A Warm Day

It was another warm day. I had been enjoying the extended sun since arriving in Utah. The continual warmth here contrasted sharply with the indeterminate weather we used to endure in Britain. I sat there enjoying the afternoon. The sun warmed my face and a gentle breeze fluttered through the leaves. The smell of the freshly cut grass and the birds singing above relaxed me and I lay back and closed my eyes. My mind began to wandered, thinking of other warm days. Before I realized it I was thinking of that dreadful day when we had first heard the news.

It also had been a warm day. The bright spring sun beamed through the large window, illuminating the empty desk before us. The trees outside, now in full leaf, wafted gentle in the breeze. The sound of bright bird song fluttered through the air. Inside the room an eerie emptiness prevailed. An old photograph hung on one wall and a poster depicting some aspect of the anatomy hung opposite. Along with the desk there was, a small trolley containing an assortment of instruments and medical aids, and a weighing scale. Besides the chairs we sat on there was one other chair, behind the desk. It lay empty, silently waiting in anticipation with Maria and I for the doctor to come in.

Sitting there it was hard to think about how I had felt three weeks earlier. Then Maria had still been pregnant, and we had been waiting in anticipation for the birth. The pregnancy had been her most difficult, more so than those preceding it. We had not known why that was but it had meant I had delayed getting back to work so that I could help out with the children. We were, however, looking forward to our fourth child, a boy; James was to be his name.

Despite the difficulties, everything had been going fine. Everything planned and prepared, we excitedly awaited the birth. Then just a week before he was due Maria had been sick. The first day she vomited, we dismissed it, she had been eating black grapes and surely that was what she was bringing up. The second day again we dismissed it; then, she had been eating malt loaf. The third day we could no longer ignore the blood-like substance she had been bringing up. We had decided to speak to the mid-wife about it when she came that day. However, we had been out and missed her call, so we called the maternity unit. They had asked us to come down so they could examine Maria. She had packed a bag feeling she would not be coming back home. We arranged for someone to watch the children and we had gone to the hospital.

There was obvious concern among the medical staff and has Maria had anticipated, they asked that she be admitted for observation. We were beginning to worry. The medical staff were saying little and seemed unsure as to the cause but wanted to observe things and if possible get a sample of what Maria had been bringing up.

The following day she seemed fine and the vomiting had stopped. The doctors seemed to be of the opinion that she might have a gallstone and had planned to send her for an ultrasound scan, but that had been clear. That afternoon George had arrived to see her. George, a South American doctor from the general surgery department, had thick black hair and just as thick an accent. He wore a ready smile that beamed out at you. Being a born-again-Christian his approach had been a little different. He had told Maria that he was there not as her doctor but as her brother. I remember being upset at that, thinking a doctor is what we need.

It was George who had first suggested that Maria was having problems with her stomach. He was anxious to have her under go an endoscopy as soon as possible and had begun scheduling her in. The maternity staff had gone up the wall and told him he was not touching her until after the baby had been born. That’s when they had decided to induce Maria.

Two days later, James had been born, and, despite the cord having been wrapped around his neck, causing him to be somewhat purple looking for a few days, was doing fine.

The doctors had given Maria a few days rest before they would press ahead with the endoscopy. Left in the maternity unit, she was finding little support from the midwives, who being used to a quick turn-around of patients had treated Maria quite badly, not understanding that there were other problems than the birth.

Over the next few days as we awaited the endoscopy I had taken to becoming a medical expert and when not at the hospital researched Maria’s symptoms on the Internet. I had not liked what I was finding and when Maria asked me about it had been reluctant to share all.

Finally the day of the endoscopy came. I had to stay in the maternity unit with James, our newborn, while Maria was taken for the examination. She had been very nervous about it, not so much about the outcome but about the procedure itself. The thought of having a thick tube forced down her throat was not one she welcomed. I remember sitting there on the side of the bed, holding James as the porter wheeled her in a chair out into the corridor. She looked back with foreboding etched across her face and my heart ached for her.

Now three weeks later we sat waiting in the consultant’s room to hear the formal results of the test. The door opened and in came the woman doctor. She was in her 40’s, dark shoulder length hair, her white coat contrasting with the dark clothes beneath. She held a thick file of medical papers in her hands. Sitting down she opened the file on the desk before her. She greeted us cordially. Then she spoke: “You know why you’re here; I will get right to it. Unfortunately, Maria, the results of the endoscopy shows that you have stomach cancer.”

There was silence in the room. Time seemed suspended for a moment. Tears welled up in my eyes as I looked at Maria and took her hand. Her eyes were also moist, a look of shock on her face. Over the days since the endoscopy, I had finally shared with Maria what I had found on the Internet relating to her symptoms. We had talked about it and worried together. However, neither of us really thought it would be true. Now here in that small room we faced reality.

The doctor broke the silence. Maria would have to have a CT scan to ascertain the extent of the cancer. The they would schedule her for surgery. I cannot remember what else was said that day. It seemed to be a very short meeting and very business like, almost unreal. I do remember weeks later feeling angry that the doctor had not provided any information about what support was available. We had just received the worst news of our lives and then we were shown the door and left to ourselves. It was almost unbearable as we walked back to the car.

A month later Maria was lying in Intensive care. She had under gone five hours of surgery earlier that day to have her stomach removed. I stood by her side; there were no chairs to sit on. The room felt chilly and sterile. The walls and curtains were white, shelves of trays filled with medical supplies and aids lined one entire wall. Nurses busied themselves in and out of the curtained cubicles of patients. Two beds down, a small group of family members stood around another patient, hushed and unspeaking.

Maria lay on the bed, a multitude of tubes flowing out of her from different points down to the side of the bed. It was as if some creature beneath the bed had extended its tentacles and was slowly engulfing her body. Her face was ghostly white, the usual olive colour of her Brazilian skin totally gone. She was almost lifeless, barely able to talk. I had to bend down, my ear to her mouth, to hear what she said. Her hands were icy cold and I wondered about the room temperature chilled by the air conditioning.

That week Maria’s recovery from surgery was rapid. As each day went past, they removed more of the tubes protruding from her. Within two weeks, she was home. The following weeks were difficult for her to get through. Adjusting to eating without a stomach was slow; what she could eat she did not like. What she liked she could not keep down. Nevertheless, her strength slowly increased.

It was August before the chemotherapy started, the doctors wanting to give her long enough to recover from surgery but not wanting to leave it too long. The surgery had showed that the cancer had spread beyond the stomach walls. While they felt the surgery had managed to remove everything, they prescribed a very strong level of drugs to be sure.

The doctors had told us that the chemotherapy would result in Maria loosing her hair. In preparation, the week before she started her treatment she visited the hairdresser’s. Maria’s thick black hair was down to her shoulder blades and had always been one aspect I had admired of her beauty. As I sat watching in the hairdresser’s, I felt a sense of loss as the scissors sniped and long tassels of hair fell to the floor and lay lifeless. She almost seemed a different woman rising from the chair when the job was through. As I rose to leave, I quickly bent and picked up one of those black tassels and placed it in my pocket. Maria thought me silly for doing so, but the sentimentality within me had to disagree.

By the second dose of chemotherapy lumps of Maria’s hair were beginning to fall and she decided to shave it all off. Later in the year, Maria and I went to see one of the Lord of the Rings films. Maria, now bald and thinner than she had ever been, her eyes deep set in her boney face, laughed with me as we joked at the family resemblance with the character Gollum. Later she would entertain the children by imitating Gollum’s voice, calling them ‘my precious.’

The months of heavy chemotherapy, interspersed with radiotherapy, took a heavy toll on her. She had lost over a third of her body weight since giving birth eight months earlier. However, it was finally over; she had been declared free of cancer, we were able to celebrate. A year after her diagnosis, we left the children with their nanny and took a long drive up through the English countryside to Herefordshire. It is a beautiful part of the country, a world away from the built up London, where Maria had lived since coming to Britain from Brazil thirteen years earlier. Our accommodation was an old Tudor house in a quiet village with an ornately carved four-poster bed. The few days we spent there, was one of the happiest times in our relationship.

As the year progressed, Maria had continued to see the consultants, who repeatedly affirmed everything was well. However, she had continued losing weight, ever so slightly but still downwards. Finally, in September, she turned a corner and the weight leveled then started to climb. By the beginning of December, we had become optimistic about the future. As I sat typing our Christmas newsletter, I was excited about the coming year and the possibilities it held.

Mid-December, Maria had gone on a residential driving course in the hope of obtaining the license she had been trying to get on and off for a few years. It was while there, though, that she began to feel a new pain. It was not severe but it was enough to be of concern and I worriedly booked Maria in to see the consultant on her return. They in turn organized a new scan for the beginning of the year.

We waited anxiously, over that Christmas period. Though Maria and I tried our best to maintain the Christmas spirit for the children, celebrations were subdued. All our attention was on the coming scan and its results.

Finally, the scan was done and we awaited the results the following Monday morning. That Sunday night, though, Maria had collapsed and at midnight, I had driven her to Barts Hospital in central London, the base for her treatment. As I left her at 3am that morning to return home to the children, it was with great apprehension.

The following day as I drove to collect the children from school, my cell phone rang. It was Maria. “Hi” I answered brightly.

Maria’s reply was quiet but sure: “I have cancer again.”

“You’re joking, right?” Despite the apprehension of the previous day, I had just not expected to receive the news like this.

As I collected the children that day, it took all my composure to greet the other parents who smiled brightly. Asking one of the mothers to stay with the children, I went to speak with the head teacher, Cathi Bolster. The school was a Church of England-run school and the staff and parents there had been immensely supportive of our family over the past year-and-a-half. As I sat in Cathi’s room tears rolled down my cheeks as the emotion overwhelmed me. It had been the first time since all this had begun that I had truly cried. I had been strong for Maria and the children and I needed to continue to be. But there, for that moment, my aching heart open, the tears flowed as I grieved for my wife. As I emerged fifteen minutes later, the tears had gone and the composure returned – I would need as much strength as I could manage to support my wife and children.

The doctors had explained that the cancer had been very aggressive in its return spreading to three different locations. There was now little they could do. No one was prepared to make an estimate of how long Maria might have. “Months, maybe weeks, certainly not years,” was as much as we could get. Chemotherapy perhaps would offer an extra three months – maybe. Remembering the suffering and pain she had previously gone through, it was not a cost Maria had been prepared to pay however. A couple of days later we left the hospital and took Maria home.

The deterioration in Maria was quick and dramatic. The pain became unbearable and within the week she was back in medical care, this time at the local cancer hospice. Two weeks later, she had lost all strength and could barely speak or do anything for herself. Each day I would drop the children at school, mothers had volunteered to look after the two youngest for me during the day, leaving me free to spend time with Maria. After collecting the children in the afternoon, we would eat together before someone from church would arrive to baby sit.

Hour after hour I sat by Maria’s side in her small room. The bed occupied most of the space, with a commode chair on one side next to a cabinet for clothes and a reclining chair on the other. In the corner was a small sink and mirror. A small table stood at the foot of the bed filled with flowers. Maria had always liked flowers and I made sure there was a plenty supply of fresh blooms for her.

Maria by then had stopped eating the hospital food and friends brought a ready supply of nourishing homemade soup for her. Each day I would carefully pour the warm soup through her dry lips, supporting her head with one hand. In the evenings, we would turn the lights off and I would sit and read from the scriptures to her by the light of the wall lamp. Some days I was not sure if she was conscious or not, but still I came and read, partly for her and partly to strengthen me. It was during those hours, as Maria lay silent, that I mourned the lost of my wife though she was still with me.

Then one day I went in to find Maria awake and agitated with the nurses. She was arguing with them, demanding to go home. By this stage, Maria was barely able to speak, unable to manage a sentence, but her intent was clear: “I want to go home.” This was something I had felt was unwise at that stage but the following evening she was still adamant, using all her strength to express her desire. Finally, we had accepted Maria’s wishes.

Unable to obtain an ambulance until the following day, I phoned ahead to ask someone to prepare the room, then carried her in my arms out to the car. Arriving at the house, I carried her up the stairs and laid her gently on the bed. I thought back to eleven years earlier that month, when returning from our honeymoon, I had also carried Maria up those stairs and laid her on the same bed. Then it had been to start a new life together, full of hope. Now it was to await the end of Maria's life. A nurse had followed from the hospital in her own car and had helped get her settled. Then we were left alone.

The next two days had been hard to get through. On the Wednesday sensing time was close I called each of the children into the room to say their goodbyes. Then I had lain on the bed next to Maria, holding her frail hand and gentling talking to her and expressing how much I loved her. At 10pm, almost unnoticed, she gently slipped away.

The following morning as each of the children arose I had the sad task of explaining to each that their mother had gone. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done. Again, in turn I took each of them to see Maria’s body. It now lay cold and lifeless, the face ashen. A lavender scented candle burned in the corner to sweeten the smell in the room, a scent that I will never be able to smell again without evoking thoughts of those moments.

We held the funeral ten days later. Because of the numbers wanting to attend, we had held it at our main chapel in central London. The chapel was crammed full of people that knew Maria. As the coffin, draped in flowers, was carried to the front of the chapel, I led my four children following it in procession, through the throngs of mourners. Maria’s picture stood on an easel next to the coffin. One of Maria’s friends had sung ‘How Great Thou Art’ faltering with emotion and barely able to finish. Another friend had spoken about their friendship and how much that had meant to her. The stake president spoke, praising her service as the stake Primary president. Then, I rose to speak. Having already gone through my own mourning, I stood calm and collected, looking at the congregation before me and felt a need to strengthen them. I cannot particularly remember what I said but felt guided by the Spirit and bore a strong testimony that the Lord was in charge, that I did not know why she was taken but that God did and he would bless both her and us for it.

Following the service, her brother and I stood alone on the sidewalk as the coffin was placed in the hearse and driven off. Maria had not wanted to be buried in London and we had decided to have her resting place in Lancashire were some of my family still lived. We then returned to greet the mourners.

The burial took place three days later. That day was also sunny, but being February there was a sharp chill in the air. There were far fewer people there that day. Other than family and a handful of friends who had made the journey, a few members from the local ward who had known me as I grew up and had met Maria on our occasional visits there had come to attend.

After a short service in the cemetery chapel, we stood around the graveside as my brother said a prayer of dedication. The coffin was slowly lowered into the grave. We stood there for a few minutes, staring down at it, no one really knowing what to do now. A tree stood to the side, its branches leaning over the plot of ground, its leaves rustling in the breeze. In the background the hum of traffic was heard as cars, unknowing, uncaring passed by. Finally, I turned and walked away.

The next day I visited the Preston Temple. The endowment session was quiet and as it ended people quickly left the Celestial room. Alone I sat there on the sofa in the center of the room, its elegant decor giving a sense of sublime. I looked up to the glittering chandelier hanging above and thought of heaven. I bowed my head and said a prayer. Then bidding my wife goodbye until we should meet again, I rose and left.

As I walked out the temple that day, the sun was again shining. Birds were singing and the gardens were amass with flowers. I knew Maria was well and that she wanted me to go on living. We had talked of this eventuality over the preceding years, even before she had the cancer. I had known of its coming since before I met her and was prepared. Now it was time to move on. As I walked down the path, I slipped the ring from my finger, put it securely in my pocket and began the next stage of my life.

Now months later as I enjoyed the afternoon sun, half a world away, beginning a new life I knew Maria was happy with what I was doing and that she approved.

Craig Pickup
20th September 2004