117sticks

At the start of 2020 my elder sister Linda, the clever one in the family, had already been in a fight with breast cancer for a few years. After a hopeful spell where she seemed to be clear of it, it woefully returned as a secondary cancer in her Liver. She refused to engage with us about the likelihood of it being terminal, but we all guessed it would be. On the 9thJuly 2020 she called a family zoom meeting. She shared the news we never wanted to hear - the chemo she was on had stopped working. She died at home 16 days later. Linda was only 62 and had enjoyed no more than the first few verses of her well-planned and picture-perfect retirement. Just a few miles away my mother, Marmit, 83, had just watched one of her children die. Comfortably at the fiery end of the personality spectrum, her battle-ready demeanour masked both any grief she felt for the loss of Linda, but also the fact she too was riddled with cancer. We hadn’t a clue – her multiple aches and pains were simply put down to old age. A few short months later an unexplained fall at home meant hospitalisation and tests. She had advanced tumours all around her body. The potential cancer types behind these were multitudinous, and untreatable. She was moved to an end-of-life care unit at a local nursing home, where, unlike the covid-swamped hospital, thankfully we were at least allowed to visit. Three of us held her as she died on 17th November, just 115 days after my sister and less than three weeks after finding out she even had cancer.