by Laura Roppé
As time went by, I realized the girl on the overpass was not alone, that occasional strangers were drowning in despair and longing all around me. A passing glance from a stranger entering the bank jolted me with a sudden, but palpable, flash of sadness. At the park, when I witnessed a mother pushing her young child on a swing, I could feel her hopelessness as surely as if she’d whispered, “Help me” into my ear. As surely as if she’d been standing on a freeway overpass.
And each time a stranger’s hopelessness whispered to me, the idea blossomed inside me just a little bit more: I wanted to give them hope. I wanted to make a lasting impact.
When “Float Away” started to make its way around the world through the magic of radio and the Internet, I began receiving emails and cards from people who had heard the song. One woman wrote to tell me she had just lost her young husband in a tragic boating accident. “I am struggling to carry on,” she said, “for the sake of my three young boys.” Someone had played “Float Away” in her young-widows support group, she wrote, telling the group, “You have to listen to this song.” After that first day, she had listened to the song fifty times in a row, she wrote in her email, and it had helped her get through each day.
Another woman wrote to tell me that every day, she had stolen away from her family to drown her sorrows in a bottle of wine. “No one knows my secret,” she wrote to me, “but your song is giving me the strength to seek treatment.”
A man wrote that his girlfriend was battling cancer and he had been playing the song for her every day throughout her treatments. “Your song gives her strength to get through the worst days,” he wrote. “Thank you.”
Back when I received these beautiful notes, only a few months before my own life was torpedoed by the unthinkable, I was deeply moved, of course, but I was not one of those people. I read Brad every email and note, my voice cracking and catching with each word, but I stood safely on my side of the chain-link fence.
I can help others through my music, I thought. Surely this was my higher purpose. Why me, I didn’t know, when I hadn’t suffered a catastrophic setback in my own life, but it felt right, like the fulfillment of some lifelong potential.
It did not occur to me then that in the coming months, I would cling desperately to hope in my own life, too. No, I thought, I would be the purveyor of inspiration for others, through my music; but in my own life, I would hopscotch across the clouds as I’d always done. Because, you know, bad things never happened to me.
But, oh, how life can turn on a dime with just one phone call! One little phone call from that damned surgeon, and I had been ripped from the safety of the sidewalk and pushed onto a concrete ledge overlooking an overpass. I had become one of them, one of those other types of people. Pitiable. Pitiful.
And now, having reached my fourth chemo infusion, the half way mark in my arduous chemotherapy regimen, a milestone I’d thought would be cause for celebration and high-fiving, I felt nothing but despair. I wasn’t fist-pumping the air at reaching the halfway mark. No, I was decrying the interminable second half yawning before me.
The glass was half empty.
At night, I had started to have recurring dreams in which my girls were in some form of peril—Chloe falling off a towering ledge, Sophie being swept out to sea. And in each dream, there I stood, mere inches away from my endangered child—powerless, ineffectual, reaching, reaching, screaming, crying. Impotent. Each morning when I awoke, my heart felt bruised from the previous night’s battering.
The glimmering memory of my prior self, my vital and powerful self, was becoming faded and cracked. I was beginning to feel . . . hopeless.
After coming home from my fourth chemo infusion, the halfway point of a grueling marathon, a milestone I’d expected would elicit excitement and a sense of accomplishment, I stood in the shower, letting the hot water pound my scrawny back, and I cried deep, heaving sobs.
I could give up, I thought suddenly. I have the power to make it all go away.
This was a novel thought. I had the power to make the pain and dreariness go away!
This wasn’t a movie. This was real life. And it sucked. Hard. And I wanted out.
It was my prerogative to end it all! All I had to do was stop fighting! Why had I been fighting so hard—not just now, against cancer, but all my life? I’d always been so fierce, so focused, so accomplished. Never a quitter! Never half-assed! And where had it gotten me? Here. To this. What was the point in any of it? Why keep fighting? What was the big whoop about survival, anyway? Easy come, easy go.
Just succumb already, Laura! All the pain will melt away!
An entire lifetime of pushing, and pressing, and proving—swinging my machete through dense jungles of my own making (à la Michael Douglas in Romancing the Stone)—and I suddenly recognized my own power: I could simply let go, and . . . fade away.
The path of least resistance. I’d never taken that path before. It sounded . . . relaxing. Like a steam bath.
What difference would it make, really? One less person on Planet Earth out of, what, billions? Just one less person . . .
I drew a frowny face in the steam on the shower door.
Poor me.
What was happening to me? This was so unlike me!
The hot shower water beat down on me, mixing with the tears streaming down my face.
“Hold on, for one more day . . . ” I sang in the shower, my voice almost inaudible. “Hold on for one more day.” I sang more loudly. “Hold on for one more day! Hold on for one more day!” It was a battle cry.
I waited. Wasn’t this song—my song—supposed to summon the angels straight down from heaven? Wasn’t this song—this beacon of light and hope—supposed to lift me out of my darkest moment? Wasn’t this song supposed to inspire me?
I waited.
“Hold on for one more day,” I said flatly, this time in a speaking voice.
Apparently not.
Chapter 37
My Dearest Jane,
I cried yesterday and today. I was not crying about the big- picture, “I don’t want to die” stuff. I was crying just for the here and now. I feel so ugly. For all my bravado, I am so very sick of looking at my bald head. And I hate the smell. Do you smell that, too? I feel like I smell my chemo all the time—on my skin, on my clothes, on my sheets, in my stuffy room. I open the win- dows, I change the sheets, but I still smell it. I am such a grab- life-by-the-horns person, and all I do nowadays is lie there and stink. I had put lots of stock in this halfway point. And instead of feeling jubilant at arriving here, I feel overwhelmed that I’ve still got four to go. Four! That seems very long indeed. You know I am not usually like this, Jane. I’ll be better tomorrow, I promise. I know when I see my doctor tomorrow he’ll have a way of making me forget the self-pity.
When Dr. Hampshire entered the examination room, he could plainly see I was on the verge of crying. It was unlike me. I was his upbeat, positive patient. His role model for other patients. A force of nature! A limitless well of strength. Not a beaten-down, can’t-get-my-ass-up-again quitter.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“It feels like such a long road,” I whimpered, the wax paper crinkling beneath me on the examination table. “I can’t see the end.” My voice was breaking. “I’m starting to . . . ” I couldn’t bear to finish the sentence. Give up.
Dr. Hampshire looked me in the eye. He knew.
“Laura,” he said firmly, “you are the strongest person I know. Do you hear me? You can do this.”
“But . . . ” I began, intending to let him in on my secret. I was not strong. I was a quitter. I was a big fat quitter!
“All you have to do is keep showing up, Laura, and I’ll do the rest,” Dr. Hampshire continued. He got up from his desk chair and stood beside the examination table. He touched my forearm. “Laura, the road is already shorter than it was yesterday. Every single day, you are one step closer to being finished. And when you are finished, you will be cured, and you will never look bac
k. You will live a full life; you will raise your daughters.” And then, with an intensity befitting the skilled down-from-the-ledge talker he was, Dr. Hampshire added, with absolute medical authority, “And—you—will—be—famous.”
Against my will, I cracked a smile and chuckled, even as tears trickled down my cheeks.
One less person on Planet Earth out of billions? Bullshit. I would not go quietly into that good night. No, I would fight tooth and nail to make it to my 103rd birthday.
“Doc, there are just no guarantees,” I responded, my spirit beginning to flicker back. “About fame, that is.”
Dr. Hampshire laughed. “No, but some things are just inevitable.”
Indeed, we both knew he could make no guarantees about any of it—life, death, health, fame. But it didn’t matter. Dr. Hampshire had the audacity, the compassion, in a world full of lawsuits and insurance companies and limits of liability, to promise to cure me, his patient on the brink of hopelessness.
And just like that, by doing so, he took the machete from my limp and blistered hand, and he began swinging and hacking, clearing a pathway through the dense jungle, just for me.
Even before my winning bingo card came up with all the right letters—C-A-N-C-E-R!—I’d always been fearful of death. Well, actually, not death so much as dying. I wasn’t afraid to be dead so much as I didn’t want to experience a gruesome and painful death.
There were a million possibilities for my eventual death, and some were downright horrifying. A terrifying car crash? Or, worse, a plane crash, with plenty of time to anticipate the ultimate impact? A serial killer, maybe?
Or perhaps I’d win the lottery (as I was entitled to, after all) and pass in my sleep at the ripe age of 103. Yes, I concluded each time precancerous thoughts of mortality danced in my head like sugarplum fairies in The Nutcracker, yes, I would die a very old woman, in my sleep, while wearing a white cotton nightgown (with pretty little eyelets trimming the bottom hem), my long gray hair brushed beautifully across the crisp white pillowcase. And I wouldn’t feel a thing. It would be just like sleeping.
But once Brad and I started having babies, the accepted standards of parental care and responsibility obligated us to at least consider the possibility that one or both of us would make an unexpected, early departure, and most likely in a manner not including a white cotton nightgown with pretty eyelet trim. And, worse yet, we had to plan for this morbid possibility.
And so, back when Chloe was an infant, Brad and I trudged off to the office of our estate planner to sign a thick stack of useless documents that we would never need in real life, just so we could pat ourselves on the back and boast smugly to our yuppie friends, “We’ve put everything into a living trust, just in case. Haven’t you?”
“Sign here, here, and here,” the estate planning attorney instructed me. “And Brad, you sign here, here, and here.”
Brad and I looked at each other, amazed at how adult we’d both become. We were ready for every contingency now—even our premature deaths, however inconceivable that possibility seemed.
“If I go first, Brad,” I blurted, overcome with anxiety about future catastrophes, however hypothetical, “I would want you to remarry and find love again.”
I stared at him expectantly, basking in my Mother Teresa–ness, awaiting his equally loving reply.
Without missing a beat, though, he replied, “Not me. If I go first and you remarry, I will haunt you like a poltergeist.”
I laughed—as I always did at Brad’s zingers—but then I rolled my eyes for the estate planner’s benefit.
Actually, Brad’s possessiveness thrilled me. I reveled in the thought that even in the afterlife, he would be infinitely unable to relinquish me to another man.
And now, only a few years after signing those estate planning documents, on the night after Dr. Hampshire had promised to cure me (presumably against the advice of the hospital’s legal department), Brad and I lay in bed together, holding hands. Since hearing Dr. Hampshire’s confident words, I’d felt the weight of the world lifted off me. Quitting was no longer an option.
And yet, I realized, there was no going back to my precancer state of bliss. I’d never again assume I’d make it to 103. I’d never again assume I’d make it through next year, for that matter. Now, suddenly, unexpectedly, the odds that I might precede Brad in death weren’t quite as long as they’d once been.
“If I die,” I said quietly, holding Brad’s hand in the moonlit room, “I’m gonna hang around you and the girls in the afterlife, watching you, protecting you, and continuing to love you.” Brad didn’t say anything, so I continued, “I’ll send you signs I’m there with you. If you don’t see the signs, I’ll be frustrated and bang my head against the wall. Well . . . my proverbial head against the celestial wall. You know what I mean.” Still nothing from Brad. “So please, Buddy,” I pleaded, “be alert and acknowledge me so that I can be at peace.” I blinked back tears. This had been very difficult for me to say, but it had to be done.
Brad turned to look at me in the moonlight, without speaking for a brief moment. “Babe,” he finally said, “I don’t listen to you when you’re alive. What makes you think I’ll listen to you when you’re dead?”
Chapter 38
My Dearest Jane,
The other day, I was not feeling well but had to mail something. When I entered the mail store, the clerk was already helping someone else, but she said to the lady she was helping, “Ma’am, do you mind if I just help this lady [me] and then get back you?” The “ma’am” was about to protest but then turned to look at me. She saw my gray complexion and my head scarf and said, “Of course not.” Then she smiled at me and gave me I-am- sorry-for-you eyes. Being a cancer patient has its perks.
Although my long brown wig had sounded like a great idea before I lost my hair, once I was as bald as a cue ball, it turned out I preferred myself au naturel. I never wore that pretty brown wig. Not even once.
When I went out, I wore a simple scarf on my head, which, I quickly learned, was akin to stamping CANCER PATIENT on my forehead. But hey, it was easier for me than pretending everything was hunky-dory.
Looking like a cancer patient had its perks. (Occasional line cuts, for example.) But it also had its drawbacks: I was never just “some lady” anymore—a lady buying stamps at the post office. A woman unloading her groceries from a cart. No, even while performing simple errands, I was “the lady who is fighting bravely for her life.” I was Susan Sarandon in Stepmom, courageously preparing her children for their future with Julia Roberts. A swelling, symphonic soundtrack followed me all the time, everywhere I went.
I often elicited reactions from passersby when I was out and about. Sometimes they turned away. Maybe I was an uncomfortable symbol of mortality, or perhaps a reminder of a heroic battle a loved one had fought. At the other extreme, people sometimes stared at me meaningfully, as if to say, Hang in there or, occasionally, I’ve been there. My return gaze always said, Don’t worry about me. I’m a fighter.
Maybe I was just imagining all of these telepathic conversations, but I could hear them just the same.
At Chloe’s first T-ball practice one chilly afternoon, a fellow mother, whom I’d never met before, approached me. Without preamble or ramp-up, she sidled up to me and stage-whispered, “You must really cherish every moment with your kids now.”
Her eyes were moist.
Oh, wow, she thinks I’m dying, I thought. And soon.
Well, no, I don’t cherish every moment with my kids now, as a matter of fact. Sometimes, especially when they’re whining, they still annoy the crap out of me.
“Yes,” I said to my new, nameless best friend, this unexpected shoulder to cry on, matching her intensity with my own urgent stage whisper, “yes, I really do.” And then, just for good measure, I sighed deeply and shot her a meaningful glance.
I wanted to leave. I didn’t want to be a walking emblem of mortality that day. I just wanted to watch Chloe’s haphazard attempts a
t swinging a much-too-heavy baseball bat.
But really, what did I expect? What was this woman supposed to do in my presence? Ignore me? Or make idle chitchat? Can a person talk lightheartedly—about American Idol, perhaps—with someone she presumes is dying? With someone who is dying, talking about anything other than matters of life and death—about cherishing one’s children—would be downright petty, right?
Maybe so. But I just couldn’t be lofty and intense every minute of every day. At least not at T-ball, anyway.
The thing was, despite my physical appearance, despite all the infusions and doctor’s appointments and medicine and weird smells and metallic tastes in my mouth and pain and nausea, I still felt like plain old me on the inside. I may have looked like a wraith, a gray phantom floating through life in a head scarf, but I was still me. The problem was, in my cancer patient disguise, no one could discern the undercover rock star held captive inside me. She had ceased to exist to the outside world. All anyone could see was this . . . this stupid . . . container.
Well, everyone, that is, except that weird guy in the grocery store parking lot a few days before.
I had just come out of the grocery store, gray as granite, wearing my head scarf and Jackie O. sunglasses, when a man in the parking lot approached me.
“Hi,” he greeted me.
“Hello,” I replied politely, though the thought of chatting with a stranger in a parking lot made me want to set my hair on fire. (Just a little cancer humor for you.)
“Do you shop here a lot?” he asked.
I figured this was his well-meaning attempt to convey his best wishes to the (presumably) dying lady, but I’d reached my “well-meaning attempt” quota for that week, and I was tired.
“Yes,” I responded. “I shop here all the time.” Please get to the part where you encourage me to stay positive. I need to go to bed.
“I really like your scarf,” he said then, zeroing in on the singular “I really like your scarf,” he said then, zeroing in on the singular thing about me that was compliment-worthy. What else could he have said—“I really like your gray pallor; it reminds me of dolphins, and I just love dolphins”?