.

On the way home from New Jersey I find myself in a window seat next to two British women on the plane. They were sitting in front of me on the way over and I remember them, they are happy, laughing, enjoying themselves. The inevitable ‘what did you do?’ conversation ensues. They’ve done ‘everything’ in New York, having travelled over to see Barry Manilow in concert (does he still play I wonder to myself, although the women tell me he wasn’t well and the concert was cancelled.) So when it’s my turn I just say I went to a funeral. ‘Oh,’ they say. ‘My friend died,’ I say. ‘Of breast cancer,’ I say. They look at me. ‘How old was she?’ they ask. ‘Forty-one,’ I say. ‘Oh,’ they say. ‘It fucking pisses me off good style,’ I say. I don’t mean to swear but I’m so angry. And all this last week I’ve been having very short conversations which punctuate very long silences which consist of few words, ‘This fucking sucks.’ Because it does.

I look out the window. The runway, we’re moving out now. ‘American?’ they ask. ‘No,’ I say, ‘Australian British.’ ‘How old?’ they say, again. ‘Forty-one,’ I say. ‘Yes, we know a girl‘, they say, ’27,’ they say, ‘with a daughter. Yes, she left a daughter behind.’

Oh, I think, so that’s worse than Rach is it?

Words for Rach

February 2012. From Liverpool to New Jersey, rosemary for remembrance. For Rach.

On Monday 6 February 2012 my dear friend Rachel Cheetham, blogger at The Cancer Culture Chronicles, died of metastatic breast cancer. This last week I left the blog in the good hands of my beloved partner Ronnie Hughes, as I travelled over to New Jersey to say goodbye to Rach. I’ll be posting more about this, and also editing film of the service. But for now, here are my words for Rach, as read by me on Saturday 11 February 2012 at the ‘Celebration of Life’ service for Rachel in New Jersey.

—

I’ve only known Rach for a fairly short time, but we very quickly became close. I was looking back through my emails to see when we started to get to know each other and I found the first message from her in November 2010. You see Rach and I both inhabit the ‘blogosphere’ – that’s what we call the space where we bloggers meet. Yes I have a breast cancer blog, like Rach. I too have been diagnosed with breast cancer, at a relatively early age, have been treated, have spent years of my life being a patient. But unlike Rach, I’m lucky. I’m lucky because my cancer hasn’t behaved like Rach’s did – at least not yet. So I’m still here to talk about the life I’m living after diagnosis, which for the most part doesn’t involve much medical intervention. But the thing that Rach and I immediately had in common was that we disliked the culture of breast cancer that wanted us to be triumphal survivors. You may have read Rachel’s obituary, written by Anthony (her beloved husband), about how they got on with their lives after Rachel’s diagnosis and treatment….

Confident treatment was successful, because everyone “survives” breast cancer, don’t they?

But in fact, not everyone survives breast cancer, and bloggers like me and Rach felt that telling the truth about breast cancer might actually help us start finding a cure, and eradicating the disease in the first place.

I can hear music

A Sky of Honey, in times of trouble

Ronnie here, with some music. Because we need it now.

When I find myself in times of trouble, music always comes to me.

When I can’t even bear the sounds of silence, I need music. Not any old music, though. Very particular music.

On the day Sarah was diagnosed with breast cancer almost five years ago, we could hardly speak for shock and fear. But neither could we stand the raw sounds of our own tears and trepidation to be the only sounds in the room. So we listened to Kate Bush, over and over and over. Not the whole of her work. Or even the whole of her ‘Aerial’ album. Just the long continuous suite on one CD of it called ‘A sky of honey’. The joyous journey of a day, on our least joyous of days. And Kate didn’t make it all better. How could anyone? But we both uttered one word for what she did that day. One word that we’ve used on all the other days so tough we’ve had to send for her again. ‘Balm’.

What is this ‘balm’? How does it feel?

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.

Rachel and Sarah

Rachel, June 2011

Ronnie here, standing in while Sarah’s away

Early this morning I took Sarah to Manchester Airport for her plane to New Jersey, to join everybody else there and say goodbye to Rachel. Going there, at the same time and the same terminal, reminded me of a happier day last June, when Sarah set off to go and stay with Rachel and Anthony for a week. Later in the year the two friends both mentioned this magical week, when they published these two parallel posts about each other and their friendship, on the same day, last October.

My Friend Sarah, by Rachel Cheetham Moro

“This year I have spent a lot of time in Liverpool. Yes! The Liverpool of Beatles fame in Northern England. I was surprised to learn that Liverpool’s climate actually rarely sees snow because it’s temperate maritime and the city is a recipient of warm bands of Gulfstream air. So this is why I’ve seen daffodils growing in Liverpool’s parks in February. Spring comes early in Liverpool.

On the deck of the allotment

I’ve meandered down Penny Lane in March and have been a regular visitor to a wonderful public space known as an “allotment”. It’s a kind of cooperative where the good citizens of Liverpool may rent garden plots to raise fruit and vegetables or whatever their inner gardener desires.I’ve clomped around in garden beds and dug for spring onions of all colors, fresh bulbs of garlic, and delicious little new potatoes. I’ve picked tomatoes and cucumbers and wondered aloud what to do with them all. I’ve even picked a pomegranate. A tropical fruit grown in Liverpool? Must be that Gulfstream air.I’ve strolled down flower and tree lined rows of allotments. I’ve shaded myself under an apple tree and I’ve marveled at the bounty of the most beautiful pear tree I’ve ever seen. I’ve sat on the deck of the allotment shed, sharing a picnic and catching the last few rays of summer sunshine and I feel like I never want to leave.

Memory Pools

Rachel, in Greenwich village with Sarah, last summer, buying a hat for Buckingham Palace

Ronnie reflects on the places where memories accumulate, as the news comes in about Rachel dying

“All of us who have spent much time in hospital waiting rooms, corridors, wards and consulting rooms, and that probably includes most of the readers of this blog, will be aware of the particular form of ‘waiting’ these places specialise in. Hours of boredom, when you realise what the true meaning of being a ‘patient’ is, sometimes interrupted suddenly and violently with life changing, life threatening news. Those moments when a previously dull, colourless place suddenly goes ‘real’, and the quiet hum of a ‘normal’ cancer clinic turns into shock, thudding heartbeats and, sometimes, the sound of crying. The sound of somebody creating a memory pool.

Rachel

Sarah's post card painting of Plot 44. Posted to Rachel early this morning, before we knew.

Earlier today we learned that our friend and fellow blogger, Rachel, from The Cancer Culture Chronicles died this morning from the effects of metastatic breast cancer. We will have a great many words to say about our beloved friend. But not today. Today we are too sad to speak much.