From Lima to the meaning of Life

Travelling for 24 hours is just plain hard, whichever way you look at it. ‘Cattle-class’ is called cattle class because…well, because you are herded in like cattle and have less legroom than cattle or chickens.  Oh yes, then there’s arriving in London and only one of your bags arriving with you because the other one is goodness know where, between the USA and a computer glitch over UK airspace. 

A day and a half later they still have no idea where it is. And it has Jane’s journal in it, her record of her personal journey for the past 12 months. Irreplaceable. And then there’s the cold and arriving home and .......and nipping round to a neighbours and glancing down at their coffee table to see the headlines of The Times news paper and seeing the banner across the front page, “Kate Gross” and then going icy cold inside as I read the words.

Through our lovely friend Jill Mcmillan I met Kate a few times and so what Jane & I then read very slowly to each other changed the day completely. Completely!  ...and left us deeply moved 

I asked Jill if she thought Kate would mind us blogging what she wrote for The Times and her husband then has blogged on their own website and she thought it would be more than fine.

Read Kate’s Christmas message & know that life will suddenly come into its true perspective, as it did for us yesterday as we returned to the UK for Christmas.

  - TW

May your days be merry and bright, And may all your christmases be white (This is an article Kate wrote for the Times last week, which was printed today. She asked me to publish it to the blog as our time with her is now very short. Billy - 11th Dec '14)  The ghost of Christmas Future will hang around our table this year. As we decorate the tree, open our presents and sit down for lunch, I will not be the only one imagining what these same rituals will be like next December when I am no longer there. This is my last Christmas; 2015 is the last New Year I will see in. I am 36, my twin boys are not-yet-six, and I am dying from advanced colon cancer. I have had this disease for over two years, but now I am drawing in like the December nights, knocking on the door of what Philip Gould called the death zone – the great winding down we all will face when we have weeks, not more, left to live. We found out last month that cancer was reproducing wildly in my colon, abdomen, lungs, liver and bone - ever the over-achiever, my disease has taken the opportunity of a break from chemotherapy to run riot. So, I have exited the world of Oncology, a known space of sage Professors and carousels of bright young Registrars seeking to nuke my disease with an aggressive phalanx of drugs. I enter the calmer, quieter world of Palliative Care; regular visits from the nurses at my local hospice, ever increasing doses of morphine in an effort to quell these terrifying new-found pains that travel my body. In this new world my quest is for liveable days, pleasant and comfortable hours and moments of snatched happiness. When I was asked to write this article about Christmas I hesitated. I hesitated because I am terrified that I won’t make it even that far, and writing down my hopes seems like tempting fate. Look at Linda Bellingham. She decided to stop her chemotherapy to give her a glorious “last” with her family, but she didn’t make it.  And I am desperate to be well enough to open stockings and sing O Little Town of Bethlehem one more time, and desperate not to mar festive seasons to come with the grim anniversary of mummy’s demise.  But, like all things that come with this dreadful disease I have named my Nuisance, I am not in control. I do not get to decide what speed this final part of my journey takes. Force Majeure could strike at any moment: I could pick up a chesty cough from the school playground which would do me in. The tumours could tighten their stranglehold on my liver well before it gets its last taste of Christmas sherry. Cancer is cruellest to the control freak like me. It strips away pleasures, one by one, finally stripping away my ability to plan anything other than the day ahead. Come what may, Christmas won’t quite be Christmas this year for our family. Faced with this combination of hope and uncertainty, my family learn from Larkin: we know there is nowhere we can live but days. We can’t postpone our happiness until tomorrow because we don’t know what tomorrow will bring. We have to make the most of now. The 25thDecember is too far away to bank on, so I am denied my usual months of pre-Christmas list-making. But today, oh today I can be sure of. Today I will meet my best friend’snewborn baby.  Today I will sit with my children and stuff our tasteful wooden advent calendar with gaudy sweets. Today I will walk with my Dad along the banks of the river Cam as the damp December mist enfolds us. And soon, so soon, it will be time to get the Christmas decorations out and marvel over the brightly coloured objects we haven’t seen for a year. Primary-coloured, heavy clay bells strung on ribbons, fashioned by clumsy toddler hands. Baubles covered with baby handprints. The armless Angel we cherish,amputee or not, secure in her perch at the top of the tree. We can’t bank on anything. But that doesn’t mean we stop hoping for it. With a break in the pain, I can get out of my bed and my planning gene kicks in, as irrepressible as hope. What do I want this Christmas? I want to do the simple things again. Christmas is about precious rituals carved out over the years; learned from my parents as I grew up, now taking on a new shape in my own family. On Christmas Eve, I want my husband, the boys and I to go to cinema to see Paddington, have a crudely un-festive lunch of burgers and then go and sit in the shadow of Isaac Newton’s statue at the Trinity College crib service. I want to be able to get up at 6am to the shout of “is it morning yet?” and “Father Christmas has come! He’s come!”  I want to toast my 100 year old Gran and smile as I see generations of one family around the table suffering our annual ration of Brussel sprouts. I want to see in 2015 in the wilds of Suffolk with my best friends and their kids, and a massive rib of beef. These are more than plans. They are iconic rituals which havegestated over the years. Repetition has scored the grooves deeply into our lives. I know these things we do will not die with me. Let’s say I do get that far, let’s side with hope and say I make it to the toasts and the turkey and the carnage of present opening. I wonder how we will cope with the presence of Christmas Future at the feast. I am sure two rambunctious five year old boys will help keep him under control. And we are a pragmatic lot, our family, so I suspect we will welcome him in with some black humour and offer him a mince pie. An unwanted but acknowledged guest, better at the table than knocking menacingly at the window. Better we welcome him in and recognise that whilst my time-horizon is now as truncated as a toddlers, for those sitting next to me the idea of a long afterwards when our family is three, not four, is ever present in their minds. I wonder if we will struggle more with the burden of lastness and the expectations of perfection it brings. There are few things I distrust more than the bucket list; I find any potentially wonderful experience easily ruined by the weight of expectation. I can celebrate this year being the final Christmas Dinner I eat - I never liked turkey much anyway. But if this is the last time I will open stockings with my children at the crack of dawn, then I will want it to be perfect. And, of course, it won’t be. Even if by some miracle I am fit (tish) and well (enough), like every family we will have our festive niggles.  My darling, consumerist, selfish little boys will cherish the plastic Minecraft figures I bought them under duress more than my hand-crafted, memory laden gifts I have prepared for them. I will expend precious energy shouting at them when they refuse to wear a “smart” shirt and trousers for the big day. They will see more of the Mini-Ipads which Father Christmas has been asked for than my precious face. My husband will hate the jumper I buy him, as he does every year. The dog will steal a leg of turkey. My parents will have a terse exchange over the gravy, and only I will want to watch Downton Abbey Christmas always brings with it these stupidly high expectations, whether it is the lastever or whether you have years more celebrating ahead. We have expectations of perfect families, well-behaved children, thoughtful gifts lovingly received, peace and harmony replacing squabbles and nagging. If we are not careful, reality will ruin Christmas. Not just for our family, what with all this fate-tempting writing and my sky-high hopes, but for all of us. So I like to remind myself that a real Christmas includes the bad stuff too. Not just the gingerbread house, but the arguments over who will get to eat the sweet-filled roof. Not just the carol service, but the cold, wet wait at the bus-stop afterwards. Not just generations of family under one roof, but snidey bickering, competitive gift-giving and marital disharmony. And for us, this year, not energetic mummy running the show, but mummy lying on the sofa. Mummy sleeping through present opening. Mummy reaching for her ‘special Calpol’ to ease the pain. Dad taking too many photos of mum. A little cry on each others’ shoulder at the end of the day. The Christmas idyll is never an idyll, for any of us. So my promise this year is to enjoy all of it. These days that lead up to it, not just the main event. The grumpiness, anger and frustration with my best beloveds that are a reminder that I am alive and red blood still pumps through my veins. I am pale imitation of the energetic parent I once was, but there is still pleasure to be gained from Christmas as a spectator sport. Though my Christmases past are blissful memories, I do not need to live there. The present is no idyll, but it’s what we have. And I intend to enjoy it. May you all do the same. Kate’s book Late Fragments: Everything I Want to Tell You (About This Magnificent Life) will be published in early Jan 2015. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Late-Fragments-Everything-About-Magnificent/dp/0008103453/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1418402946&sr=8-1&keywords=late+fragments

Visit to Peru

Getting perspective when moving at speed is almost impossible. But today we’ve pulled over into a lay-by to let the world rush by and allow our spilling thoughts to settle.

Communities cling to ugly & dangerous  hillsides outside Lima

We’ve spent the past 6 days hurtling about visiting various communities that all share more or less the same challenges. To put it in a nutshell, they all face sure and certain attack from the weather....at some time unspecified and unknown. They live under the threat of a possible catastrophic water related event, from floods, either from violent rivers nearby or flash water&mud floods that will arrive unexpected from the barren hills above.

Within months this river will be bursting its banks

Peru is a curious country geographically and climactically. Those of you who are clued up on these subjects will know about El Nino, or have heard about it as it's in fact a global problem. And maybe you’ll also know that Peru has been central to this strange and little understood weather phenomenon.
If you google or Youtube: El Nino+Peru+1998, you’ll discover what happened when the last great El Nino hit the country - floods and mud slides of epic proportions and havoc beyond belief - more terrifying than can be expressed here.

But it’s been a while since ’98 and during the past 16 years meteorological technology has advanced to an insanely clever level. They are able to track the weather pattern of the world with dizzy-making detail and collect swathes of data from the warming deep seas and all the evidence points to another El Nino disaster on the horizon.

An informal community in the flat, desert-like, Piura basin - no water, sanitation or basically anything!

The imminent arrival of El Nino and other flood related events is debated every day...it’s ‘imminent’, but, like the second coming, no-one knows the date or time. So, you would think that everyone would be hyper vigilant and on their toes for the second coming, but you would be wrong.

The women and their children from Los Polverines, Piura

Those in the know watch and wait, they pour over their maps and discuss in great depth which are the most vulnerable areas and which communities are in danger of annihilation. But, it’s been a long time since the last disaster and when you live in a city where it never rains (Lima is the second largest desert city in the world), it’s easy to eat, drink and be merry and...keep your fingers crossed.

This house is metres from the river. See their own flimsy flood protection, which will be swept away in seconds

This week we flew north to the Ecuador boarder to Piura and visited communities at high risk and talked with their leaders and the fearful men&women who have no voice (actually it was 90% women - terrified for the safety of themselves and their children and their meagre posessions) . We walked in the wide dusty street-corridors which one day will flow with terrifying torrents of destruction and visited 3 schools all in flood paths.

This little orphan is being looked after by teachers. 

We were guests of Practical Action and their sponsor Zurich International. With them we visited communities in flat desert planes, on the banks of rock-dry rivers and those up in the foot of the Andes where rivers are beginning to bubble with mischief. We visited formal and in-formal settlements where were was no water, no sanitation, no clinics, schools or even a space for the community to meet.

They all asked for help. Help to...improve their terrible living conditions, to improve their personal safety, to get them land rights, to build schools, to get first aid training...oh, and to know what to do when the floods rip their worlds apart. All the communities had no early warning systems or sirens, no government advice, no adequate flood defences, no community action plan, no disaster supplies......etc etc (...you get the point)

This river bed has been used as a dumping site for rubble. It will be torrent in the floods - Andes in the background

And we listened and allowed our hearts to ache and to wonder what Emerging Leaders could possible offer in the future. Strangely the threat of the river almost became a metaphor for the hopelessness we felt all around us







.....and we were reminded, at a visceral level, that there is no sustainable change without good Leadership.










Oh, and p.s....right now Lima is hosting the Global Climate Summit @ COP20. All the great climate wise-heads of the world have come together from 198 counties to see how they can stop us all destroying our planet. Let’s hope that common sense rules and not the arrogance of egos.


- JB