Memories of Max - A Father's Story

Chapter 8 - Allan

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I remember in my early twenties sitting with my father and some friends drinking late into the night. During the war my father had become a Squadron Leader at the age of twenty two. To me and my friends, living our middle class lives, the concept of war and the life that was led by my father’s generation seemed more than a world away. We could not see how we would ever rise to the challenge that these young men had faced. My father gently rebuked us. He was confident that given the same situation, all of us would rise to the occasion and would account for our generation in exactly the same way that his generation had done.

I had my doubts. These doubts have been swept away. I have not lived through the terror and suffering that his generation endured, but I have experienced a similar hurt and the qualities required to move through and past that hurt. They are there in all of us.

How do you react on being told that your child has cancer? In one sense this is an easy question to answer. You react with anguish and tears and in the ways which I have already described. What follows this initial reaction is more difficult to predict and from my experience extremely varied. It depends on your character, your previous world experience, your beliefs, and on your hopes and fears. Sometimes it is bizarre and usually never understood by those outside the immediate situation.

What follows is your attempt to cope with this burden. Again there are many common reactions which most people experience, but it is when you delve into the minutiae that the variations appear. Most cope, but how they cope and the emotions they experience differ considerably.

Barriers are erected hastily, sometimes shoddy but still effective. They are shored up by rickety scaffolding which swings and sways in the wind. These structures serve their purpose as you slowly try to find the bricks and mortar to build something more sturdy. Sometimes even the sturdy structures are ineffective, because you forgot about the foundations and there was no-one to guide you with the plans.

I had many and varied reactions to Max’s cancers. I do not think that I could have predicted any of them accurately prior to his illness. There is extrapolation and there is extrapolation. There is the theoretical projection of past experience and the world you know and there is the reality of what actually happens.

For most of Max’s leukaemia and initially during the second cancer, I believed that he was going to die. I had to believe it because this was my way of coping. This was my wall which I built against the surreal world into which we had fallen. My rationale was as follows -‘Max is going to die but if he doesn't then I can only gain. If he does then I'm prepared’. In the cold light of day this premise has huge flaws, but it worked for me at the time and that was all that mattered. You reach out and grasp for any belief that will carry you through the dark times.

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