13th January 'In peace we will lie down and sleep; for you alone Lord, make us dwell in safety.'

 At the beginning of this blog I said that I am dyslexic. Hence, writing has always been ‘work’ to me, but work that has sometimes been a compulsion. I knew at some point the compulsion  would go, and I had hoped for a suitable ending. Perhaps like Cyrano I could eulogise poetically and have a dig at the foolish and pompous? Or perhaps I could look to Shakespeare? Yes, I think there lies the truth of my desired ending.

As someone who has always gravitated to the laughing mask, rather than the weeping one, I had hoped to end like a Twelfth Night with a wedding. However, what led me to this entry is more akin to King Lear.

On 11^th December I was to have the huge privilege of conducting our beloved Ben and Nine’s Wedding. But instead of officiating at this sacrament of joy, I found myself in hospital watching the nuptials on an iPhone as a doctor half my age held my hand and two nurses twice(?) my age regaled me with tales of old Hanwell and shenanigans in a bus factory down Trumper’s Way! I cried in sorrow and grinned with joy and pride; two masks concurrently consubstantiated on this patient’s face.

That night, the surgeons removed 18 inches of colon and sent it to establish what horrors lie beneath.

The next few days, like Lear on his heath, I felt myself sinking into despair and madness, desperate for true love. I have never had much truck with Sartre’s, ‘hell is other people’, but after two days I was reaching for a pipe and polo-neck sweater. 

My Goneril and Regan were, what I shall call, the “Dying Swan” and the “Sh1t Slinger”.

The Dying Swan in the bed opposite me had, to quote the doctors, “nothing really medically wrong” with him. He spent his few waking hours wailing like a deranged Greek chorus, demanding the ministrations of nurses for such physically arduous tasks as pulling the sheet over himself and lifting his plastic beaker.

The Sh1t Slinger, though, expressed himself as a post-modern performance artist. He preferred to speak in actions. The bourgeois conventions of lavatories and commodes were clearly inhibitors to his self-expression: far better, naturally, to perform in bed. You do not need, I assure you, the cinematic imagination of Dali and Bunuel to realise degradation when six feet to your left you hear phrases such as, “don’t smear it on the bed”, “it’s on your hands”, “stop throwing it”. Never have I been so grateful for the invention of 100% polyester curtains. At the end of his ‘performance’, the Sh1t Slinger gave no word of contrition or gratitude, he merely stated his desire to be taken outside for his cigarette. The nurses with extraordinary charity accommodated his whim.

I lay on my heath incandescent with rage and declare; “we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools”.

Four weeks later, at 3.15am ‘in peace I lie down’… awake. The din of the ward has gone. So too has Ben, as I now lay on what was once his bed, keen that my fidgeting doesn’t disturb Sarah. 

The crack in the curtain in the room frames creation in its darkness, a darkness punctuated occasionally by a flashing blue light. Still, I lie unable to sleep not because of pain and discomfort, but because I feel nothing.

For what feels like forever there is no gut griping or gurgling.

For what feels like forever I am not mulling on the big decisions in life such as, would the immanent expulsion be gas or solid? Nothing.

In peace I lie down. Time moves on, and the crack in the curtain resembles the tuning process of our old black and white Grundig 12ins portable TV. Grainy grey tones become undefined grey neo-gothic shapes. Then, at around 5am, I see the unmistakable brickwork of my church, but still grey in the light. 

In this blissful state I reflect on light and darkness. The light and darkness of the past few months. The light and darkness which will inevitably appear again uninvited at some point. I do not believe in yin and yang, the ‘you can’t have one without the other’ philosophy. Neither am I convinced by C. S. Lewis in Shadowlands arguing that without pain we cannot appreciate joy. That seems cold and systematic.

As I gaze at creation emerging with the morning I know that, like God, it is possible simply to be ‘well pleased’. If we are created in God’s image then we can celebrate the light when it greets us, and remember that darkness doesn’t have the last word.    

But then at 5.30am, it starts. The gurgling and groaning of pipes and the sound of stuff being forced through unwelcoming tubes.

Nine months on, it is the sound of the central heating switching on. 

Postlude of praise & thanksgiving

I don’t know what the future will bring, hopefully no more unexpected items in the bagging area; things are looking good.

Thank you to all, family and friends, who have loved and supported me, Sarah, Izzy and Alexander. Your love and care has carried us through these months and continues(!) to do so. 

Thanks must go to the medical staff whose skill and compassion has worked wonders. Thanks also to medical friends who have demystified jargon, advised and have, through tears and laughter, been true reflections of the Great Physician. 

Thanks to my church of St Thomas. I very deliberately use the word ‘my’. Pious colleagues will shout in annoyance and unison: ‘God’s church’. However, the past few months have taught me that such sterile theological qualifications do not reflect the reality of experience. Such a pious approach merely disconnects the people from the place. All churches, including my St Thomas’, are places where prayers are offered, new life is welcomed, pain is shared, unions sanctified, and death articulated in love and hope. The whole of life is here, my life has been here even if lymphoma had made me physically absent. Perhaps those who seek to ‘rationalise resources and assets’, confident that churches do not belong to people but God, should remember that we see the divine in each other, not abstract objects. 

Thank you to all who have prayed in the wider Church: it has helped more than you could imagine.

Finally, as it is the last thing he will read, thank you to Ben for being this blog’s proof-reader, editor and voice of sober reason; but much more for being a part of our family.