The first lessons

What do I remember?

By Sandra Turner

It is late Friday afternoon. Back pain that has refused to respond to physiotherapy, massage, walking or Pilates has brought me to this place.

My husband and I watch as the doctor rifles through my file. My usual GP is away and we have her new registrar. He is young, keen and nervous as he passes my test results across the desk.

Aggresive lytic lesions in the spine and a large tumour at T3.

Lytic? Am I meant to know what this word means? I don’t dare to ask.

The first lession: this thing is beyond my sphere of influence. I need help.

The registrar barely looks at us. We sit in silence, gripping each other’s hand.

“Well, I’ll just make an appointment for you, at oncology” and so he leaves the room, and us.

Slowly, slowly, the news sinks in.

He returns with an appointment for four days’ time. I ask him, “What do I do with my work"?”

Now, cautiously, he does look at me. “You will need all your energy and focus for what’s ahead.”

This turns out to be good advice.

Saturday is a daze. The children are taken to their sport, the weekly grocery shopping is done, and the washing hung on the line. The routine of life, putting one foot in front of the other seems to help. Through the haze it becomes clear that I must close my practice. I must focus my mind and energy. There will be nothing left for those whose lives also need close attention.

Sunday night I sit on my office floor with my two dearest colleagues. Work files lie strewn around, yet to be organised. Files that track the careful and painful work that is the world of psychotherapy. I endeavour to get going, to manage this somehow. My friend gently says, “This is your life’s work”. The grief in me wells up. My distress is huge. For a while I am held gently in each of their arms. We then get to work, sorting out what is to be done. I make the calls, one after another, breaking shockingly into my clients’ lives. “I need to see you tomorrow, please bring a support person with you. We can only meet for a short time. I will explain more tomorrow.”

This being both vague and resolute can only leave an unsettled night for everyone. Confusion, fantasy and paranoia are our bedfellows as we each prepare for the day to come.

Others would have taken extended leave, not acted so decisively. I knew this was the best way for me. I knew that this thing, whatever it was, was deadly serious. I knew I needed to free myself so I could face what lay ahead. This intuitive knowing would serve me well in the days and months ahead.

Late that night I talk again with my supervisor. We had been in close contact since Friday. She calls to ask who will be with me. I had forgotten I would need my own support, my own person to stand with me.

This lesson I am to learn many times until I eventually get it. She will be there.

Monday comes, the last time I will meet with my clients. There is no time for deflections. We only have 15 minutes. I work strongly, asking that we meet each other in this painful space. This unexpected and wrenching leaving stretches us both. Any proper timeliness is gone. “Our work together has to finish, I am going into Oncology tomorrow, this is our last chance to meet.” It would be an easy deflection to focus on me. Instead we forge ahead to where we can encounter each other. Confusion, fear, and distress are all present.

Cheryl and I have been working together for a long time. Her tears brim but are held back while she battles to stay in control. She learnt to be this way early in her life, to hunker down, and withdraw inside whenever the world became unsafe. If she leaves like this it will be days before she recognises her feelings of abandonment, hurt and distress. In the meantime, these poisons will have been spread generously around her family in a variety of controlling and blaming ways.

Time is short: I appeal to her not to withdraw. Standing at the door we turn to each other, tears flow freely as we recognise all that we have done together. We can now say goodbye. Therapy has been done to the last.

The day is relentless as each quarter hour turns over. The next person arrives and hears the news that I can no longer be her therapist. At lunchtime I collapse with the gut wrenching sobs of my own pain, my own letting go of the work that I love. My colleagues of last evening are here again with lovingly prepared food set on the table to nourish us. They hold me in so many ways.

The afternoon begins with each person requiring the same care, gentleness and challenge. This was the biggest day of my life - so far.

I wake in the night, groping across the usual warm space. The bed is cold and empty. I find him hidden in the dark of the lounge. I have known this man since I was nearly eighteen. This is new territory for us both. We reach out, hold each other, barely comprehending what is happening to our lives.

---

While I was writing this out on my laptop on the couch, cup of tea on the windowsill, I had Maiea by Moana and the Tribe playing on repeat. Mohamed and I Shazam’d this track while listening to the radio in the car the other day, brought in by its haunting sound and rhythmic reo. Recording the voiceover, I thought I would keep it on in the background to give some fullness to the sound, but I hadn’t actually looked it up to understand what was being said. Reading about this song made it feel like it was just proper and right have it keep me company in the background, holding me, as I read this story.

This song comes from an album that seeks to celebrate te reo, and raise the visibility of endangered languages by collaborating with indigenous vocalists. The languages in this song are te reo Māori and Scottish Gaelic: two languages that have been colonised, and of two peoples who are fighting to reclaim them. One, the language of my ancestors; the other, the language of those who are sovereign over the land that I call home.

Maiea is a call for peace; an incantation to soothe and calm a troubled mind.

Te reo lyrics - Scotty Morrison
Music - Paddy Free and Moana Maniapoto
Scottish Gaelic vocals - Megan Henderson
Te reo vocals - Moana Maniapoto

Listen here.