Betwixt and Between

December 2024

Last summer, my best friend, who had recently survived breast cancer, was given another cancer diagnosis. This one was a doozy. It’s a rare appendiceal cancer (something like 1 in a million diagnosed cancers), and there is no cure for it.

I’ve known - since we met on our first day at university - that my best friend is amazing. And oh, how she has proven it since last summer.

My best friend hasn’t climbed any mountains or fronted any media campaigns. She hasn’t run any marathons or started any petitions.

(I’m glad that there are people who do those things: who raise awareness and money and say to the world: look. Look at this unthinkable horror that is happening t0 me. Please do something that will stop it from happening to other people. To your children. To you. I sponsor those people. I applaud those people. I admire them with everything I’ve got.)

Here’s what my best friend has done.

She has done many of the things that those with cancer do. She has borne treatment with solid determination and good humour; she has kept on working because she knows that there is more to life than counting down the days to your next treatment; she has made the effort to do things that have meaning for her, and for the people who love her, because she understands how much these moments and memories will mean to us later.

And she has done something else. Something so generous and beautiful that I don’t think I will ever get my head round it.

She has shared her coming death.

She has been honest and direct about what she feels, fears, wants, needs. And in doing so she has allowed those of us who love her to do the same.

This is my first close-up experience of a death-with-warning. At first, I thought it was the cruellest possible thing. As time has gone on - and as my best friend has shown us what dying can be - I’ve found this time to be a privilege.

Don’t get me wrong, it is horrible. I would give literally anything for my best friend to have more time. There are things in this situation which feel beyond cruel.

I went to London at the end of November for a few days of hanging out with my best friend, who was getting weaker. I stayed for two weeks. I sat in hospitals and ran errands and spent time with my friend’s family and just generally did what needed to be done. Between life and death there are so many practical things to think about: could someone make jelly, could someone pick up a prescription, could someone cancel this and arrange that and find the missing charger. And there are the moments that absolutely wallop you in the guts. Brass bands playing carols should come with a five-minute warning, for a start.

It’s a strange thing to say but between all the sadness and exhausting hospital-wrangling, I was reminded of how friendship doesn’t change. Spending all day every day chatting and eating food in odd configurations (haribo and chicken satay, anyone?) had a lot of parallels to our early days at uni. Except now our friendship is thirty-five years old, and we are virtually telepathic, in the best possible way. We have seen each other through divorce (mine), a breast cancer each, our weddings to excellent men, the birth of our children. We have supported and listened to each other. We know each other inside out - all the worst bits too - and we are completely accepting of each other, completely delighted to be friends.

During those two weeks in December, we were all very clear that the end was near. So in this strange between-life-and-death time - made all the stranger by the fact that everyone else around was preparing for Christmas - my best friend and I said goodbye.

The goodbye was not, as it transpired, the final one. Some interventions by the hospital and a stay at a hospice mean that my best friend is still with us. She did not want to die at Christmas time; does not want our memories of grief to be entwined with carols and trees and gift-giving. There’s that determination, that generosity, again.

So, we are betwixt. Everything is heightened and everything is happier and everything hurts.

At New Year, BMB* and I will do what we have done every year since we moved to Northumberland and travel to London to celebrate with my best friend and our families. It will be different. It will be that last year that will be exactly like this.

But one of the amazing things that my best friend has done over these last eighteen months is to help us all to admit, to embrace, that we will manage without her.

(I have just paused to have a good cry.)

So, I have spent December between home and London, between hospital and a kind neighbour’s bed, between managing everything like a grown-up and sobbing like a lost toddler. As I write this I’m held in the preciousness of this time. I know a lot of people dislike the bit between Christmas and New Year, but I’m a fan. I love that a meal can be a mince pie, a piece of Brie, a pear, and the last of the Quality Street; I love that it’s considered a perfect use of time to watch ‘Matilda: the Musical’ in the morning and ‘Wonka’ in the afternoon. I love** seeing the beach busy with dogs on Boxing Day. And I love that my best friend is still alive, and that she has taught me that however much I do not want to, I’m going to make a damn good job of getting on with a life without her in it. Walking this road with her has been an honour that I will never forget.

Love your people, my friends.

See you next year.

Stephanie xxx

*Beloved Mr Butland

** I say that I love it. I always love seeing a happy dog, but where were these people on 10 February when the rain was horizontal? On 8 December when the air was so cold it hurt?