Death and the Elephant

by Raz Shaw

  2. Put my pyjamas on.

  3. Take my sleeping pills.

  4. Get into bed.

  5. After the first wave of drowsiness I take my pyjama top off and put it under my pillow.

  6. When the second wave of drowsiness hits, I whip off my bottoms (pyjama bottoms) in a military fashion under the covers, while manically smiling at everyone on the ward to hide my PJ guilt.

  7. I leave my bottoms (pyjama bottoms) under the covers within easy reach for re-clothing purposes.

  It works a treat. I am naked under the covers. And naked under the covers makes me feel like normal is here somewhere, watching over me.

  Of course, now and again I might forget where I am and get up for a pee in the middle of the night. I often get a few paces away from my bed before I realise that I’m in the raw and have to rush back to retrieve my bottoms (pyjama bottoms).

  Naked escape is euphoria, nirvana.

  And naked freedom is freedom.

  And freedom smells fucking great.

  Freedom smells like newly cut grass.

  Freedom smells like the fruit/mint mixture in Pimm’s.

  Freedom smells like Hawaiian Tropic suntan lotion.

  Freedom smells like freshly baked bread.

  Freedom smells like lemon trees.

  Freedom smells like fresh paint.

  Freedom smells like petrol.

  Freedom smells like shiny new leather.

  Freedom smells like woods in rain.

  Freedom smells like Playdough.

  Freedom smells like the ripping open of a condom packet.

  Freedom smells like Grey Flannel aftershave.

  Freedom smells like just-popped corn.

  Freedom smells like late evening barbecues.

  Freedom smells like wet dogs.

  Freedom smells like burnt garlic.

  Freedom smells like Pepto-Bismol.

  Freedom smells like ‘other’.

  And other is the only place I want to be right now!

  IN MEMORIAM?

  I know one thing: life is to be taken seriously but the moment you take yourself too seriously, you are screwed.

  However, I can’t lie, I don’t want stoicism, I want tears. At my funeral. Even more at my memorial service. Bawling, wailing and weeping. European-style, collapsing-on-the-floor lamentation. As a director, I can make that happen. That’s the game I’m in. The manipulation game. And in my experience, the best way to make sure people weep uncontrollably is to make them laugh first and then sock them with the sad stuff. They are loosened up and ready to wail!

  So you see, I couldn’t just die and let someone else plan my memorial service.

  ERGO

  I am fully aware that a lot of you will wince every time I talk about the possibility of death but it’s the reality of that particular situation. The doctor gave me a 70 per cent chance of survival. Ergo there was a 30 per cent chance of me not surviving.

  The definition of not surviving is dying.

  And, more to the point, those odds give you licence to think about what might happen if you do die without actually thinking you will die.

  The other reason I can talk about it is that I didn’t die. You may have noticed. There may well be a Poirot-type twist at the end of this book, but somehow I think that’s unlikely.

  MEMORIAL

  The fact is that I did plan my own memorial service. I couldn’t resist it. It was a wonderfully morbid and camp thing to do. And I loved it. That’s the point. I had a damn good time doing it. And I didn’t do it with ‘woe is me’ tears streaming down my face. The act of planning my own memorial service felt fun and naughty and liberating. And it was a welcome distraction to the mayhem going on inside me.

  DEATH

  Plus, the reality of it all is this:

  I never thought I would die but I often thought ‘what if I did?’ and I enjoyed being given guilt-free licence to think such morbid thoughts. A free pass to romanticising my own death. And I devoured it. It was my number one pastime. If you start talking to other people about it, they get uncomfortable because all they see is your death and they find it sad and upsetting that you might be contemplating it. So I chose to keep it to myself.

  In truth I found it replenishing. To think about it. To write it down, even. I found glory in going to the edge of the mountaintop. I found glory in the romantic notion of people sobbing uncontrollably at my funeral and again at my memorial service.

  DEATH AND THE ELEPHANT

  Death and the Elephant creep silently into the room. You can try to ignore the Elephant but you know it’s there, squeezed next to your cancer-infested body. Its trunk is playing havoc with your packed lunch. This is the first time that you are faced with the big question. Death.

  What do I do? Do I try to ignore it? If I try to ignore it, the elephant rumbles and rumbles and rumbles. And that’s not healthy. It’s not healthy at all. It’s a complete throbbing mind fuck.

  Every time you even glance away, its leathery grey skin pushes hard against you and lets out a deep hard trumpeting rumble.

  ‘D-E-A-T-H.’

  ‘D-E-A-T-H.’

  ‘D-E-A-T-H.’

  ‘D-E-A-T-H.’

  There’s only one thing you can say:

  ‘Elephant (Death), I know you’re in here, I know you’re close by. I know you could crush me at any moment. But Elephant (Death), I am going to acknowledge you. More than that, Elephant (Death), I am going to get so close to you that I can hear your call. I like knowing you’re nearby. I like myself when I know that I am not ignoring you. Not ignoring the possibility of you. That keeps me alert. Keeps me real. Keeps me feeling like I am living in the now rather than running away. It makes Death (Elephant) seem tame or tamed.’

  First embrace the darkness. The only way after that is towards the light. The more head-on you can face it, the more you can stare it down, the easier it is to live with and the more likely it is to retreat.

  In other words, if we acknowledge death and its potential and possibilities, we are minimising the Elephant and taking the fear of the unknown and the unspoken out of the equation.

  It absolutely doesn’t mean I thought I was going to die; it purely meant that I could think about death in a slightly abstract and more ‘fun’ way. Hence the joy to be had in planning my memorial service. That planning made me feel like Richard Burton at Cannes. It is glamour laced with a little bit of darkness. And that’s a heady mix. And if Richard Burton is death, then Liz Taylor must be life.

  And that’s quite a life.

  I’ll settle for that.

  PART THREE:

  THE RESULTS

  THIS MOMENT

  This is what all this has been about. This moment. Right now.

  The scan.

  The blood test.

  The prodding and poking.

  The looking at the notes.

  The looking up at me.

  The looking at the notes.

  The looking up at me.

  It all leads to this moment:

  ‘There’s still a mass of something between your lungs but we’re pretty sure it’s scar tissue and absolutely nothing to worry about. As far as we’re concerned, the radiotherapy has done its job and, all things being equal, you’re as good as new. We’ll see you in three months’ time, but, right now, you’re good to go.’

  And that is that.

  I stare straight at her. My consultant. I am full up with silence.

  Deafening, fearsome, beautiful, terrifying silence.

  That is that.

  That

  is

  That.

  I have no words.

  Silence.

  Silence.

  Silence.

  I sort of smile.

  ‘Oh! OK. Er. Thanks. OK. Bye then.’

  And I am out of her office and into the clinic reception area that I know so well.

  I don’t want to leave.

  What is out there for me beyond these walls?


  It’s safe in here. It’s familiar. I take in what has been my second home for the last nine months. That familiar stale sterile smell. That strange serenity. That calm urgency. Echoes force themselves upon me:

  Self-pity tears.

  Bad cancer gags.

  Strange Wimbledon parties.

  Awkward nurse flirting.

  Can’t find a vein.

  Don’t try to speak.

  A Home.

  A Home. For. The. Sick

  I am homesick.

  I find myself in the early spring outside world. A Fulham Road that was always horribly familiar now seems a vast cavern of scary newness that goes on forever.

  Nostalgia has never really been my thing. But this new thing, the all-clear thing, the ‘you’re as good as new’ thing, is just plain weird.

  Doing cancer is a full-time job. And now I’m out of work.

  I spend the next few hours devouring Knightsbridge shops in a sensation void. What should I be feeling?

  Euphoric? Relieved? Exhausted? Rejuvenated? Optimistic?

  What AM I feeling?

  Nothing. I feel nothing. Just dark and numb.

  Empty. That’s it. Just a big old cancer-free overload of emptiness.

  And that’s kind of OK. Like this is par for the cancer course. That euphoria or relief or optimism would be tempting fate in some fashion.

  So I dismiss it and carry on window shopping.

  I say window shopping because, despite having an uncontrollable urge to spend thousands and thousands of pounds on retail therapy, I have an even stronger urge to hit the casino as soon as it opens. So any money spent before that time would be diminishing my gambling destruction stash for later.

  And I make it home. To my home. Not hospital home. I make it home with not a penny spilt. And home seems quite different now. Lonelier somehow.

  For the last nine months I have been a two-home family and now one of those homes has been taken from me. A huge melancholic wave hits me. Followed by a wave of weirdness. Followed by a colossal wave of guilt. Guilt is my Jewish stalker. It’s there at every turn. Every time you think you’ve banished it, it returns full in the face.

  And it is all confusing me.

  Why do I feel sad? Why do I feel guilty about feeling sad? Where’s the release? Where’s the euphoria? I’m an adrenaline junkie. I need euphoria. I need it now. This isn’t how I imagined it would be. This isn’t what remission is. Remission is supposed to be life-saving, freeing, joyous. Isn’t it? This? This is horrible. This is worse than a comedown after a Bruce Springsteen concert.

  And then it strikes me what this is. This is grief. I am in mourning.

  ߦ I am in mourning for my ill self.

  ߦ I am in mourning for the focus that my ill self had.

  ߦ I am in mourning for the purpose that my ill self had.

  ߦ I am in mourning for the people who looked after my ill self, for his ‘friends’ on the wards and in the radiotherapy waiting room.

  ߦ I am in mourning for my cancer.

  Like two boxers embracing at the end of a mammoth fight, we had squared up to each other and fought a dirty, brutal nine-month bare-knuckle battle. And all I can do as I wave it goodbye is have respect for its power, its resolve and its relentlessness. It has been my opponent, my nemesis, but also my long-term companion. The closest thing to me that I have ever experienced.

  And now it is gone. And I miss it. I truly do.

  And over the next few weeks that feeling escalated. And as it escalated I went into casino-destroy mode. I reached out for my other powerful opponent and jumped into its dark evil embrace.

  And to top all that, after the initial flurry of phone calls when the grapevine learned of my remission, everything went silent.

  The phone stopped ringing.

  People stopped popping over with food parcels and cheer-you-up gifts. It was silent and I was ‘normal’ again.

  I didn’t want to be normal.

  Don’t turn me back to normal, please. Normal makes me sad and angry and self-destructive.

  Casino frenzy intensified.

  Something truly horrific began to stir inside me.

  Cancer had left me a ticking-bomb-going-home-present-goody-bag.

  Inside that goody bag was a note that read:

  Please bring my cancer back.

  Simple as that.

  Every morning I woke up hoping for my cancer to return. Hoping that I could go back to the hell of the previous nine months.

  I know that thought is hateful but I had no control over it. Cancer was propped up in the corner laughing at me. It had unearthed my dirty secret. As the guilt deepened, so the gambling frenzy escalated.

  The shame was pretty much unbearable.

  And it wouldn’t go away. It hovered over me like a leopard ready to pounce. And it was confusing. Horrific. Unbearable. It seemingly had absolutely no ending.

  Come back, cancer. Please come back. Please, please come back.

  My heart imploded in utter confusion. I felt ill and dirty and repulsed. At me. At myself.

  Come back, cancer. Please come back. Please, please come back.

  And sex didn’t help.

  Come back, cancer. Please come back. Please, please come back.

  And even Bruce Springsteen didn’t help.

  Come back, cancer. Please come back. Please, please come back.

  I tried to talk to other people about it. I tried but it never came out right, and even when it did, they either didn’t think I was serious or – much worse – they pitied me and despised me in equal measure.

  And the only thing that helped the pain and the guilt was gambling.

  CANCER VERSUS GAMBLING,

  PART FOUR

  THE FINAL ROUND

  So that’s exactly what I did. Gamble. I launched into a pit of utter gambling destruction. Gambling at that moment felt wonderfully horrific. The ultimate in self-harming. Just and deserved punishment for those hateful feelings of cancer grief. And the gambling spiralled out of control. In a matter of just a few weeks I was reduced to maniacal gambling of tumultuous proportions. And I guess the relief that the gambling cult leader felt to have got rid of its cancer rival meant that it was going to grab this opportunity and force me to go completely gambling gaga.

  And it did.

  And I did.

  For me, out-of-control gambling HAD to take place at the casino. Betting shops and fruit machines just didn’t cut it. Not 100 per cent sure why. It was something to do with windows. Unlike a betting shop or a fruit machine arcade, a casino has no windows or, at the very least, has blacked-out windows. It has no clocks either. For the simple reason that they want you to lose all sense of time, to get lost in the moment and not think about how long you’ve been there. So you stay longer. And lose more. A very effective trick that works on addicts and suckers like me. (I am both a sucker and an addict – a saddict.)

  I have to emphasise that I didn’t KNOW I was out of control. I just knew that I couldn’t be anywhere else but the casino at that time. Destruction mode means not that you WANT to lose but that you KNOW you are going to. And you don’t do anything to stop it. Or, more to the point, you are powerless to stop it! That’s the disease. It doesn’t allow you the luxury of clarity. It doesn’t allow you the luxury of choosing when and where and how you stop being an addict.

  Every day for those three weeks I would turn up at Napoleons Casino on the dot of 2 p.m. I’d usually be the first through the door. I loved being first. It was a glimpse of calm before the self-inflicted storm. I went straight to the cashier’s desk. How much cash I had was dependent on what had happened on my final bet the previous night. That final bet would often have been at 3.59 a.m. The casino closed at 4 a.m.

  It had been nine months since the diagnosis. Nine relentless months of chemo and gambling. It had also been nine months without an income. Unexpectedly, just before my illness, my brothers and I were given £10,000 each after the sale of my grandmother’s house
. Everyone else seemed to think that this was a lucky financial coincidence that would help support me while I was ill. To me this was gambling money. Pure and simple.

  In those three final gambling weeks I got through about £9,000, which was roughly three times the amount of money I actually had left from my original 10k ‘stake’. Where I got the rest, I can’t even recall. Maxing credit cards? Selling my body? Kidnapping my family? Manipulative lying to the parents? All of the above? Who knows. The fact is that somehow I found the means to fuel the frenzy.

  Once inside the casino, blackjack was my game of choice, I would identify a table, nod at the croupier, sit down and begin. In ‘normal’ gambling mode I would start small – £5/£10 bets – and play conservatively. Warming up, so to speak. However, nothing about this particular mode was in any way ‘normal’. This was no time for rational behaviour. It had to be all-out attack from the get-go. Which in play terms meant trying to make twenty-one on almost every hand. This goes against every rule in blackjack strategy school. ‘Be patient. Whatever your hand is, you win if the dealer busts’. In destruction mode, you play with £25 chips and you do NOT adhere to the rules. It means you lose big most of the time and win big now and again. Winning big is great. For the simple reason that it affords you more time in the casino and less time in the outside world. Of course, you do EVENTUALLY lose. Need to lose. Have to lose. Want to lose. Do. Lose.

  So for those three weeks the gambling beast was unleashed. The gambling cult leader took its revenge good and proper. The self-destruct button was switched to go and I attacked that casino with a furious kamikaze focus that was unlike anything that had gone before or since. And it felt awfully good. And I don’t mean that in a Noël Coward way. I mean, it felt fucking awful and fucking good all at once. Like a never-ending vomit to a bulimic. Awful because it was awful but good because for the first time in nine months it felt like undisrupted pure focus destruction. And that singularity seemed freedom-like. And freedom was glorious. It was made even more concentrated by a strange feeling in the back of my soul that I couldn’t quite pinpoint. A glowing nostalgia feeling. Almost like a final hurrah somehow.