I flip my pillow to the cool side, and think of my
grandmother. It’s something she used to do when I would sleep over at her
small, one-bedroom apartment, something that happened only as a treat when I was young. After an
evening of homemade chips fried in bacon fat (her specialty), Bugles, and Wink
(a lemon-lime soft drink), and several games of Cribbage and Crazy Eights, she
would put sheets and blankets on her small sofa, and tuck me in. I’d lie there, listening to the tick, tock of her carriage clock, before falling asleep. Sometime in the
night I’d wake, briefly, as she would come out and turn my pillow to the cool
side.
I noticed a sign at the hospital today advertising a 6-week
course entitled “Cancer patients and insomnia”. I am relieved. I now know it
isn’t just I who struggles with sleeping.
When my husband asks why I can’t sleep, I can’t really tell him. It’s
something to do with fear, and with the heavy weight of being a survivor. I
toss and turn, sometimes for hours, listening to the snores of my husband. He
has the ability to lie down, put his head on the pillow, and fall asleep in
about 60 seconds. I find this annoying on many levels, although I envy it too.
People don’t understand this thing, this survivor’s guilt.
But it’s heavy, and it’s real. I’ve heard other people, on TV, people who have
escaped great disasters maybe. They say, “Why me? Why was I spared?” Why,
indeed? Maybe it is to share my stories, to witness other’s stories and share
them, too. Maybe it is to be more involved in the world. Maybe it is because of
science, and the great advances that have been made in treatment. Or maybe it
was just chance, and I won the lottery. I know of two others who were diagnosed
with cancer after I was. They were good people, who were loved, and needed, and
they are both now gone. Can you begin to understand how the weight builds?
It’s not every night I struggle. But it’s been getting worse
over time. I finally ask the doctor for a sleeping pill. I do this because I am
going back to work, and can’t afford to lie awake until 2:00 am only to get up
five hours later, groggy and tired. It is bitter in my mouth, but it seems to
soothe the frantic churning of my mind enough that I can fall asleep more
quickly.
I think of my grandmother fairly often these days. Whenever
I see a chickadee, for example, which I do almost daily because we have a bird
feeder in our backyard. I sit at the counter in our kitchen, sometimes along
with two of my cats, their tails twitching and jaws snapping with hunting
fervor, and watch them. We get sparrows, redpolls, downy woodpeckers, magpies,
and flickers along with the chickadees, but the chickadees are my favourites.
My grandmother used to sometimes sing me a song, when she stayed with us during the
endless, innocent summers at our cabin on Lake Windermere. I'd climb into bed, the one with the headboard with "secret" sliding doors where I would hide my most treasured possessions. It still resides in my basement. I can't bear to throw it out or recycle it or donate it. It is like a memory time capsule. I can't remember the song though, other than it started “Chickadee
dee dee dee dee dee dee dee”. She would rub my back with her calloused,
rough hand, and I’d fall asleep quickly and fearlessly.
At the cabin, my demons lurked in the clothes closet next to
my bed, where there was a gap in the ceiling that led to the mysterious attic.
I could sometimes hear the squirrels that infested it scrabbling in the walls.
Once or twice a summer, my dad would go up just to check and make sure
everything was ok up there. At night, I’d flip on the light switch and close
the closet doors, leaving a glow that reassured me no monsters would appear in
the dark. It occurs to me now that I need to build a closet in my mind, with a
light switch, where I can close the doors and switch on the light, and fall
asleep knowing that fears are contained, illuminated into non-existence.
Sometimes when my husband is late coming to bed, I leave the
bedside light on. I pretend I’ve been reading, but what I really want is a
shield against the darkness when the fear comes. I feel all courage has been
sapped from my body and I lie there, tense and wakeful like a three-year old,
fearing monsters. I try to think
of my grandmother then. She was born in 1900, which means she lived through two
world wars, the great depression, and many years of limited means. I’ve been
told that she was also on Canada’s first women’s hockey team, and in my mind I
can see an old photo I think I have been shown. In it, she had long dark hair
and what I know to have been blue eyes, and a team uniform. I only knew her
when she was old, of course, with short white hair, but her eyes were always
that soft, cornflower blue colour. But she had courage. She had to have had.
I hear my husband coming, so I quickly reach over and turn
off the light. When he opens the door, the room is dark. I say nothing as he
climbs into bed beside me. This helps, the closeness of another person. Some of
the fear goes away, and my breathing slows. When I hear his breathing calm into
sleep, I turn my pillow to the cool side, and close my eyes.
