Signed, Sealed, and (Hopefully) Delivered

This week my thoughts, many of my conversations, and – most contentiously – my Facebook timeline, have been consumed by the unfolding refugee crisis. Simply the fact that I choose to use the term “refugee” there rather than ‘migrant’ will be enough to see some of you read no further, so discordant has the issue become. I don’t think British culture has been so divided on a matter of national identity since an American friend asked whether or not milk should be added first or last when making a proper cup of tea. (The answer was last, obviously.)

I’m not going to use this post to preach about to whom I feel we should provide shelter, or how. I have neither an exhaustive enough political education nor enough Neurofen to spend this evening trawling through the facts and figures to support my perspective, or refute those to which it is vehemently opposed.

The thing about which I do, passionately, feel we should remain united is helping people who are in desperate need. In recent years this has come in the form of the Rucksack Project, distributing kit to homeless people across the country to help them get through the winter, and before that it was Live Aid, Comic Relief, and every sponsored silence or Great South Run that we as a nation have thrown the full force of our support behind. So I was heartened when a group of local people, (the fabulous ‘Don’t Hate, Donate’) began collecting aid to distribute to those who have left behind their lives and belongings, and was keen to help out in the best way I knew how. Unfortunately, I swiftly realised that I’m not actually very useful. Until the day comes when a freshwater pearl demi parure is all that stands between life and death, I don’t really have the transferable skills required to pitch in and make a difference. (But if, in the inevitable zombie apocalypse, they discover that tiger’s eye really can soothe neurological ailments and lapis lazuli wards off the apocalyptic virus; I’m your girl.)

We made a few lists of things which would be useful for anyone who finds themselves displaced and without much assistance, and gratefully raided the various pound stores and charity shops for which our local High Street is so oft derided. Nineteen pairs of socks and thirty-three toothbrushes later, I could either help several refugees feel a bit more comfortable or keep just over a third of a monstrous, many-fanged centipede cosy-toed and minty-fresh. I was proud of how many boxes we’d filled with the basic necessities, but still didn’t feel as though I was really giving much of myself to the project. It didn’t feel personal, and it should.

Remembering back to the Boxing Day some years ago when I volunteered at a Christmas lunch for the homeless, elderly, and vulnerable, I recalled the difference it made to some of the guests when they were given one of the Christmas cards I’d spent the previous few days writing. For some of them, it was the only card they would get, and it seemed to matter to them to know that someone cared. That someone had thought of them, and taken a moment to show it. I decided to apply the same principle to those seeking shelter, asylum, and lives free from the chaos of conflict. So I reverted to doing the thing with which I am often most at ease, and started to write.

I wrote a handful of messages of support inside blank greetings cards. Nothing lengthy or exceptional, just a few lines of comfort to those for whom hope was proving hard to find. I asked my friends and family to contribute messages too, and slowly the pile began to grow. "Dear Friends, you have not been forgotten. Please keep going…"

Most were supportive, but a few were cynical. One asked why I was “writing to terrorists,” and how I felt about these missives being received by “our enemies”. As I began to answer that of course I didn’t want them to be read by murderous lunatics, I realised that – perhaps – I do. Whilst IS are unlikely to be thwarted by a postcard of a kitten and a sharpie-scrawled quote from Winnie the Pooh, they’re not the people who make up the majority of the refugees. (Whatever the Daily Mail may tell you.) Many of the people who are in those camps, however, are young men. Young men who are lost, and angry, and frightened, and being stripped of their dignity and humanity by successive nations who don’t want to help. If one, just one, of those vulnerable young people feels valued and supported for just a moment, then maybe that’s all it will take to help keep them on the right path as they complete their unimaginable journey in search of a better life. We’re all often just a heartbeat away from having our lives altered irrevocably, and sometimes it’s the smallest thing that tips the balance the right way.

Were it not for some happy accident of birth, I too could have been born into another culture in a less privileged land, and the chances are that if that were the case I wouldn’t still be here. My health, or lack thereof, has nearly bested me on several occasions during a lifetime that has only managed to continue this long because of the support systems which life in this country provide. On the 11^th of September 2014 – one year ago today, on a date already significant for so many – I had the most recent in a series of operations that have saved my life. Had they not operated when they did, the extensive infection which had spread through to my bones would almost certainly have overwhelmed a system compromised by years of illness and immunosuppressants. I was lucky, and I’ve been just as lucky before. I’m aware, perhaps more than many my age, at how many points our fragile lives rest on a knife-edge, ready to fall one way or another. Many of the scientists I admire believe that those moments translate to infinite parallel universes within which all the alternative options are explored. Perhaps there is one where a version of me, someone a little Kate-like – but not much – is healthy. And perhaps there are others where I wasn’t as fortunate as I have been; where I didn’t receive the necessary help on time, or where I was raised in a place that just didn’t have the resources to try. Considering the nature of my life’s complexities, I have to accept that – if there are multiple worlds co-existing alongside this one – then in most of them I’m probably dead.

So, you see, it’s more important than ever to make this life count. To help others if and when I possibly can, and to recognise that even the smallest gesture can make a big difference if it happens to come at the right time. If that means writing a letter to a potential terrorist, then so be it. Maybe if we can all send out a little more love, and hope, and courage into the world there will be fewer people who feel that the only way to make an impact upon it is to spread hatred and violence. After all, Bin Laden wouldn’t have looked half as threatening in those videos if he’d accompanied the long beard and flowing robes with a bit more tie-dye and a bit less TNT...

Tick Tock

On the first day of the new year, I was reminded how precious our time with the people we love is, and how privileged I am to share each and every moment with them. It's not something I had forgotten, as such, but I had perhaps become so caught up in thinking it that I'd forgotten to feel it properly.                                                 

I usually curl up away from the world on New Years Eve, agitated by the incessant reminders that as I journeyed in and out of hospital time was doing little more than pass. I could always hear it ticking long before the chimes.

This year, it was time for something completely different. After a slightly unsettling conversation with a GP who reminded me that the NHS IVF cut-off is closer in practical terms than I had previously considered, I was very aware of the implications of transitioning into another year. A year when I'll turn 29, (which I will continue to deny, favouring a fifth attempt at 25), which is a little too close to 30 when so many decisions must be made long before I'm 35.

So it was with a jumbling tumble of  anxiety and anticipation that I curled up in the warm, with tea and the telly, to see 2014 out, and 2015 in. There was one notable difference this time though; I wasn't alone. I got to spend my New Year's Eve with someone who has always tried to ensure that I'm not on my own for any of the big things, and, more recently, has been there for all the little things too. 

I wasn't in any doubt about how fortunate I was to begin this year feeling safe, warm, loved, and happy - which I'm afraid I still peer quizzically at on occasion, like a dog that hasn't understood a command, as all this contentment is quite new a thing. 

Although unremarkable by the standards of many, it was a particularly good night by my own. I appreciated just how much of the previous year I had enjoyed, despite it also being one of the toughest. As it neared twelve, my companion smiled and pointed out that he wouldn't see me again this year. I felt a moment of bereavement, realising that whatever happened next we'd never again get the same time back. Those months and weeks and days and hours and minutes and seconds of things that were good were being swept away alongside all the bad stuff I had been so keen to move away from. After all that has happened this year, the one thing I had not anticipated was being sad to see it end. But I was, as 2014 drew its final breaths, sorry it was ending there, as all the firsts became lasts. 

What made me so fortunate was that all those lasts; last smiles, last hugs, last kisses, would be reborn in the fireworks before the smoke had begun to clear. Despite the many hardships hovering just over the horizon, the new year brought with it lots of hope. The sense of beginning was just as strong as the pang of loss, and the fireworks beautifully embodied the feeling that there would be pockets of the purest, brightest light in the approaching darkness.

When I woke today, still comforted by the hope and light and happiness that sent wisps of itself out into the future with tantalising clarity, its focus was even more keenly illustrated.

During the night, as I had mourned our lasts and sought solace in our nascent firsts, a neighbouring household could take comfort from neither.

At this stage I don't know who died - if it was the husband of the older couple, or his wife. Simply that yards away from my happiness someone elses lasts were much more final, and their firsts so much more sad. Someone, somewhere very close, had smiled with, and hugged, and kissed the one they loved for the last time. The very last. Their firsts would be so opposite to mine that it was almost impossible to think of them being played out simultaneously. All of my hopeful togethers are to be their desperate alones. All the love and support that carried me into the new year was stolen away for them as the joyous strains of Auld Lang Syne faded too. 

I will begin this new year so very thankful for the people with whom I will share the rest of it, and - I hope - will do my very best to appreciate the strength and depth with which we each love, and are loved, by things whose ties to the world are so frail.

The Ties That Bind

Sometimes perspective is subtly gained, and other times it crashes into view and simply obliterates the previous mode of thinking. The hospital which has been its stage - and my home - for the last week is a master of shifting attitudes; an arena so cacophonous with extremes of emotion that few are seldom fixed.

Being quite experienced in pain and complexity, I've struggled much less with the physical reality of this current unwellness than I have with some of the wider questions it has thrown into my path. The now-unavoidable gastric surgery carries with it substantial risks to fertility, the extent of which I am only just beginning to explore with the help of relevant specialists from the field.

Suddenly finding myself asking very big questions about my future has been made particularly jarring because I had never given much thought to it before. My mother was in her late 30s when she became a parent, and even as a child I had always presumed that the same would be true of me. As ever greater numbers of my peers have begun to have families of their own, and the quantity of nieces and nephews I've amassed threatens to overwhelm the world supply of Jelly Tots, I still felt under no pressure to consider my own reproductive responsibilities. It was a question for another time, another decade. Something that seemed so abstract and far away, and felt almost ridiculous to ruminate upon seriously when it was so far from being relevant.

It is a theme repeated, I suppose, by couples everywhere who find themselves actually having to think about fertility. It's an aspect of our health we take for granted in a more absolute, evolutionary sense than we might any other, and do not test until it fails us. I had been as naive as anyone, never questioning my ability to have a child of my own, and indeed focused more on the rights and responsibilities afforded me not to get pregnant than anything else.

Much as I adore the cheeky, sticky, noisy, lovable riot of children to whom I am Auntie, I have been perfectly content to postpone any thought of adding to that brood myself. I'm not the type who coos and clucks over other people's babies, and don't have much experience entertaining children. This awkwardness led to a general assumption that I am not a very natural mother and a much more intuitive Wicked Queen. (It may also have something to do with the tiara, but I still deny responsibility for those poisoned apples.)

Despite the teasing, I don't think I had really given the concept of motherhood much thought at all until I was twenty. When my grandfather died it was earth-shattering, but somewhere amidst the shock and the grief and the pain was a strange kinship and familiarity. That moment of devastation linked me to the past in a way nothing could have done before. The loss of that great man and all that he was to us, and the staggering realisation that from that point on he could be only a memory, was when it all fell into place. I have referred to it since as my "circle of life moment", because I knew, there and then, that our lives have power and purpose simply because we share them. As I felt both the privilege and the loss of having been loved so much by someone I so admired, I recognised my place in the order of things in a way I had not done before. I wasn't just a daughter, or a granddaughter, I was a link in a chain that stretched back generation after generation, and - most startlingly - would reach out just as far into the future too.

I've touched on the significance of that moment before, but have found myself remembering it so much more acutely in the shadow of this latest news. As I indulged the self-pity and allowed myself to sink a little deeper into what was becoming quite a comfortable sulk,  my whinge was interrupted by a whisper.

"Please let me go. Tell the children that I love them, but they must let me go."

An elderly lady in a bed across the ward is receiving only palliative care, and her lucidy drifts somwhere between remarkably keen and hopelessly lost, never certain which is cruellest. Tonight she has called alternately for her children, and her parents, earnestly seeking the comfort of those greatest loves as her life begins its end.

Her family is large and caring, guilty only in their eagerness to cherish the moments of respite from distress, despite - and because of - their rarity. It is impossible to watch life unfolding and untangling itself at such close hand without realising how small a part we each play. How insignificant the knots are in which we find ourselves tied, time and again, until there is no time. No "again". It isn't blood she calls to, or to which they cling, it's bond. A bond formed by loving as deeply, resolutely, and fearlessly as family demands, but which is not exclusive to genetics. It's the quality of the relationships that surround her which have brought the greatest joy to know, and are causing the most pain to leave, not their heritage.

As the spectre of their loss calls to the ghosts of mine, I find myself so very grateful for those in my life whom I would be most loathe to leave, family and friends, and equilibrium begins to restore. It's hard to be too dedicatedly self-pitying in the face of so much love, and life, and potential for more of the same. I may not know what shape my future will take, or how far it may deviate from the course I'd expected, but in this moment it is enough to possess the luxury of time to find out.

As the last of the ward lights are dimmed and the day's visitors reduced to a cluster of empty chairs, so she whimpers to the night and asks it to take her; eased of the pain her illness delivers but wracked with the agony she knows awaits them. She quietly asks the nurse if she can have something to cuddle, and they give her a pillow. As she falls asleep with it cradled tightly to her chest my heart breaks for far worthier tragedies than my own, but this single bed has never felt quite so vast.

Caller ID

Today was the 1st of March, and the welcome sunshine heralded the forthcoming spring. There was a freshness to the world, promising to breathe the colour and life back into all those too-long warmed by radiators and thermal socks. The trees have begun to bud, daffodils have started pushing golden trumpets skyward through the slowly thawing ground, and birdsong’s returning to hedgerows as the hardy winter species take advantage of insects enlivened by the unexpected sun. It was a day of beginnings.

Once home, as buoyed by the fresh air and sense of optimism as any good cliché expects, I smiled at the shrill ring of the house-phone and made sure to grab the mug of freshly-brewed tea on-route to answer. There are only a few who’d call the landline at that time of day, and I assumed it would be my friend Chris, wanting to catch up after a few weeks of radio silence from us both. A good cuppa and comfortable seat are a necessity when such a lengthy chat’s anticipated, and as I picked up the receiver and settled down with both, I’ll admit to being unprepared for the female voice on the other end. As soon as she introduced herself as his mother, I knew I wouldn’t touch the tea.

Chris and I met seven years ago through his wife, Elaine, when we found ourselves thrown together on a hospital ward full of elderly ladies. We shared a sense of humour, and quickly formed a friendship forged through long days spent in opposite beds, with little else to entertain us but each other. On her way back through the foyer having been out for a cigarette, she’d passed the charity stall and bought me a squishy little elephant that was full of beans. Someone had told her many years ago that because elephants never forget, if you give someone an elephant, it means they’ll never forget you. We laughed about it and stood it on the windowsill with a little grey cat visiting family had brought her, and which she’d named after me. One day after a trip out on “day release” I returned so tired that I could do little more than curl up on the bed fully dressed. Without a word she padded over and unbuckled my shoes, doing the only thing she could think of to make me a little bit more comfortable, hoping I’d relax enough to sleep despite the increased pain and nausea that I’d been admitted for in the first place.

Elaine's gift.


We were all surprised when her condition deteriorated overnight, and though she clung to life for a few more days, when I saw her in the private room she’d been moved into there was little left of the vibrant, giggling woman I’d bonded with on the ward. Her husband kept in touch because he thought it was what she would have wanted, and over the years we became friends.

Although my only contact with Chris has been through regular phone-calls, he’s always been interested in what I’ve been up to, and always cared very much that I remain healthy and happy. His career in the forces left him with scars deeper than those which had previously hospitalised me, and occasionally he’d recount some of the nightmares which had outlasted his service. Those tales weren’t always easy to hear, but were tempered with anecdotes about his time in Germany, the antics of the five cats he’d raised from kittens, and his enduring passion for science and astronomy.

Several attempts have been made throughout the years, by me and by his friends and family, to dissuade him from drinking as heavily as he began to following Elaine’s death. But he never slept soundly without her, and couldn’t imagine spending his life with anyone else. Until today I’d never spoken to his mother directly, simply heard him speak of her, often mentioning how robust she was for a woman of eighty who had still cared for her own mother until recently. I can’t count the number of times Chris joked about the longevity in his family, and talked about outliving me despite being thirty years my senior. Thirty years to the day, as the same date in April birthed us both, and made the annual well-wishes much easier to remember!

As the very last of the sun streamed through the window, warming the seat I’d curled up in to chat with him, his mother quietly explained how her son had been found dead. It was a strangely civilised and emotionless call; her supplying the details, me offering the condolences, us both agreeing that the news wasn’t entirely unexpected. I felt sorrier for her than for him in many ways, because he’d been very philosophical about his lack of desire to live without Elaine. He’d lost a life he no longer wanted, but she’d lost a son she’d never given up hope would learn to cope on his own. The tears that followed the click of the receiver flowed for so many things. The shock of the news after expecting his cheery refrain to greet me, the familiarity of the hurt I knew his family would be feeling, and the uncompromising contrast between the afternoon’s positivity and the sadness that was creeping in with the evening shade.

Long ago I’d had to accept that I couldn’t “fix” Chris. That none of the people who cared for him could do that. The best I could offer was to be his “little friend,” as he always referred to me, mainly to wind me up. I listened to him, laughed with him, and let him cry when he needed to. In return he cared, and repeatedly reassured me that he’d always be there if I needed him. Despite his flaws and failings, and all the people he had let down over the years – including himself – he really meant it. In a funny sort of way I always knew I could rely on him. He was determined to do right by me because of Elaine, and never went very long without giving me a ring to check that all was right with my world.

The only wobble during today’s call came when his mother asked me if she could phone me from time to time, to keep in touch, because she thought it would be what Chris would have wanted. I assured her that she was welcome to ring at any time, and I was always here if there was anything she needed. I’ll do my best to listen. I’m sure we’ll laugh sometimes. And I’m sure there will be times she’ll need to cry.

The weather report for tomorrow says it’s turning colder. Spring isn’t beginning yet after all. First, winter must end.