Memoir by Gail Coufal
Guarded (2005)
Act 1
Guarded. Someone wrote this about her life. About her.
She had picked up the disability papers her oncologist filled out for her. She’d walked back to her car, got in, decided to take a look before she put them in the mail. He had answered questions about diagnosis, when, what kind of cancer. A treatment plan. Could she work at her job through this or not? What was her prognosis?
Guarded.
She’d never felt anything like the quaking that went through her then. It was not shaking with fear; it was an earthquake epicentered in her gut. I’m not ready yet. Really, God, all those times I said I wish I was dead? I didn’t mean it. I don’t mean it.
She didn’t want to be guarded about anything now.
Act 2
By Thanksgiving, when her birthday came around, she was bald, angry, scrawny, too sick to eat. There would be no turkey and turkey gravy, no sweet potatoes, no Brussels sprouts, no Napa wine. She had not been guarded in telling her family, friends, and coworkers, but no one but her husband was there that day.
He tried to comfort her.
“This will never be over,” she spat out.
She sat at the unset dining room table, swallowed up by her big blue robe and ski hat. She put her head in her hands and cried.
“Of course it will,” he said.
This made her wail. He led her to their bedroom and lay down beside her.
Act 3
She was fitted for her radiation mold just before the end of the year. Arms up, a slice of metal to rest on, right breast exposed. They were perky people, these Radiationers. They liked to say things like “after chemo, this is nothing! You won’t feel a thing!”
“Then why do you all leave the room?” she asked. “If it’s no big deal?”
Hahaha. No one thinks this is funny except her writing group.
The Radiationers added, “Some people feel fatigue, but many do not, and they go right back to work!”
They were wrong. The fatigue was so deep she could barely lift her head off the pillow for weeks—no really, months and months. Or was that depression? Or old age in the post-menopausal world she now lived in? How would she now go back to work? She hated her job. She could only think that if life was not perfect before—and it was not—how would she handle the added depression rolling over her?
It was her preexisting condition.
Penance (2008)
Act 1
She had been back at work for a year after completing treatment. She was alive but not in a good way. Every morning she crouched in her shower and sobbed.
She became paranoid. Driving to work one day, she stopped at a red light. During the wait, she turned to her left and saw a hearse pull up beside her. Again, the tears and sobbing. It was difficult to wear makeup during this time. It seemed Damocles and his Sword were everywhere. Wanting to die, not wanting to die. Which was it?
Act 2
She somehow convinced her husband she would go mad if she could not quit her job and rest. On top of that, their 17-year-old cat was dying. So she up and quit her job, thinking she could be frugal, that they could live on one income.
Act 3
She spent the summer crying over her deceased cat, ironing shirts, putting a few plants in the garden. She spent time on her knees, washing dishes in the bathtub because it seemed like a good time to remodel the kitchen.
It was a penance worthy of her sins.
She wrote in her new housewife’s notebook every day. And meditated when her busy, busy brain had nothing to do but make her crazy. She water-jogged most days in a community pool with a friend equally impaired, and came home to sleep.
Soon she was barely getting out of her robe, forgetting to brush her teeth, just watching old ER episodes.
Her husband said, “Maybe you should see someone.”
She signed up for an eight-week course: “Managing Your Depression.” Hahaha.
“I want to believe.” A line from The X-Files.
Hyacinth (2011)
Act 1
She wishes someone had told her that her new normal would be new but nothing like normal—and that this is fine. Sometimes really fine. Why be normal?
Act 2
She is better. She is fortunate to be here still.
Act 3
Now it’s easier to remember to take time for herself, to meditate, to write, to remember a line from Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey: “I have just learnt to love a hyacinth.” She is learning to remember again.
Afterword
Cancer got me writing again. Suddenly I had to write. My humor grew darker than ever. I could be as mean as I wanted to be. I could tell the truth. I could tell lies.
In April 2005, at 51 years old, I was diagnosed with a Stage 3 breast cancer. At first, I went to a couple of talk support groups, looking for answers, for solace. These were too frightening; I couldn’t listen to people who already knew they were terminal. But when Autumn Stephens’s writing group was offered through my community cancer education program, I signed up—and stayed.
The pieces here are based on a writing prompt from one of her classes. Autumn gave us an exercise that resulted in naming a play. She then asked us to write three acts and to spend only five minutes on each act.
Now, when I sit down to write, I don’t go to cancer and my cancer treatment willy-nilly. Life seems enormous again. Cancer is a piece of that, of course, but I feel much more private about it than I did then. Still, I keep going to Autumn’s class, hoping that what I have to write may buoy another woman in understanding this disease and the way it carves itself into our lives.
Editor’s Note: Don’t miss “In the Cancer Room” by Autumn Stephens, her own meditation about leading the workshop.
Art Information
- “Dead Plant in Pots” © ChelseaWa; Creative Commons license
- “Lemon Sprout” © John Lustig; Creative Commons license
- “Spring Mood” © Nadja Girod ; stock photo
Gail Coufal lives in Oakland, California, with her husband and their two second-generation cats. She works in higher education by day, is a voracious reader by night, and goes to New Mexico as often as she can.
Gail has spent many Saturdays writing with the "Cancer in Other Words" group at the Markstein Cancer Education Center.
Gail's "Her Baldness" photo above was taken by her niece Mia Burk in 2005 and is used by permission.
