Author: judyfairbairns

by

Island Blog – Truth and Connection

I considered not writing today, I did. But, if writing is a compulsion, there really is no point in any attempt to avoid. It considers me. I write to uplift, that’s my thing, not contrived and with no agenda, but just because I am who I am. In uplifting, I gain so much. I cannot, not, do this uplifting thing. It is part of me. So, when I am tired, bone weary, feeling shit, I hesitate myself, if that is indeed possible. I pick up and join with the voices of my past, those in my own parental home that said, and clearly, You never go out with a face like that, or Nobody wants to know about you and your current angst, of words to that effect, and so we didn’t. We left our feelings behind because the mess of emotion is, was, something to be ashamed of, an affliction, and everyone else is just fine by the way, so keep your smile bright and your lies constrained by chains in the cellar of your soul.

When I question this now, many miles away from youth and my now dead parents, I find my own answers. They come slow, like geese on a spring wind, like daffodils in an ice cold sky, faltering, halting, holding fast to a risky opening. That thinking was then, I say. Yes, it was, comes the answer, but the truth of it remains steadfast. You don’t ‘go out there’ with your smile half way down your legs and that boring liturgy of stuff that nobody wants to hear pushing at your teeth until it blasts out into a How Are You face, sending the asker into a wall of regret at asking at all.

Another answer that lifts like blossom from the sludge of thinking is that it is a huge mistake to attach possibles to a feeling. Defining a feeling is very important. I feel very tired. That’s how I feel. It isn’t because I have had a tough life, nor that I hold regrets about my motherhood, nor that I find it hard to pump up a car tyre, nor that I find it a damn menace to chop wood. None of that. I am just tired. Funny that we need to attach reasons, when a feeling is just a feeling, and that feeling will pass, as everything does. But, being human, we question, and isn’t it interesting that the judges, bored old buggers who haven’t tasted limelight for a while, leap from their chairs and into the ring, the moment we allow such questions the floor. So don’t do it.

A young friend visited today. I knew her when she was 12 and now she’s a granny. We had a wonderful time, talking of our memories, our connections over 30 years or more and my tiredness got fed up and lifted. Connection is everything, because it takes us out of our own story and into a new and interesting narrative. This might seem that my story is not enough and, at times, it isn’t, and that, I believe, is the same for us all. To question is to quest. To reach out is to reach. To be truthful about feelings is to honour them. I’m learning, all of the time.

by

Island Blog – Singularity, Tile number 17 and the Frog

I was thinking, or was I being thought? Good question. When a whale in the wide open ocean, or a stag within forest cover, or, even the frog I found in my kitchen this morning, looks at me, I do wonder who is looking at who, or is it whom? The wee frog shifted its unrestrained eyeballs this way, that, up and down, over and above and wotwot, unlike my looking, which is forwards, pretty much. Such a limitation, I said to said frog, as I lifted it’s cold wee body out into danger, aka, the outdoors. How it got in infiltrates my thinking. Not that I mind. We are all travellers, from one season to another, from one state to another, from sleep to awareness, from one birthday to the next. But this frog stopped me, thought me. Beyond the how-the-hell-did-you-get-here questioning (and I am quick to beyond myself from that poibntless question) I wondered about the help thing. My help. I did not squeal nor pull back in revulsion and call the fire brigade or, worse, pest control. No, indeed. I hunkered down, best I could, and watched its eyes, felt its fear as it froze on tile number 17. I only know this because, in my oldness it helps to count my way in the dark. I liked being 17. Finally I was free of curfew and about to find the damn lunatic with whom I fell in love, and who fathered five astonishing individuals. I digress.

We all walk singular. Oh yes, we join others, conjoin with a few, stick with one or two, but, even within those comforting boundaries, we are still singular. I am still me, and that me can cause much eyeball switch. Change comes, to one, to another and the timing is always off, or so I have found. So how hard it can be to retain self when others want, or appear to want, me to change shape in order to fit. We all build our protections, and, yet, when we meet a rigidity, we are thrown. And what we do, all of us, initially at least, is to doubt ourselves. What did I do wrong? Is my change a bad thing? And, sadly, many of us slink back into the dark of those unnerving questions. I certainly did. But, as we do that slinking thing, which is, to be clear, safe passage, we lose our singularity and our voice is silenced. We have watched this scenario played out in many films, cheered the one who rose, naked and scared and singular into their own light, risking the wrath of anyone at Ground Control.

It takes courage to stand strong. I don’t know the way, can’t find the words, have no plan beyond the truth that I will stand for this no more, allow this no more, will not bend my shape. I know this place and, trust me, singularity is not single. Not at all. There are a gazillion singulars on heretofore unknown paths, feeling the fear, pushing on in trust and faith. You will find them, as I did.

As the frog found me.

by

Island Blog – Awake the Echoes

Before I left on my journey into the unknown, my head was a full chorus of discordant voices, a clamjamfry of chaos, each voice certain it was in the right place and in the right choir, which none of them were. Once I realised that I held the baton, I regained control, thanked them for turning up and sent the whole lot packing, sans pay. This confusion was birthed from my own fears, of cancer, of therapy, of travel, of the ferry sinking, the train crashing, or not running at all, of the Zap Centre not able to find my name, etc etc. I imagined the latter and agreed with myself that I would be anyone at all, just to get this treatment into my past.

As I moved into the freezing and draughty corridor pre boarding, an actual ferry sat docked and gape-moothed, swallowing cars and vans and bikes, I felt those think-eejits choking out last breaths. Funny that……once I get the hell on with something that affears me, my imagined horrors become as wisps of nothing. The ferry did not sink. The train left on time and arrived in the right station. The hotel was expecting me and my room was comfortable and safe. For five nights and days I moved with growing confidence, walking the short route for morning radio-zappery, and thence to the Maggie’s Centre where they know just how to welcome all of us cancer folk, and those connected, who want to talk or don’t want to talk, who want tea or coffee or just to wander alone.

The imagined fears think me. Echoes, they are, of old voices, the shoulds and coulds and musts and might-but-didn’ts; of failures perceived, in fact, of all that our spectacular minds can bring to bear, in order to pulp us down. I can summon up a massive storm just thinking about a short trip somewhere, and, I know that many laugh at that. Overthinking, too much imagination, catastrophising, I’ve heard it all, and used to define myself as ‘faulty’ from such opinions, but not now. Now I have learned that, for someone like me who sees these possible disasters, albeit ridiculous, is, in fact, a wise person. I still go, I still feel the fear, but I still step out. A lot of the fears, breathed out from lungs of brass, I flap away, but some I pay attention to and then prepare, because I damn well will not give in or up or over, never mind the oldness and aloneness of me. And if, and when, I hear the echoes awakening, the old fears, the invitation to say no to every single adventure, even the weeny ones, I rise. Every time I rise. I don’t say it’s a breeze because it isn’t. It’s a bloody effort even to admit I am thinking about this journey or that. But, I will not settle on the settle.

Naturally, like everyone else, I would like the echoes to go away for ever and ever, but they won’t. They are rooted in a very long past, parents, their parents, and their parents, crusty old judges, confined in the corsets of their times. They are in our blood, and they will rise every time we feel anxious about anything. We dont have to listen, well, we do, because pushing them away only lasts a wee while. We need to say, hallo, I hear you, but you are not helpful to me so please go away. It works. Then you, or I, pull up our boots, feel shit scared, and get out there, no matter what comes next.

by

Island Blog – Isolation, Connection, Brave

When I talk with people, initiate the conversation via some made up nonsense such as ‘Do you know where the loo is, or where the tea bags are, or Is this Radiotherapy treatment room E?’ Even though I have all the answers anyroad, there’s a sort of lock and load thing that happens, eye contact, a connection. I do this wherever I go, for myself, for my own elevation from isolation……(I can sense too many ‘tions arising here) but, also because my biggest love is of people, all people, any people and everywhere or anywhere. I know about isolation, or the feeling of it, the cut and hollow and dark of it, and not because I am alone, but because I know how it feels to be lonely. I used to think it was just me, that everyone else in their colourful clothing, their smart car, the pretty picture they painted as a completely happy couple, family, friendship et lala, meant that I was the weirdo who just fell short of the mark. I know differently now, now that I talk to people anywhere and everywhere. Not one of us lives the dream we dreamed, or very few.

In Waiting room E for Radiotherapy, I find astonishment at a cancer diagnosis. This person went for an ordinary eye test, another for a check up for a persistent sore throat, yet another for a cough, a sore back, a limpy leg. Not one of us could catch the cancer word and bring it in to ourselves. Some are still reeling, the process of such an acceptance, a long one. But each person can still chuckle, can still be who they were before and with a story. Both in the waiting room and in the Maggie’s centre, I have learned about others lives, and these connections, this eye contact, this sharing, has lifted us both, in each encounter.

We all walk in isolation, at times in our lives. I remember doing just that when my husband was alive. What is important, is to find someone who is on the same path at the same time. Of course, paths divide and one goes this way and the other, that, but just for a moment in time, we can meet and say, without words, hallo. I see you, and you see me, and isolation just became connection.

But first, we must brave up and talk.

by

Island Blog – A Crooked- Voiced Crow

I’m hearing sounds unfamiliar to me. Above my hotel lurks a crow with a crooked voice. Sounds to me as if he has wrongly wired vocal chords. I watch him make these strange calls and when a mate joins him on the CCTV camera, it thinks me. I might have, and did, at first, consider him a case for sympathy. With that voice, will he ever attract a mate? The rasp is more ‘Go Away’ than ‘Come Hither’ after all, but how wrong was my judgement on the matter!

Inside the warm and welcoming Maggie’s centre, I watch people. Over there is a man who has throat cancer, his voice, produced via a box implant is a hoarse and raspy whisper, his own voice gone forever. Was he a tenor or a baritone, loud-spoken or honey gentle or a bit of both, depending on circumstances? Did he shout, once, as he will no more, or sing, or summon the troops into battle? I will never know. Then there is the guy who has terminal liver cancer and is just out of hospital. Despite this, he is full of jokes and twinkle, talking to everyone, ready, always ready to laugh.

I watch newbies wander in, eyes darting left and right, looking for a safe landing. I hear the welcomes from the staff, the ‘Come Hither’ in their warm and compassionate eyes. Gradually, the newbie’s coat comes off, she is guided to the kettle, the coffee and the tea, the bowls of fruit, chocolates, biscuits and cake. We sit in sunshine behind the glass walls, talking, wishing each other all the hopes for full recovery. I am aware that some cannot hope for that, but, in talking to them, laughing with them, I can see the cancer slide away from their eyes, just for a moment, an hour, a day. Back home, back into the relentless barrage of tests and therapies, reality may well re-invade, and hope can be a heavy weight to lift up each day, for some. I can afford to play the fool, I am well and ridiculous and always full of mischief. (Mischief…….interesting word to pull apart, methinks.) But, even though I am so lucky, so without pain or a possibly hopeless road ahead, I am accepted because I have cancer. We are a new family and there is much to learn about each other, many random conversations to have, many opportunities within which to uplift each other. If I lived here, I would definitely volunteer in this centre. I would meet and greet, lift and encourage, play the daft eejit, sympathise and sit beside another broken bodied soul. And it isn’t just the one with cancer who needs such. There are partners, children, siblings and friends, all in a permanent state of shock, all battling with an overactive imagination, or with a sharp and agonising truth.

I am learning, as we all must, not to hide our diagnoses nor our feelings around them, but to stand up and out, as survivors, however long that survival might prove to be. To find each other, people we would probably never ever meet, had cancer not found a landing within our trusting bodies, a chink, a broken paving stone, a pothole, an unintentional welcome to a predator. I hear, and see, multi cultures in here. I see all shapes, all sizes, listen to all accents, and all of them are beautiful to me now, in a way they never were before. How easy it is, especially in a city, to march past all of this beauty without even a ‘Hi’. I’ve been ‘Hi-ing’ my walk to my radiotherapy appointment each morning, sometimes to the astonishment of the person coming towards me, so used are they to their own agenda and a perceived unfriendliness of everyone they don’t already know. Mostly, however, I receive a smile and a ‘hi’ back and that thinks me too. We can become so very lonely as we live out our lives, not because we want to, but perhaps through fear, or the ordinary process of keeping our broken parts invisible to all. We cover them in clothes and make-up. We keep our arms close to our bodies, our voices low. But what we all long for, in truth, is connection. We just don’t feel confident enough to reach out for it, to face the risk of rejection, for fear of looking foolish. But if we could just, like the crooked-voiced crow, call out anyway, smile to each other, say ‘Hi’ to a line of folk in a bus stop, a queue for radiotherapy, anywhere, everywhere, I know that loneliness would lift, just a little, and, who knows, it could lead to new friendships, as it has for me.

For anyone interested in learning more about Maggie’s Centres, I am visiting the one in Glasgow, on the Gartnavel Campus, opposite the Beatson Cancer Centre, but these havens of support are everywhere.

Just go to http://www.maggies.org

by

Island Blog – A Bimble

The days rove on, and, if I don’t have my specs on, they can rove on without me. I. have noticed this, waking into a Friday which suddenly became Thursday. Maybe I found this Thursday Alert in the local shop on questioning the lack of a weekly veg delivery, or perhaps I arrived for a Friday appointment a full 24 hours ahead, all dressed up and alert and toting my picnic. My life is nothing but adventurous and that’s for sure, but the difference to what was, is that it seems the adventure is heading somewhere all by itself. I can catch up, but I am not always the leader, as I once was. Who would have ever thought that things would string away from me in such a way? It laughs me, mostly. I kind of like the olding time, the way I can explode into a puzzled somewhere, all dressed right and with my picnic. Times, yes, it is mildly inconvenient, but with a mostly empty calendar, I can come back again on the right day. It thinks me.

Once (was it once….no it was not) I knew the date. School, children, business, bookings, all of that. The suddenness of old age surprises me. It may surprise others, but they are careful not to hi- light my appearing, just in case I wobble off my perch t’wirly. I remember this with my own mum, but never thought it would come to me. This old ness. No. However, it is here. I walk daily, but it is a bimble, a cautious wander over the rocky track I used to tramp beneath my boots sans thought. Perhaps this olding bollocks is a result of last year, cellulitis, cancer, beloved dog dead, perhaps. Perhaps.

But nonetheless, I will be ongoing, I will plant my feet in every day, even on the wrong date. Honestly, I believe in b**gering on. Our dad taught us that, and now I am here, all alone but living in the most beautiful place in the whole world, and with a strong community of like-minded dafties living just down the village, it doesn’t matter what day it is. A day is a day. The date matters now and then, but not much.

And, within each day there is the promise of adventure, even if I have to catch up with it.

by

Island Blog – Inscape

Today was modified. After the busy dogsitting day, I knew I was going to allow myself to phew, a lot. Although I woke fine and dandy, I always do, as it is fantabulous just to wake at all when so many do not, I had a weary in my bones and an oldness sort of thinking. There’s a swingbat on that sort of thinking, because I am old and happy about it but I do not like the slump of it, the challenge of it, (thanks Julie) and, although I refuse to couch, or potato, myself, I confess to thoughts that beckon. You could just flop. You could just allow. You could, trust me, you could. I hear that voice, but I cannot take said voice seriously. I am the daughter of a life, of strife, of trauma and regret. I have witnessed and avoided, I have run away and returned, I have no weapons, no desire for revenge nor violence but I have lived a life that, on reflection, only I could have lived. And that thinks me.

I awoke to cats on, not my tin, but my sunroom roof, cats running, not mine, but my neighbour’s, beautiful tortoiseshells and great mousers. I no longer hear the squeaks of the mouse family within my drystone walls, no longer do they keep me awake at night as they scurry about their ordinary lives of survival in my loft, no longer do I watch them rush across what is to them a great divide as they seek fallings of bird seed. I am mousey silent, and there’s a think. Is it ok that these lovely cats are keeping the mice down, or is it ghastly annihilation? Short term, and don’t we always think this way? It thinks me.

A sudden was a young woman stopping at my door with her dog. Fancy a walk? she asked, and I was in. We walked and talked, I said I can’t go far, and she said no problem, just tell me when you want to go back. Safe in that support, I found strength in my legs and breath as we meandered around her life and mine and we both caught that connection which is everything. Neither of us fit into a category, neither want labels, both have known trauma and difficulties. Well, who hasn’t? I believe that our key is to recognise this and to change ourselves somehow. I am further ahead than she, I know this. Our inscape tells us who we were back then, the business success, the marital contributor, the mother, father, friend. We did well. Yes, we made mistakes, ones we may still hold onto as ID, but we are somewhere else now.

And that can mean lost. I know it. ID is a security. When that is taken away, we can become amoeba, floating aimlessly in our loss of identity. What I have learned is to notice that loss, to halt those aimless thoughts and to challenge them. I may be not who I thought I was, but the very ‘was’ of this lost thing is of my past. Can I let it go, that ID of whom I was and whom I believed in for so long? I am always working on that one.

by

Island Blog – The Flying Things

I had a dog today. Well, it’s better than a hissy fit or a conniption and certainly more rewarding. She is a black spaniel puppy, well trained and, for the first time, away from her human parents. She knows me, but that is so not the same thing as being left with me, not in her world. At first she was anxious, a lot of looking out of windows and eye-snapping me every time I moved from one room to another, a whole load of following and looking and those eyes were laden with doubt and insecurity. She is beautiful and soft and sweet and I reassured her a thousand times, creaking down on my hunkers to eye-level her, telling her ssshhhh, we’re ok, you’re safe and so on. I proffered toys, kept since my wee Poppy died, and for visiting dogs, and she rushed everywhere, with a pig, or a bird or a hedgehog or a something that has no name I know in her mouth, that spangle tail wagging like a metronome. We walked a little and she was keen to fly. I could feel that in my old legs, less under my own control than they were before. Before what, or when? I think since all this dying struggled me, and cancer too. That’s a something I flap away as if it was a mere cold, but obviously, my body is resulting. I doubt that is good grammar but, as you know I love to sideswipe the rules on that.

Around 1pm I was knackered and that thought me. She, the Spangle, asked nothing more than cuddles. She made no barks, chewed nothing, responded with cocked head, ears full forward whenever I spoke. I could have said Fancy a trip to Ibiza? and that tail would have told me Yes! However, I knew I needed to lie down. So we went upstairs and I did, inviting her onto the bed. She jumped and landed right on me, her paws either side of my face, her eyes staring right into mine. I looked back and she remained with that looking thing until I got the giggles, initiating a whole shenanigan of mischievous palaver, and I just knew rest was wrest from my grasp.

The sun was bright with a hail storm up his backside. We watched it, the hail, storm by, and then we walked again. We dillyed and dallied, endless sniffs abounding as the wind, latent, for now, still creaked the old trees. I switched back to hear their voices. You only speak in the wind, I said, and they creaked back, like old friends, like old memories. We are quiet in the calm, just like you, they said. It is only in troubling times that we need to speak out, much like you will do in your own troubled times, because nobody ever learns a damn thing when everything is easy. Yet, beyond the easy, In the after of an assault, when someone creaks and speaks from experience, there will be someone else who needs to hear, and who will catch the words.

And then, in my looking up, I saw the flying things. I haven’t seen them for many cold months. Insects in a whirl, a lift, coasting the sun warmth, a spin of hope. I watched them whilst the Spangle sat looking too, with no idea what she was seeing. But I did. I saw. And then we moved on.

by

Island Blog – The Bog and Lifting

Mostly, I am coloured up and cheerful as a chipmunk. Then comes a day when it is even a pain in the arse to get dressed. I don’t like these days, and they know it, because I can hear them grumbling and muttering each time I push myself on and up. And I do. I think it’s because I know about being in the bowels of a depression and how vicious and controlling it is. Thankfully this time is way back in my past, but the body holds the score and we both remember the control of it, the way invisible octopus arms smothered me, held me down and down some more until I forgot who I was, and why I was. The scars are there somewhere and when the past puts its finger on the trigger, I tense, I remember, and my inner fighter rises, stronger now, powerful, even if I am not. She will protect me but only because I call her up from sleep, and that is the key.

When someone has known the ghastly of a mental bog, the knowing never goes away. But, once lifted from said bog, something rises as a teacher. Do you want to learn, survive, bloom again? If, as in my case, the answer is yes-but, then out comes the sunshine of hope. Yes…..But….? Indeed. The but bit is important because you are up there, Oh Teacher and I am slimy and hopeless and full of self-hatred and remorse. How on earth will those beliefs change? Ah, says the Teacher. Just follow me. And I did, and I learned and I was a keen student. I remember faking cheerful, faking ‘sorted’ because in my day, depression was something to be ashamed of, something imagined. ‘This is all in her head’ they said, and they were right, but the dismissive way it was whispered in corridors, was not right at all. As if I had manufactured these days of darkness and fear, just for attention.

I am not depressed now. I have learned much over the years, discovered many wonderful inroads into intelligent and compassionate support, walked them, learned the routes to feeling worthwhile, important, valued. T’is a goodly map. I also know, and believe in, the tactics for arising from the bog. I understand that the bog is still there, but I have found footholds. I know where the Pull Grass grows, that which I can grab a hold of, should I slide down. I have learned the weather patterns around a possible slide, and to avoid going out at such times. And, avoidance tactics are pivotal. On days such as this, when I can’t be arsed et wotwot, I am careful to do exactly what I want to do. I may cancel a meeting if it insecures me. I may decide to stay behind my four stone walls, light a fire, read or listen to an audio book. After all, who is judging me for my hiding, my declining, my indulgence? Only me. The critics of my past are long dead, all of them, parents, teachers, husband, so those voices are just dust in the wind. I know this now.

But, when such days wake me, confabulate me, I cannot dismiss them. A day is a day, after all, hours of it. But I can cock a snook at it, swish my sword, say I Am Important, I Have a Choice, and, most importantly, I Am Me (and that’s just dandy). I may not do this or that, those things my imaginary ‘yous’ keep banging on about, and, even if it feels odd at first, the more I do this, the bigger I grow and the further I walk from that damn bog. And my judges.

by

Island Blog – A Lift into Sparkle

Oh my gosh was I tired today. I remember so many people answering me ‘tired’ when I asked How are you?, and, I confess, I could feel irritation rise in my gut. I wanted to push for a single positive in their life, almost to shake them. Oh, what I have learned since those days! I guess its experiential compassion. And, more, that, the pretence that life is always wonderful, is good, in balance. But an overdose of ‘wonderful’ is, frankly, both unreal and impossible and therefore not to be believed. However, I was brought up this way. You left your ‘stuff’ at home and, out there, you were upbeat and cheerful. There was a dichotomy in that, nonetheless because once back home the lode re-landed with a big heavy thump and nobody, including me had addressed the ‘stuff’ or even knew how to. I heard it chortle like a goblin as it held me in stasis, thrilling with its power and control. For years I avoided asking the How Are You question, or asking it whilst in full flight, not waiting for the answer, afeared that involving meant solving. Not now. Now I know what it is like to feel lonely, lost and scared, my ‘stuff’ all consuming, the goblin growing into a giant. Perhaps that is where they were, those ones I hurtled past in my busy and productive life, so called. Perhaps, had I stopped to ask, to listen, to lay a hand on another’s, to say I’m here, I might have made a difference to them. Although I could never sort their stuff, not even my own, that act of friendship just might have lifted them a little at a pivotal moment in their lives whilst taking nothing away from my own. In fact, it might have shifted my perception and that, I have learned, is always a good thing. A self-centred life is all very well, but nobody learns a thing from such a life, including the person living it.

I am just returned from a visit to the cancer centre in Glasgow. The hotel is near the clinic, minutes away in fact. I found Google maps and did the whole thing of current location and destination. But, then, I couldn’t work out how to hold my phone. This way takes me left, that way, right. I could wander for days if I don’t get this right. Here comes someone, airpods in, moving purposefully. We make eye contact. Can you help me please, I ask, with a smile. I get one back and I can feel the warmth of it. He stops. Sure, he says. He must be all of 25, and in a hurry. Yet still, he is kind. I may have electric blue hair, but he will have clocked the wrinkles. I’m heading for the cancer clinic, I say, oncology department. He melts. You say cancer and everyone melts, as I do. I think it is up here…..I wave my arm across most of Glasgow. He grins. Yes, but bring that arm in. It is just above us, up that wee hill, just a couple of minutes. That’s the main entrance. I thank him and we share an eye smile. He could be my son and he is kind and he stopped for me. Braced and re-energised, I march up said hill and down again, a little, down toward the entrance, where everyone looks down. Of course they do. Whether going in or coming out, there is a cancer in there somewhere.

Through the doors and I am assailed with signs, people moving by, more people than I see in a week on the island. Nothing fits with my instructions. I swing round and back again, looking daft. Can I help you? asks a woman with a badge. Oh, yes please, I am here for a CT scan. Radiography, she says, and points to the big sign I obviously missed. I march on, more corridors, more possible rights and lefts. I ignore them all, arriving at a reception desk where I am greeted with a big smile and a welcome, as if I was the DJ for their party. It chuckles me and I love it. I give my details and am guided to take a seat, which I take amongst others who look up through sad eyes and down again. I am here with cancer. They have cancer. We are all scared.

I politely stick my butt in a chair and settle beneath the ghastly tube lighting. We are slightly off from the main drag, one that hums with passing nurses, technicians, equipment, patients in wheelchairs, patients in rolling beds. We all watch. We all thank our lucky stars, for now. After fifteen minutes of a silence that begs, longs to evolve into chat, I know it is I who will do this. I am the DJ. How can I begin, I wonder. It thinks me, a lot, and then I find something. Does anyone know if it’s ok to keep a mobile on? (I know the answer, but that’s not. the point). Oh, you can connect, a woman says, she, with her husband in a wheelchair, You just look on the wall, there’s the wifi and the password. I thank her and rise, crossing the divide. I am now respectfully between her and another man with a stick. I smile at both, casting a rainbow. I sign in, not that I give a damn about wifi right now, and see my Poppy dog as my screensaver. I pivot to the woman, show her. Oh, she says, Oh, and asks me to show her husband, which I do. He tells me their border terrier died 12 weeks ago and they are both lost without him. I say how sorry I am and that my own wee girl is also dead, not so long ago. I ask questions about their dog, how they feel, and warmth rises. Then I go back to my seat and ask the young woman beside me if she has a dog. She has, she had, she also mourns her wee yorkie, is completely lost without her. We all talk dog for a while, and if I look, I can see the connections multiply across the thoroughly scrubbed floor of a cancer waiting room. It’s like theNorthern Lights and as beautiful. The last man in, the one with the stick is yet to be drawn in. So, I say, do you have a dog? He beams. I do, a German Shepherd. A beautiful girl. Tell me about her, I say, leaning forward, and he does and every single one of us is thoroughly engaged.

And, despite what any of us are going through or facing, I could see tiredness lift into a sparkle.