I’ve found myself thinking of my friend Sarah a lot lately (to be fair, I often am, it’s not a new thing), and inevitably crying. It’s been getting to me lately – I just want to hear her voice one last time. I still grieve the hours of voicenotes between us, lost from my phone when it died 6 months after she did. Her dulcet northern tones always brought me joy, solace, perspective, often making fun of me… Now they exist only in my head. I’ll never hear her voice again. It just suddenly hit me all over again over the past month or so, how much I miss her, and so I cried. Not just an errant tear, but that knee-buckling, body-shaking sobbing. A few days later, I put the program from her funeral up on my fridge, and realised that it had been her birthday, the day that the sadness of missing her had really hit me. She would have been 37.

We lose so many, and grief sits ever present on our shoulders. At 35, I’ve lost (irresponsible, I know. If only I could remember where I put them…) so many friends – Sarah, Ferg, Danna, Canada Katie, Lucy… just to name a few. As if it isn’t enough being told we’re going to die soon, we also have to miss those that have gone before us. Every time we grieve someone else we also grieve ourselves, and our friends who are still here. Because we know if we don’t go first, our time on this earth with them in it will potentially be limited.

Grief is something that connects every human, yet it’s also when we feel the most alone. When someone you love dies, it feels like all there is. The days ahead stretch on with nothing but the absence of the person you used to speak to every day….

Grief comes at strange times, too. After the first days, weeks, months when it expands to encompass everything, yes the time between bouts of grief paralysis get longer and it changes, but anything can bring it right back up as if it is as fresh as newly fallen snow.

Last night, Sarah’s voice came into my head, laughing at me when I used to text or voicenote her from the bath.
‘You’re crazy – I would never have my phone in the bath, that’s my relaxation time,’ she’d tell me.
‘Me too, Sarah,’ I told her last night. ‘I’ve come around to your way of thinking, are you proud?’
She didn’t answer, but I could imagine her response.

I lost my keys once. No idea where – I’d got myself inside my flat but the keys were nowhere to be seen. I looked everywhere. Seriously, everywhere. Sarah’s promise to haunt me flashed into my mind and I cursed her for hiding my keys. I woke up one morning around two weeks later, to the set of keys sitting unassumingly next to my  bed in the middle of the floor…

I laughed at the memory of her, how much she made me laugh even in the hardest times. Then I cried because I really bloody miss her. Her not being here hasn’t got any easier. I can get through the days better than I could when she first died, but I’m never too far from sobbing about how much I miss her. I wish I could voicenote her about the incredible weekend I just had, oh how she would love to hear alllll the details. But I can’t.

But I wouldn’t want to not miss her. I don’t want to remove or dissolve my grief, I want to think about her and keep talking to her because she stays alive in a small way, inside me. And I would never want to change that.

This week marks two years since my friend Ferg died. I’m still not sure how to navigate anything related to having cancer in  your face without texting him. When I was back in Sydney over Christmas, I caught up with his sister, Anna. We became so close on my trips back to Australia, especially in the 10 months when I got trapped there over Covid. We would go for walks over the headlands, all over Sydney’s North, and stop somewhere for brunch after. Not enough times, never enough.

And still, beyond the grave, Ferg is somehow providing me with comfort. When they told me my tumour was dangerously close to my carotid artery, I realised I’d heard that somewhere before. I trawled back through thousands of messages until I got to:
March 2, 2021 – Ferg: The f*cker is wrapped around my carotid artery, so as soon as that pops… shows over.

A heartbreaking sentence and one I wouldn’t want for either of us (or anyone). But somehow, as I read that again, and realised it would be 5 more months from that message to the day he died, it came as a comforting alternative to the ‘you’re going to die any day now’ narrative they were reminding me of daily. It gave me room to breathe, Though I can’t pretend for a moment that he had great quality of life (that phrase never ceases to irk me) over that time…

But thanks Ferg for continuing to have my back, even now. I love you, brother.

Just to share another little bit of Ferg with you while I’m here, another way he referred to ‘show’s over’, was by saying ‘then it’s party time lol’. He had such a brilliant sense of humour and view of the world and although he was younger than me, and diagnosed after, I learned so damn much from him. Reading back over our messages makes me laugh so much still, and they say laughter has healing properties, so I actively try to do some every day – which is not easy when you don’t find ‘comedy’ funny, so I’m grateful when it happens spontaneously, like when hanging with, or reading messages from, friends. So thanks Ferg for that, too.

This week also marks the day that our friend Danna died – one year ago. She was a very bright light, and had a seemingly unlimited supply of energy for loving others, no matter what was going on with her. She amazed me with her capacity for love and adventure, and I try to be a little more like Danna, every day. I remember first bonding with her not only over both having Sarcoma in our faces, but in the fact that our hearts both belonged to countries that we were not born in, countries far from our family, homes of our own making that we were very dedicated to remaining in, and making the most of, even despite very serious cancer diagnoses. She showed me how to ride the waves of cancer progression (oh yeah, just like surfing, you know? Fun!), and when she made the decision to move back to the US with her family when the doctor told her she had such little time left, she did it in her own way, on her own terms. And we talked through it all as she went. I learned a lot from her, too.

Earlier this year, in the week that my friend Maddie and I went out to dinner to ‘celebrate’ the birthday of, and simultaneous 6 month anniversary of Danna’s death (us sarcomies all tend to find each other, so it’s nice having someone who also knows the person you’re missing), I got an email. Years ago, when I was sort of recovering from the first chemo and big surgery, while I was waiting for my teeth, I was at UCLH one day for an appointment, and was asked if I minded meeting briefly with a guy who had a similar cancer to me, and his mum. There were so many similarities between our cancers – from the position, to the experiences we’d had with it, though they were a bit behind me in the process. They were over from Wales, trying to work out whether to get surgery in Wales (no experts available who specialise in difficult maxillofacial cancers and reconstruction), or travel to London for the surgery, to be done by my team. Such a difficult decision and so much for them to weigh up, but I ended up saying ‘come to London. They know what they’re doing.’ It was the only option that made any sense to me.

I never found out how things went. Not until this email arrived in my inbox, from his mother, 4 years later.  A friend of hers had come across me online somewhere and showed it to her and she recognised me immediately. She told me that my rec of going to UCLH for the surgery had absolutely been the right one and thanked me for helping them to make that decision. My heart soared. Of course, I asked how he – Jac – was. But I had a feeling I already knew which way it was going to go, and indeed, the reply felt like holding up a mirror. Things had got worse for him like it had for me, but quicker. The loss of an eye (well, the taking of one), recurrences, holes appearing in his mouth, in his face, just like mine. Struggling to eat, talk, leave the house, carry on with any sort of life… A verrrrry familiar complete dismissal from medical professionals, who appeared to have mostly given up on him as his health declined. Then going blind in his remaining eye, like they threatened was about to happen to me, if I didn’t drop dead first…

Dying scares me, yes. But so does suddenly going blind. One day, shortly after they threatened me with the possibility of it, Rosa and I sat on my sofa, making contingency plans for what I would do if it happened. I turned on Siri, who I hate, and tried to get her to send Rosa a message saying something along the lines of ‘help, I can’t see!’ The little robot in my phone had no idea what I was trying to get it to do. Hilarity ensued at the various messages it wrote from my request. I think Rosa just knows if I send her a weird jumbled message that makes no sense, she should maybe text then call me, just in case. I was meant to practice using Siri a bit in various situations, just in case… I should probably do that… I don’t think I even remember what to say to make her work…

Anyway, complete loss of sight means the end of independence. A reality Jac had to face, as he had to stop working, stop doing all the things that made him who he was. And then the inevitable. Poor sweet Jac is no longer with us. Another one gone. Taken way too soon. And it felt so close to home.

Once again, my heart broke. Only days after our dinner for Danna. It felt like it was all around us. If not news of people dying, then friends getting ominous scans and rediagnoses…

Sometimes it feels like it never lets up.

I know people can feel guilt in grief – survivors guilt, i.e. why have I survived when so many haven’t. I don’t have that, I am overjoyed at the fact i am still here. But I am still sad for those who aren’t.

I take every one of these people with me, as do we all. Those of us who are still here, clinging on as long as we can for little bits more of this magic thing called time, with all the people we’ve lost carried in our hearts. I often ask myself; what would they do if they had more time – the time that I inevitably, thankfully, have. Long may it last. I’m now the age Sarah was when she died and I make sure to remind myself to live enough for the both of us. For all of us. For everyone who didn’t get the years I’ve been blessed with.

I will end here with the perfect words of Maya Angelou, borrowed from her poem, ‘When great trees fall‘.

And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.