I'm in Heaven

by Terry Ravenscroft

  In the past I had heard many people remark that they ‘felt like death warmed up’. I had said it myself, many times. We hadn’t known what we were talking about. Being subjected to chemotherapy is feeling like death warmed up. More than warmed up: grilled, roasted, pan-fried, baked in the oven on regulo 8 or 220 degrees for an hour.

  And to what purpose? What was all the pain and suffering I was putting myself through in aid of? I was going to die anyway. In ‘less than a year’ it would be ashes to ashes dust to dust time and the way I was feeling it would be in less than a month not less than a year. What a bloody awful state to be in. What a way to live. What a way to die. I could have cried. I did cry a couple of times, when it all got too much for me.

  I once read somewhere that knowing you are about to die concentrates the mind wonderfully - a man in the condemned cell about to be hanged was the example quoted - and I could certainly vouch for it. The trouble was that it concentrated my mind on my approaching death, and no matter how much I tried I couldn’t get rid of it for more than a few minutes at a time.

  In attempting to, I re-read all my favourite books; I’ve always been able to get completely immersed in a good book.

  I have my Uncle Reg to thank for my taste in literature. Not for pointing me in any particular direction as to what to read, but by his habit of leaving the book he was currently reading lying around the house. I’d pick one up.

  “Is this any good, Uncle Reg?”

  “Well it’s making me laugh.”

  “ Riotous Assembly? It doesn’t sound very funny.”

  “Well it is.”

  And it was. I discovered I liked books that gave me a laugh along with the story and any message they might contain. Besides, I was never all that keen on messages, they’re usually just the author’s prejudices dressed up in nicer clothes. The novels of British authors Tom Sharpe and David Lodge and Guy Bellamy were and still are my favourites, although Tom Sharpe should have done himself a favour and packed it in while he was at the top. I’d read all their books at least twice, often getting as much pleasure from them on subsequent readings as I had on the first.

  Not now though. I just couldn’t concentrate on the words, good as they were. Wilt wilted. Nice Work didn’t work. The Secret Lemonade Drinker didn’t give up any more secrets. Five minutes was about the maximum I was able to lose myself in the trials and tribulations of Henry Wilt or Vic Wilcox or Bobby Booth before being dragged back to the reality of my own trials and tribulations. What is a tribulation anyway, exactly? At one time I would have looked it up. Not now.

  It was the same with my favourite films, Raging Bull, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Godfather trilogy. Films that had previously held me in thrall, no matter how many times I’d seen them before, now failed to grab my attention at all. Even the Russian roulette sequence in The Deer Hunter failed to grip me, and that had always made the hair on the back of my neck stand out. But I didn’t have cancer when I’d seen it before. It’s different when you have cancer. Everything is different when you have cancer. Robert de Niro is conning the Vietnamese hoodlum into putting three bullets in the chamber of the gun, thus giving him a better chance of killing the little yellow twat when he turns the gun on him. Who gives a shit?

  Nor did music help. Although I was a just a child in the 1960’s my favourite music was the songs of that ‘swinging’ era. It was always playing on Aunt Betty’s Dansette whenever I went round to her house, which was often as she was always baking lovely scones. In addition to my taste for the butter-plastered raisin-rich scones I developed a taste for The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Kinks, a taste which has remained with me all my life. I still can’t eat a scone without thinking of the music of the early sixties.

  “What’s ‘a dedicated follower of fashion’, Auntie Betty?”

  “Somebody who likes all the latest clothes, love.”

  “What’s ‘nothing to get hung about’?”

  “It means nothing to bother your head about, love”

  “What’s ‘I can’t get no girl reaction’?”

  “Shuttup and get on with your scone.”

  Wonderful music. Auntie Betty used to say she was spoiled when it came to music and I agreed with her. Certainly there’s been little to compare with it since. Maybe the music didn’t die when Don Maclean sung that it had in American Pie, with the death of Buddy Holly, but since the coming of boy bands and girl bands and rap and hip-hop it’s certainly on the critical list.

  I like my music as much as I like anything, and as with all lovers of music can get completely lost in it. Not then though. Not when I had cancer. If anything listening to music was less successful than books and films in preventing my mind from drifting off to the graveyard.

  One day Auntie Betty asked me what music I would like played at my funeral. She apologised in advance and said she didn’t like to bring it up but if she didn’t and it was left to the vicar he might play something I didn’t like. It didn’t have to be hymns, she said, people had all sorts of music played at their funeral nowadays, when it was her time to go she was having Spirit in the Sky and The Old Rugged Cross but she’d been to a funeral the other week where the woman had had the Twenty-third Psalm and Another One Bites the Dust. I told her they could play anything they’d a mind to, Call out the Fire Brigade by The Move if they wanted, unless they were cremating me, when it might be considered as being in bad taste, I wouldn’t be hearing any of it would I?

  I soon discovered that life took on a different meaning when you knew you were going to die. Before, when you were doing something, you didn’t wonder how many more times you’d be doing it, much less when it would be the very last time you’d be doing it. But facing death I thought of nothing else: the last time I’d ever be taking the bus from Harpurhey into Manchester city centre; the last time I’d ever look up at the night sky and seek out The Plough; the last time I’d ever be put the kettle on to make myself a cup of tea - would it be the last cup of tea I would ever make or would I be doing it again in an hour or two? It would certainly be the last time I would be doing it one day not too far away.

  A week into the chemotherapy my food started to taste of metal. Another of the side effects. I recalled that Bob Foster at Hargreaves’s, when he was undergoing chemotherapy, had said everything tasted of metal, that if you were having fish and chips you might just as well eat the knife and fork. He was right. Steak, chips, meat pies, fish, pineapple chunks, custard, rice pudding, everything tasted like metal. How could sausage and mash taste like iron? They’re meat and potatoes. But they did, along with everything else. “An ice-cream, sir? Certainly, what flavour would you like? We have steel, lead, silver, gold, uranium - that last one will bring a glow to your cheeks, my word will it - pewter, copper, lead, or how about this new one, tin & aluminium ripple? You’ll settle for a bronze? A bit heavy on the stomach for some but that’s my favourite too. And would you like it coated in mercury sauce and dipped in iron filings?”

  I was eating less too, for I had little appetite; the wonder was, with everything tasting of metal, that I was eating at all.

  A benefit of having little appetite was that because I was eating less I wouldn’t be getting constipation, another one of the hundred and fifty four side effects. Or so I thought. Not so, for despite eating hardly anything it now started taking me longer to get rid of what I’d eaten. A soft-boiled egg for breakfast took four minutes to boil, five minutes to eat and up to two hours sat on the lavatory to get rid of. And it still felt the same size and shape as an egg when it came out, and with a lot more difficulty than the hen had had discharging it. I actually squawked like a hen once, which at least brought a rare smile to my face.

  I tried not eating at all, not a difficult thing to do when a bacon sandwich tastes like a sardine tin without the sardines, but even then it still felt like I had constipation.

  I went to my GP to see if anything could be done about it. Dr Khan was about as much use as a concrete condom, and about
as sensitive. “You are just going to have to put up with it, Norman. It is always the same story with chemo.”

  Chemo again. Friendly again, like it was a mate. Chemo Harrison or Chemo Higgins. Get yourself on a course of it Dr Khan, you’ll soon find out whether it’s friendly or not.

  Three weeks into the chemotherapy my hair started to fall out. Not uniformly, so it didn’t look so bad, so it looked like my hair was perhaps thinning slightly, but in big lumps, so that what was left were just tufts, a tuft here a tuft there, like a leather pouffe losing its stuffing. I went to the barber’s and asked him to cut the lot off.

  “Cancer is it?” he said, eyeing what was left of my hair. My face must have told him he’d supposed right. “I’ve done a few who’ve been on the old chemo.”

  I wished once again that people would stop trying to make chemotherapy sound friendly. Now it was ‘the old chemo’, even friendlier. Through gritted teeth I was about to put my thoughts into words when the barber continued, “Two of them made a complete recovery. They still come in. Regular customers.” He paused reflectively for a moment and said, “Can’t claim it was the haircut that cured their cancer though.”

  “It won’t cure mine,” I said.

  “You never know though.” The barber was still lost in the notion of the curative powers of having a haircut. “I mean barbers used to be surgeons at one time. That’s why we have the red and white pole; it signifies blood and flesh. Not that I ever cut anybody,” he added quickly, anxious to protect his professional reputation and the possible loss of a customer.

  I wish you’d cut the crap and just cut my hair, I thought, and conveyed this by scowling and pointing at my head.

  The possible curer of cancer took the broad hint and asked me if I wanted a No 1 or a No 2. I didn’t know the difference but having just got rid of a particularly bad spell of diarrhoea I didn’t want to tempt providence by asking for a No 2 so chose the No 1 option.

  When I got home I surveyed the result in the hall mirror. If I’d had a pit bull terrier or a bulldog by my side I’d have been a dead ringer for about ten per cent of the male residents of the Barbara Castle council estate. Perhaps I should get one? And matching studded leather chokers for myself and the dog, like I’d once seen one of the morons and his moronic dog wearing. And maybe a pair of big leather boots and one of those leather waistcoat things they wear, and a tartan shirt and a few tattoos? It would certainly make the Jehovah’s Witnesses think twice before ringing my bell again if I answered the door to them like that. No, not worth it, the price of pedigree dogs, even if it meant scaring the Holy Joes off until Kingdom come. Maybe I could put the cat on a lead? That really would put the shits up them; they’d think I was going crazy. Sometimes, then, I thought I was going crazy.

  The Jehovah’s Witnesses called again a couple of weeks later. Caught me on the hop again. What is it with them? Can’t they find something more interesting to do? Stand watching the traffic lights change or something? I thought to tell them I had cancer. It might stop them coming back. I dismissed the idea more or less immediately; if they knew I was dying they’d probably be round every day telling me God had a place reserved for me in the Kingdom of Heaven. So I told them I’d got something cooking on the hob, a tin and aluminium stew, I had to switch the gas off, stay right there, I’d be with them in a minute. But instead I went out of the back door and walked around for an hour, left them standing there, gave them a bit of their own back, they’d kept me hanging about on the doorstep bored rigid often enough.

  A week after I’d had the No 1 haircut my eyebrows and eyelashes began to fall out. I couldn’t bear to look at myself in the mirror, I looked like a snake or the mock turtle in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I almost cried again.

  I stopped taking the chemotherapy then. Bollocks to it, I was going to die anyway, I’d prefer dying sooner rather than later looking like a giant anaconda. When I told Mr Matthews he said it was my decision and that he understood. He didn’t. He’d have to be looking like a giant anaconda with constipation and its food tasting of metal and dying of cancer to understand.

  About a week after I’d called a halt to the chemotherapy I began to feel a bit better. At first I thought that maybe the treatment had worked but even as I thought it I knew I was kidding myself, it couldn’t have, I’d already been told it was terminal, doctors didn’t say you were going to die if you weren’t; they sometimes said you were going to live when you weren’t, but that was either because they were crap doctors or just to give you hope, and there wasn’t any hope for me.

  My feeling a bit better was short lived. Two weeks later I felt as bad as I’d felt before. Worse. Then Mr Matthews said another operation might help.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Now, minutes away from that operation, a yelp of pain from Mr Braithwaite brought me back to the present. Nurse Evans, who was changing Mr Braithwaite’s dressing, let out a concerned cry of apology. It made me smile. Not because of Mr Braithwaite’s discomfort but because it was the first time I had seen Nurse Evans that day, and Nurse Evans was an English Rose.

  I looked at her with both pleasure and sadness as she went about her gory business. With her lissom figure and long brown hair she would have been perfect for me. In her late twenties she was quite lovely, with the look of Audrey Hepburn about her, although not perhaps quite as beautiful as Audrey Hepburn, maybe an Audrey Hep. But although she was very friendly towards me, more friendly than she was to the other patients I liked to think, I harboured no illusions. How could I? For one thing she knew I was terminal.

  I was aware of course that it is far from unusual for women to marry men even though they are well aware that their bridegroom isn’t going to last for much longer than the wedding ceremony. But that was when they were in love; and although it wouldn’t have taken me long to fall in love with Nurse Evans, if I wasn’t in love with her already, I was pretty sure she didn’t feel the same way about me. My one hope was that she would somehow guess I was yearning for an English Rose and, aware that I had only weeks to live, might marry me out of pity. I certainly wouldn’t be able to ask her, my shyness, even facing death, the constant stumbling block. I’d tried looking at her in the way I’d looked at girls in the past in the hope they would start talking to me but she’d asked me if I was feeling all right and did I want a pain killer so I hadn’t bothered again.

  Another patient in the ward, Mr Statham, lung, was at the moment being comforted by the hospital chaplain, the Reverend Ever (known throughout the hospital as the Reverend Ever amen). The clergyman dropped by the ward every day to bring comfort to the members of his captive congregation. The hospital chaplaincy was the Reverend Ever’s first position, having arrived fresh from theological college only a month previously, possibly pausing only to pick up a new dog collar and a pious expression.

  Having comforted all the believers he now made his way over to me, the smile on his face vying for space with self-righteousness. I groaned when I saw him coming. At least with Jehovah’s Witnesses you could pretend you weren’t in. He stopped at my bedside and looked down at me in the condescending manner of someone who thinks he knows better than you, and said brightly, “Good morning, Norman.”

  “Bugger off.”

  When the Reverend Ever first started visiting me I’d tried being polite in rejecting his attentions, then I’d tried being politely firm, then just firm. None of these ploys had worked so I’d decided on a more blunt approach. For all the difference it made I might just as well have invited him to sit down on the edge of the bed and make himself comfortable, which is what he proceeded to do.

  “You don’t really mean that, Norman,” he said, crossing his legs and opening his bible with all the eagerness of a sex-starved housewife opening the latest Jilly Cooper.

  “Yes I do,” I said, repeated the invitation and added, “Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

  Water off a duck’s back.

  He regarded me for a moment as though trying to come to
a difficult decision. Eventually he said, “You look very much to me like a man in need of a little comfort, Norman.”

  “You look very much like a man who doesn’t know the meaning of the expression ‘Bugger off’, Reverend Ever.”

  Water cascaded effortlessly off the duck’s back again. He said, “I’ll try to cheer you up a little.”

  I sighed. “I’m dying, Vicar. The only thing that’s going to cheer me up is to be not dying. Can you tell me I’m not dying?”

  He was well aware of my situation. “Well....” he started, in an effort to placate me.

  I broke in before he could come up with yet another of the potted platitudes he seemed to have a never-ending supply of. “Well, my arse. There’s nothing you can do, I’m a goner, end of story, end of me.”

  He persisted. “There is always hope, Norman.”

  “Not according to the doctors there isn’t.”

  “You must never give up. Take our Lord Jesus.”

  “What about him?”

  “What would have happened if Jesus had given up?”

  “Well for one thing they wouldn’t have nailed him to a cross,” I said, after a moment’s thought. I imagined this cruel but nonetheless valid judgement might just finish off the Reverend Ever and send him on his way to pester the will to live out of someone else. It did precisely the opposite. His face lit up like a beacon. “He wanted to be nailed to the cross, Norman. Jesus wanted to die. He wanted to go to heaven, so that he could be resurrected, so that he could show us the way. He died to save us all.”

  “Well he’s not saving me, is he,” I said. “I’m dying, aren’t I.”

  “But only so you can go to another place. Only so you can rise to heaven. Think of it as just moving on. I thought I’d already explained that to you?”

  “And I’ve already explained to you that I don’t believe in all that God in heaven, life after death stuff; it’s bollocks.”