Hello Hurricane

I’m going to say it. I want to talk round the subject, just list qualifications and all the things that make it okay, fine, normal.

My mum’s got cancer.

This isn’t something that happens to me. This is something that happens to other people.

I used to make a lot of jokes; “people only like Eva Cassidy because she died of cancer. Oh no, you can’t be nasty about her – she died of cancer!” I’m surprised no one ever hit me. I didn’t think that was offensive; in fact, I still don’t. I also think I may be a bit of an idiot. But whatever, I don’t think I’ll make jokes like that anymore. I just don’t feel like it.

Talking of feelings, this is definitely an interesting subject with me. When I was about 17, I made a little chart like this:

(it was about that pretty, too)

I blu-tacked it on my ‘mint julep’ woodchip wall. I don’t know what you put on your wall when you were 17. Okay, I had a couple of surfing posters too (I have never been surfing). I guess what I was doing was trying to understand my feelings.

My sister Katy doesn’t have a problem identifying her feelings. She feels something, she cries (she is amazing). I did a musical in Youth Theatre called Seize the Day. Every rehearsal, we took turns to share what we would do if we could ‘seize the day’. I said, ‘If I could seize the day, I would manage to cry again.’

You know what? Like most of the dreams I never thought would come true... it came true. We went to see It’s a wonderful life at the indie cinema down by the marina, and I did it. When George came back to his family to give himself up to the police, and the whole neighbourhood poured in... it took me 7 years, but I did it.

However, just because I’ve loosened up a bit doesn’t mean I get it. I got mum’s text and went back to my office. I sat down and looked at my work. I decided to get that piece of cake I’d been thinking about all through my meeting. I felt tired. ‘Maybe I’ll go eat this in the prayer room.’ Looking at everyone carrying on, thinking ‘they don’t know.’ Do I tell them? I get into the prayer room. I leave the light off. I sit and pick up my fork. Even more tired. Put down the cake. Drop off the chair, knees, stomach, face, like that monk in that film about Martin Luther. I feel the floor hold me, at each point, every point on my body. ‘This is how I hold you, Tim. This is how I’m holding Mum.’ The floor stretches away down here, rivulets in the green carpet. ‘But when you stand up, you’ll see its not really so far.’

In a way, I’m still on the floor there. I’m still wandering round thinking, ‘they don’t know’. I’m still eating my Victoria sponge, listening to Jon Foreman sing, ‘Hello Hurricane, you’re not enough, you can’t silence my love.’ I don’t know what I feel, but I feel something.

[a few qualifications:
- It’s the slow-growing kind
- It’s as small as they could catch it
- It’s not come into contact with main body cells, so shouldn’t transmit round the body
- They’re cutting it off in the next few weeks, and the operation has an 80% chance of success (not sure if that’s encouraging or not)
- Mum seems to be more at peace than she’s been for a couple of years. Jesus is doing something wonderful here.]