Read The Staircase Letters Online
Authors: Arthur Motyer
The Staircase Letters (9 page)
Something has occurred to her—something
transparently simple, something she’s always
known, it seems, but never articulated. Which
is that the moment of death occurs while we
are still alive. Life marches right up to the wall
of that final darkness, one extreme state of
being butting against the other. Not even
a breath separates them. Not even a blink of
the eye. A person can go on and on tuned
in to the daily music of food and work
and weather and speech right up to the last
minute, so that not a single thing gets lost.
—From
The Stone Diaries
ON THE LAST DAY
of January 2002, Elma wrote that her “primary tumour had shrunk to virtually zero, with no activity at all. So no more chemo!” But as January turned into February, the signals grew darker.
Dear A.,
No more chemo is a lovely prospect, indeed, but I must remember that the brain is a whole different story, and it has always been the big problem. No one was really very concerned about the chest tumour, except to radiate it in
order to keep it from becoming so large as to be painful. The chemo was to help stop its (lung tumour) metastasizing (say into the other lung), and thus decreasing my general well-being. However, I don’t want to sound negative here, and while I could still fly out of the world any time, day or night, without warning, I
hope
one can infer that the radiation worked reasonably well on the brain, since it did on the lung, and has thus bought me a bit of time. Too bad they can’t repeat the brain radiation (or won’t consider it before a year, anyway) as they could with the chest, but them’s the breaks, and I ain’t complaining!
Nor am I forgetting that I owe any reprieves as much to the love and support and prayers of my family and friends as I do to luck or good genes—probably way more. So thanks a trillion—and keep those positive thought-waves a-coming. To say nothing of the stories—whee! And I wish you continued high energy and inspiration for the novel, of course.
Ever … ever … ever …
E.
Ever the optimist, despite what she knew was coming, Elma continued to read and to think. Writing to me the next week, she told me she had read two more of my stories “with delight,” but “I always need at least two, better three, readings before I fit things together and know my own mind.” She had also seen the film version of Annie Proulx’s
The Shipping News
, and had admired the characters, who were, she wrote,
exactly as I had pictured them. And the scenery was beautifully filmed. No wonder in that land of cloud, fog and mirages, that people have “the sight,” and the line between so-called truth and fiction almost ceases to exist.
I was also recently blessed by a young Aboriginal woman, someone with “the sight,” in an amazingly soothing laying-on-of-hands ceremony, which helps my acceptance a lot … There have been revered healers (usually, though not always, female) since pre-recorded history, in every country and culture, though the Christians certainly did their best to stamp them out in Europe and elsewhere.
Her next letter brought disquieting news, which accounted for Carol’s not having been directly included in recent exchanges.
Dear A.,
Rather than forwarding e-mails, or sending joint ones, I have been giving Carol brief news and notes about your stories, your and Alasdair’s musical activities, the possibility of your novel being published—when will you know, I wonder?—and other anecdotes. This is mostly because she has been in worsening shape, and not up to reading or writing much. Her e-mails to me have mostly been very brief medical reports. Her doctor had actually ordered her to go to Florida for a week between chemo treatments, and she was looking forward to sun and reading. I received the following last night: “We are back, earlier than we’d planned, and I’m not doing terribly well. Starting today, someone is coming to help me with letters and so on. I seem to be sleepy so much of the time.”
“Not doing terribly well” means awful. Increasing sleepiness is often a sign that
someone has begun to slip away. I feel devastated, but I don’t think she is in pain, and going gently into that good night is very often no bad thing.
I, on the other hand, am feeling pretty well, apart from side effects of steroids, which are more of a nuisance than an affliction.
About the scan of my head, done on February 9th, the results should have been available to my doctor today, had she cared to phone … I have every intention of phoning
somebody
Thursday or Friday and saying (truthfully) that I really need to know something in terms of how heavy a dose of steroids I should now be on. Could the doctor contact me at least to say “swelling/re-growth not too bad” or “swelling markedly increasing” or whatever. I do not want to wait two weeks to find out this much, even if there is very little they can do about the results, apart from altering the steroid dose.
I must go, but I love you dearly.
Ever … ever … ever …
E.
P.S. I recently came across a poem by Stanley Kunitz, who was interviewed at the Dodge Poetry Festival in 1998, five years after Carol had won her Pulitzer Prize, and almost forty years after he had won his. He was ninety-three at the time of the interview, and still an avid gardener. This particular poem, “The Round,” conveys a writer’s need for two worlds, and the necessity of pulling down the blinds sometimes on an outer world in order to concentrate on an inner one. Try to find the poem somewhere, if you can; for while it may not be the greatest poem of our time, it resonates on a variety of levels. Kunitz walks about in the early-morning light of his garden, appreciating the flowers he has grown, taking unusual joy in everything around him, but then has to settle again to his work as a writer, where the hard task of shaping words to fit his vision brings him daily challenges and rewards.
Much later, after finding and reading the poem myself, I agreed with Elma on two counts. It may not have been “the greatest poem of our time,” but it
did convey with a simple and direct beauty “a writer’s need for two worlds”—the private retreat, the public persona—how to keep one from intruding on the other, the everlasting challenge.
How often have I sat at my desk, as I do now, like Stanley Kunitz did at ninety-three, thinking myself young because I am only eighty-one, reading aloud my scribbled words, checking the rhythms, looking for sharper images, trying for coherence in a jumble of ideas, writing something down, crossing it out, putting it all into my computer, seeing next the detached formality of a printed page, which makes cruelly evident what still needs work. The other world breaks in—do the laundry, feed the cats, buy groceries for dinner, weed the garden, go to the bank, buy a book, read the newspaper, talk on the telephone, assure friends in letters, either real or virtual, that I am still alive and functioning. The pendulum swings again, and it’s back to the messy page, full of corrections, and the new beginning of every day.
Elma’s letter was written on Valentine’s Day, though she made no reference to the date. While she surely hoped that a new life might also begin for her each day, uncertainty remained.
The lung cancer, which Martin believed came from heavy smoking, had developed independently of the polyps in her colon, and had then spread to her brain, where there were at least seven tumours in different areas. The symptoms had at first included giddiness and a loss of control in her right hand, which led to her being treated with steroids; but as the cancer progressed and the steroids no longer worked, she started to lose her short-term memory, and she would eventually become confused. When she visited her oncologist the following Monday, she had taken a tape recorder. She was trying to understand and be clear about everything.
Listening to the tape, I get the impression that the doctor hoped some of the brain tumours might have shrunk to nothing (as the lung tumour did) but had not definitely expected that. Mart confirmed my impression. But the neighbour who accompanied me and took notes said
her
impression was that the doctor got just what she was anticipating. So who knows? At least, there was an all-around improvement, and I could hardly ask for more.
At the time of this visit, and because the radiologist had not been able to clarify the results of a scan, Elma had left with the feeling that the information she had was too sketchy to be helpful. The following week, however, she saw her own doctor, and hope was reborn.
When I asked my doctor yesterday if she could do anything, she managed to obtain a fax of the scan report within less than an hour. It was quite a bit more informative and left me feeling more positive and reassured. “No new lesions are seen. Considerable improvement has occurred, with a substantial reduction in volume (i.e., tumour size) though the number of lesions has only slightly diminished.” At least the general tone is favourable.
Fearing she might sound too optimistic about her own health at a time when Carol was in worsening shape, Elma waited for a couple of weeks before writing specifically to Carol, two letters in four days. By this time, however, her own situation had changed yet again, and she felt it important to let Carol know.
Dear Carol,
I have been thinking about you a great deal. I have to say, if I am to go by what my body is telling me right now, I don’t think I have much time left, which, at the moment, doesn’t seem like much of a tragedy. Of course, when/if I am not in so much pain, I may feel quite differently.
One good thing—since I feel a need to talk to someone in the middle of the night when I start to get scared, and I can’t bring myself to deprive Mart (or my various loving and willing friends) of sleep, I have found that I am being forced to talk to God, which seems to work! And at least He/She is not going to lose sleep over it.
The upshot is that I’m still basically very content with my lot. Martin is in for a few rude shocks, though. He always relied on me to remember stuff for him! He’s doing OK, and seems a bit less tense. Anyway, I don’t want you to feel at all saddened by what’s going on (or not) in my brain. I really feel quite happy at present and still very blessed,
apart from the physical pain. The mental stuff I can handle, so far. Funny—I thought it would be the other way around.
I have been re-reading
The Stone Diaries
, which I did not appreciate at all properly the first time round. How on earth did you know, at the age you were then, so much about how it feels to be dying?
Saw my oncologist today, and when I asked how fast the symptoms of deterioration (mental and physical) would increase, she said, in effect, “How fast did it happen at the beginning?” To that I replied, “Very fast indeed.” Of course, she’s not committing herself to anything, but she sort of shrugged and said, “Well, you know that’s the way this cancer operates.”
When I say physical, I include chest pain from coughing—I have a cold and various other infections—though the pain from what they call TMJ, a disorder of the jaw, is far worse. The chest pain is possibly a consequence of the ribs being broken (well, cracked) through coughing.
I do wish I knew with more precision when and how fast the sky is likely to fall. I want to see my kids again, and they will want to see me, but how to plan for this?
Good night and God bless.
Elma
Dearest Carol (Also Dear A.),
Way back last fall, I wrote you and said I was going to have to decide about whether or not to have my colon removed. In the same letter, I said I was being bothered by something else as well, but I wasn’t going into details, since I knew too little, and it was still only in the “something doesn’t feel right” stage. I just knew it was either something of no consequence, or far more serious than the colon thing, and it was, of course, my lungs.
Now, once again I sincerely hope I am reading wrongly what my body seems to be telling me. But in case I’m not, let me say again how much it has meant to me (and still does) to have you “hand in hand in our adventure together. Onward!” What I am still praying
for is a “good death”—that I will remain accepting and at peace and that above all I will keep my sense of humour.
Carol, you are a candle to light the sun— many suns for many people—and your presence written (in both your letters and your books), physically in the world, and felt (though the latter through a cloud darkly at times) have seen me through the bleakest of times. What would I have done without you? Your friendship has made all the difference between just enduring and enduring with enjoyment, and even joy.
There’s a quote somewhere about friendship being a “world without end.” I trust ours is. If I say “I won’t ever leave you,” I sound like Jesus, and even my egotism doesn’t stretch that far. But I don’t see my leaving you if you ever need me. My concept of space/time precludes that, for one thing. “Eternity in an hour”—or a nanosecond. As far as I’m concerned, it’s still and always an adventure together—onward! I’m always there for you—with a candle.
Much love, and gratitude for having had my life touched by yours,
Elma
P.S. Arthur—of course most of this applies to you equally. The “adventure together” bit comes from an inscription Carol wrote to me in one of her books, the title story of “Dressing Up,” which was my favourite in that collection for a number of reasons.
Elma sensed that her time would now be very short; and, sensing something of this myself, I wrote immediately to Martin. His reply included a direct message from Elma.
Dear Arthur,
Thank you for your note and your concern. I knew that it would embrace both of us. Basically I find that my own moods vary with Elma’s feelings and experiences. Consequently, most of this year has been quite bearable, because Elma herself has been so positive in her attitude … When she begins to lose her grip on what’s happening, I find myself silently
pleading, impotently, “Please don’t go!” But the saddest times are when I know she’s in a lot of physical pain. She surprised herself with the discovery that simple physical pain is more scary, for her, than the loss of mental faculties. So it’s more of an agony for the partner as well. And what’s causing the serious pain right now? Not the cancer, but the jawbone!
[Addendum by E.: You would think that anyone who has endured pre-antibiotic ear infections, abscessed teeth, and childbirth— the pain of which I thought at the time was unsurvivable—would have a clue. But it wasn’t until I realized that given a choice between losing a brain faculty such as, say, my hearing and enduring the pain in my jaw, and realizing that losing hearing would win hands down, that I realized how bad my situation was. Losing my sight would be a tougher call.]
So please join us in a paean of thanks for 21st-century antibiotics and anodynes.
Love,
Martin [and Elma]