Nadine Williams

Time for a Miracle

Those words of wisdom by Regina Brent when she turned 90, currently on the Internet are  comforting as I mull over the worsening situation with husband Olivier’s cancer.

He is in hospital once again, this time with abdominal pain and we wait with trepidation for the results of more blood tests and xrays taken today to find a cause.

Her Number 1 adage, for instance, is that “life is not fair, but it’s still good’’.  Yes, it’s horrible that cancer should strike him down and with such aggression – but we have shared such a fabulous eight years together and I try hard to warm my fearful heart with his funny anecotes and touching moments.

There are many, and two stand out right now. On Saturday night at the 50^th birthday of his son, Xavier, even though he was ill, we shuffled in the one spot on the dance floor at the Sheoak Deli to loud rock music. And he smiled and touched my cheek as if we were the only ones in a solitary world and we seemed like shameless teenage lovers. I reminded him of our wedding day when we managed to dance together for, oh, about 10 minutes and neither of us stepped on the other.  It was a miracle given my history of clumsiness and lack of dancing lessons. Of course, I was high on bliss and floating on a pink cloud of plenty of champagne. I never wanted that moment to end.

“You’re not treading on my toes tonight, darling,’’ he said on Saturday.

“That’s because we aren’t really moving our feet, just swaying our bodies in rhythm,’’ I replied.

It was so nice and I smiled and licked away the silent stream of tears trickling down into my mouth.

Regina also wrote “Everything can change in the blink of an eye’’.  Such straightforward words which we all know to be reality, but don’t truly understand  until life delivers a body blow. This happened 13 months ago when Olivier’s niggling back pain was diagnosed as extensive secondary cancer, the primary being advanced prostate cancer. The scourge of older manhood. Unlike most men, whose PC is so slow they die with the disease, rather than from it, Olivier’s cancer is an aggressive No. 8 on the Gleeson scale. It is deadly.

We have lived with the Big C ever since and now that lovely, illusionary notion of Happy Ever After which we assumed would be ours for a few decades on our wedding day four years ago has shrivelled.

Which brings me to Regina’s most powerful words right now “Believe in miracles’’. I would so love to be able to believe in a miracle, but his oncologist is a realist.

I must admit, much of the bravado which fired me to write that web article nine months ago “The Art of Living Fearlessly’’  has evaporated and now I simply pray for a miracle of healing, or at least more time to enjoy life together.  Time is suddenly so precious.

Whatever fate delivers us, Regina’s final poignant wisdom from her list of 45 is “However good or bad a situation, it will change.’’ C’est la vie.

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