Freckles

Hope in the park

Five years ago, Neve began radiotherapy and chemotherapy.

This week, as I watched children racing in the park, I wondered whether Neve was also doing similar, five years ago. Did she also climb through a hole in the fence, sneaking out to explore beyond the park boundary and then denying it? Did she run barefoot through the grass? Would I have allowed her to play out of sight, with her friends, for long periods of time?

I hope so but I suspect not. In the context of her cancer, I imagine I was cautious, keen to keep her healthy and well, focused on the importance of ensuring her treatment could continue.

Keep her well, so we could make her unwell, in the hope of making her well.

What a strange thing it is, to look back now, with hindsight. The juxtaposition of the unstructured risky play of childhood with the treatment that was destined not to work.

How could rational decision making reside alongside the uncertainty of brain cancer? The only near certainty, that Neve would die soon enough from this cancer, was at that point still unknown to me. What would a rational decision have been, had I known this? Where do best interests lie, when even in the unlikely event of treatment working, Neve was almost certainly never going to become a teenager, let alone an adult. And if this treatment is traumatic, then what? What if best interests are settled upon in the context of false hopes?

Looking back, I suspect that August 2020 held the final weeks of a relatively healthy Neve. She had recovered well from her surgery and was not yet feeling the impact of the radiotherapy, chemotherapy and her cancer continuing to grow. I hope my misplaced cautions did not hold Neve back from the thrills of tree climbing and unsupervised play.

Keep her well, so we could make her unwell, in the hope of making her well. A false hope. There was no realistic hope of her remaining well. Or alive.

Fast forward to today’s reality. Returning home from the park, with all these unsettling questions agitating within me, I am drawn to the photographs in my phone. In among the many pictures of Neve in hospital, it is the images of her in the park that seize me.

I can’t help but smile, solace rippling through me. Moving from picture to picture, I watch her hang upside down on the parallel bars, squeal with joy and terror on the tire swing and fly down the slide. And there she is, hair cut short in preparation for cancer treatment, up a tree. Granted, she isn’t far up, she is resting her head on a branch, and her smile is cautious. Nonetheless, this freckle faced child is up a tree, in the park and she is smiling.

That is enough for me today.

Neve, painted by Emily Tammam in watercolour paints from The Stoneground Paint Company.

See posts below, to read more about Neve’s story and my ambivalences and grapples with hope.

Reclaiming hope

Hope at the edge