...and it isn't. When I got back from volunteering today, my neighbour was watching out for me, apparently to tell me the window cleaners had been but really to confide that she has had the results of her scan at the Beatson and her cancer (she calls it 'my' cancer) has spread.
She's 85. She told me when I moved here 6 months ago that she'd had cancer. I also know she is quite isolated. She has two sisters, one down south and one in Canada. Luckily, she also has a nephew who visits from Perth every week. And she has a very kind carer who comes in twice a week. The MacMillan nurse also comes regularly and will be back on Monday. (Mind you, come to think of it, she probably has more people in her house in a week than I do.)
She's had two lots of chemotherapy and has decided she wants no more, so this is the endgame. I don't know her very well but I had already sussed that she is quite needy and the chances are I'll see quite a lot of her from now on. (When I told her a while back I couldn't sit in the sun and would be in the shady back garden, she moved her seat from the front door to the back...)
I have no idea at all what to say to her. I make fatuous noises, saying idiotic stuff like: I hope you feel better soon, when I know she won't. The trouble is there's no handbook for dealing with death. And someone like me, who could never be mistaken for a member of a caring profession, really needs guidelines. What I want to ask her, the practical stuff - have you given someone power of attorney, have you made your will, are you an organ donor and if you are have you checked that's okay? - are all pretty inappropriate and my mouth is firmly shut on these subjects. I'm just not sure what are appropriate topics.
Don't imagine I have no experience of people dying. The volunteering I do is with very elderly people and people with serious disabilities. In three years, we've 'lost' four clients - at least two of whom we counted as good friends. Of our current clients, one has pretty bad COPD and one has had increasingly bad MS for 15 years. A third at 95 is just starting the downhill slide - we know the signs. I also had the experience of watching an elderly neighbour at my last house go downhill - broken wrist, broken coccyx, small heart attack, big heart attack - all pretty dramatic over a period of three years before she - perhaps mercifully - died. But experience doesn't make it easier. Part of having a 'good' death is surely having people around to help. And I'm no help at all as far as I can see.
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