Nuala
O' Faolain interview: ‘I don’t want more time. As
soon as I heard I was going to die, the goodness went from life.
The writer Nuala O' Faolain is
dying of cancer. In an emotion-charged interview with Marian Finucane
broadcast on RTE radio she revealed that she was diagnosed six
weeks ago in New York. She said the cancer, which began in her
lungs but has now spread to her brain and liver, is incurable.
She has turned down the option of chemotherapy, which could help
prolong her life.
Transcript of Interview
MF: Nuala O'Faolain you've been on the programme a number of times
in connection with your writing and you wrote your memoir "Are
You Somebody" in a way that it seemed it explained yourself
to you and now you're doing this interview in a completely different
context and I understand that it's to explain yourself to yourself
as well as to us as well.
NO'F: Yeah, it must look as if I'm an awful divil for publicity
altogether and, in a sense, since I wrote "Are You Somebody"
and it reached what is truth to say was a huge response, I have
in a sense put myself out there. And the interviews I gave back
then 10 or 11 years ago are like one bookend in which I presented
myself and lots of people didn't like me and lots of people did.
But one way or another it was company for me who happens to be
a childless middle-aged woman.
Now I am actually dying and I have Metastatic cancer in three
different parts of my body.
And, somehow or another, it helps me to set up the other bookend
and to say to those people who were interested in me and did care
about me to say to them 'well this is how it is for me now for
what its worth'.
MF: When were you diagnosed?
NO'F: About six weeks ago I was in New York. I have a terrific
life to be absolutely honest with you. I managed to buy a little
room that I absolutely loved and the important thing about the
room is that it was mine, 'cause for several years myself and
this man I liked were trying to pretend that I was part of his
family, him and his 14- year-old daughter who lived in a house
in Brooklyn. I had at last managed to negotiate that I wasn't
ever going to be any good of a stepmother, that she didn't need
me, that she had a good mother and a good father.
I didn't need her, I didn't want to spend my life watching her
doing her homework. So I gradually semi moved out and I used to
go to music and meet my friends and eat and I was writing a book
and I'd applied for a fellowship to write a book and I had Ireland.
So everything was well.
But I was walking along one day after fitness class and my right
side began to drag and I eventually went to A&E in a New York
hospital, a thing I wouldn't wish anyone to do.
MF: Why?
NO'F: Because it is full of chaos and people who have been shot
and run over and, I couldn't get over this, I spent 13 hours on
a little gurney and the people beside me were there for unhappiness.
Anyway, I was sitting there waiting to hear what was wrong with
my right leg when the guy came past and said that 'your CAT scan
shows that you have two brain tumours and we're going to do X-rays
to see where they're from, they're not primaries'. And that is
the first ever I knew.
MF: He said that in the middle of A&E.
N.O'F: He just passed by and I was on my own, you know. He just
passed by and a few hours later he passed by again and said the
X-Rays show you have lung tumours and since then others turned
up. That was New York six weeks ago and since then I stayed a
few nights in hospital. I might mention a bill of €28,000,
but I had some health insurance through my dear friend John, but
I sort of knew that I should come back to Ireland and I was absolutely
right.
MF: How did you deal with the information?
NO'F: Em, I couldn't deal with it ... I was so shocked I would
pay attention to anything except what I had just been told. And
it took me a long time to work my way a little bit out of shock.
MF: In terms of what people think about cancer, the shock the
terror and the treatment. Did they say to you or did you even
ask them at that stage, about eh treatment and your chances and
those kinds of questions.
NO'F: Well I saw some people in New York and they are not very
different from here. The thing about my cancers are they are incurable
and that's the central fact about them. There is a great cancer
hospital in New York just up the road from my beloved room which
I will never see again, but anyway, I might have gone to Sloane
Kettering if there had been a chance of a cure, but from the beginning
to the end I have been very lucky.
There is no chance of a cure. There's a chance of aggressive treatment
that will gain you time, often good time. And I came back to Ireland
and did 14 brain radiations and the idea was that I would move
on to chemotherapy and I don't doubt that what I have been advised
here is at least as good.
The question arrived. I was supposed to start chemotherapy. I
was supposed to start 18 weeks of it, six goes of it. After three
gos they would know if it was working .
But whether it was the disease or the brain radiation I don't
know or care, [it] reduced me to such feelings of impotence and
wretchedness and sourness with life... and fear that I decided
against it.
MF: Very often you hear of people being told 'oh, you have got
to have a positive attitude' and 'a positive attitude is what
gets you through' and I have betimes thought that this put a lot
of pressure on the person that was told to have a positive attitude.
What's your own view on that?
NO'F: Yeah, I was just reading about some best-selling man who
says 'Live your dream to the end' and so on and I don't despise
anyone who does, but I don't see it that way. Even if I gained
time through the chemotherapy it isn't time I want. Because as
soon as I knew I was going to die soon, the goodness went out
of life.
MF: I think that's a very interesting thing. Because, as I understood
it, for you life was very sweet, you had sorted out your American
life, you had your life in Ireland, you had your life in universities,
then you were going to write. So life was very sweet for you at
that point. Why does it not seem to you that if you went through
treatment life could not be sweet again?
NO'F: It's the time that I would get at the end of the treatment.
I'm not even thinking about the treatment itself. It amazed me,
Marian, how quickly life turned black, immediately almost.
For example, I lived somewhere beautiful, but it means nothing
to me anymore -- the beauty. For example, twice in my life I have
read the whole of Proust. I know it sounds pretentious, but it's
not a bit. It's like a huge soap opera. But I tried again the
week before last and it was gone, all the magic was gone from
it.
And I'm not nice or anything -- I'm not getting nicer. I'm sour
and difficult you know. I don't know how my friends and family
are putting up with me, but they are, heroically. And that is
one of the things you learn.
But, in general, every year since I was 60 me and the sisters
and brother and sister-in-law have gone to Italy and sat on a
beach. And I thought: 'Well, I will keep that goal', but now I
am wondering if I would sit on the beach thinking what? I would
be thinking 'God, was I a bit breathless last night? Am I going
to choke? Is my right leg swelling and is it hurting?' There's
so much you can't know.
You see, the cancer is a very ingenious enemy and when you ask
somebody how will I actually die? How do you actually die of cancer
?... I don't get an answer because It could be anything.
It can move from one organ to the other, it can do this that or
the other. It's already in my liver, for example. So I don't know
how it's going to be. And that overshadows everything. And I don't
want six months or a year. It's not worth it .
MF: Do you believe in an afterlife.?
NO'F: No, I do not.
MF: Or a God.
NO'F: Well that's a different matter somehow. I actually don't
know how we all get away with our unthikingness. Often last thing
at night I walk the dog down the lane and you look up at the sky
illuminated by the moon and behind the moon the Milky Way and,
you know, you are nothing on the edge of one planet compared to
this universe unimaginably vast up there and unimaginably mysterious.
And I have done that for years, looked up at it and given it a
wink and thought 'I don't know what's going on' and I still don't
know what's going on, but I can't be consoled by mention of God.
I can't.
MF: Would you like it?
NO'F: No. Oh no I wouldn't. If I start doing that something really
bad is happening to my brain, though I was baptised and I remember
my First Communion and I went to Catholic schools and I was in
the legion of Mary and I tried to stick to my pledge.
And though I respect and adore the art that arises from the love
of God and though nearly everybody I love and respect themselves
believe in God, it is meaningless to me, really meaningless.
MF: The reason I asked you is because it is a source of comfort
for many people?
NO'F: Well, I wish them every comfort, but it is not even bothering
me. I don't even think about it. I have never believed in the
Christian version of the individual creator... how could I know
far too many Buddhists and atheists and every kind of thing?
Let poor human beings believe what they want, but to me its meaningless.
I waited on the radio the other day to hear poor John O'Donoghue
knowing that he is very important to many people, but to me it
is utterly meaningless to someone it isn't meaningful to.
And yet I want to mention one thing that you might play at the
end, particularly for dying people, but I picked up little bits
here and there about Ireland, largely at the Merriman Summer School,
which is one of the great things in my life, a song I heard a
few years ago 'Thois I Lar an Glanna'-- a kind of modern song
sung by Albert Fry and other Donegal singers. And the last two
lines are two things, asking God up there in the heavens, even
though you don't believe in him, to send you back even though
you know it can't happen. Those two things sum up where I am now.
(Crying)
MF: When you realised the seriousness of the situation what did
that do to your concept of your family, your friends, your enemies
should you have them, to make all that right.
NO'F: Yes. For example, I lived for years with Nell McCafferty
and let's say, 15 years and lets say 12 of those were the greatest
fun and I owe so much to them and in fact as far as I am concerned
Irish women owe so much to Nell and I was dead lucky to live with
her. But then again it ended up not so hot, but now it is my great
pleasure to be in e-mail contact with Nell and to thank her (crying).
MF: And other people you might have lost connection with...
NO'F: Well, funny enough, there is at least one person who was
very unkind to me and he can stay that way as far as I am concerned.
I always find it hard to forgive people who are unkind and I don't
forgive them.
My God, my sisters and my brother and my sisters-in-law, I bet
you there are loads of people like me get on grand with their
family, but it never occurs to them that their family will go
to the ends of the Earth for them. I am even embarrassed by all
they do for me. What can I do with that goodness of theirs? If
I was a religious person I would see it as the spirit in action,
but I just see it as inexplicably good.
MF: You decided that in the time you have that you would see or
examine what is that gives life quality or gives meaning or significance
for you. Tell me the kinds of things you might do and have done.
NO'F: Well I couldn't do anything for the first weeks because
I had to get this brain radiation every day. Then they told me
I would have three weeks between it and starting the chemo...
if I wanted to start the chemo, because they say we offer you
the chemo because we think it will help you a great deal and I
don't doubt them.
Well, anyway, I thought if I am going to do chemo it is to win
time. What do I want to win time for? What is the quality left
in life. And then, so, I arranged to go by myself to Paris and
I thought 'I'll stay in the best hotel in Paris' and up to a point
it worked.
In the morning, in a ridiculous piece of economy, I didn't have
their €40 breakfast and I wandered out and I sat in a café
and I had a tartine and milky coffee and I thought -- 'Well this
is it. I love this'.
MF: Did that work? Did that do what it is you wanted to find out
about or experience.
NO'F: Yes it did, once .But I wouldn't want to try it again. I
wouldn't dream of it. It was such a miracle that it came together
with the right people and in the right weather. A few days later
I went to New York and that was overdoing it.
MF: Again, you are supposed to be sick.
NO'F: WelI I am sick, but I am trying to say goodbye. So much
has happened and it seems such a waste of creation that with each
death all that knowledge dies.
I think there's a wonderful rule of life that means that we do
not consider our own mortality. I know we seem to, and remember,
'man thou art but dust', but I don't believe we do. I believe
there is an absolute difference between knowing that you are likely
to die, let's say within the next year, and not knowing when you
are going to die -- an absolute difference.
MF: So people don't move away from you? Or how do people deal
with you, I mean friends. Do they crowd you out?
NO'F: Obviously sometimes, in fact often, I pray for them to go
away for the very essence of this experience is aloneness and,
anyway, it is the steroids keep you awake at night. So it is 2
in the morning or four in the morning and you're walking around
and all you know is that whatever it is you are feeling or thinking
is yours and nobody else's. And there is nobody else to lay it
off on and that aloneness is the centre and the thing that you
never know when you are well ...
The two things that keep me from the worst of self-pity are that
everyone's done it so that ordinary people are as brave as I could
ever be or as less brave as I could ever be.
The second thing that really matters to me is that in my time,
which is mostly the 20th century, people have died horribly, billions
of people have died horribly, in Auschwitz, in Darfur, or dying
of starvation or dying multiply raped in the Congo or dying horribly
like that.
I think look how comfortably I am dying, I have friends and family,
I am in this wonderful country, I have money, there is nothing
much wrong with me except dying.
When I think of how privileged I am. I had two brothers who died
of drink and they died miserably and under- privileged and here
I am as usual the lucky one in the family (crying).
MF: One of the things that you wrote about and wrote about is
that what you thought mattered in life was passion?
NO'F: That seems a bit silly now. What matters now in life is
health and reflectiveness. I just shot around. I would like it
if I had been a better thinker.
MF: What about the passion?
NO'F: The passion can go and take a running jump at itself, that's
what it can take.
MF: And love?
NO'F: Well, love's different, but I always [get the] two mixed
up anyway. Well here I am, I am glad I didn't have a child, that's
all. One of the reasons why is that since I heard about this I
have been thinking about men and women, parents who are trailing
around their houses with Methastatic cancer like me, trying to
hide it from them, trying to say goodbye, even though they are
too tired to move. And it seems to me to die leaving children
behind is so bad.
MF: It is natural.
NO'F: I don't know, to me it seems the most terrible thing. I
would have been a terrible mother. My mother was a terrible mother
and I was very close to her and I drank too much 'til I was 40,
which was a waste of my one and only life. The whole family, family
life was predicated on drink. We'd meet our father in a pub or
our mother in a pub, everything was done through a pub.
Nobody realises until they move outside Ireland just how abnormal
Ireland is that way. If I had my life again I wouldn't drink and
I, of course, I wouldn't smoke and I would try to think better
although where drink would get me I don't know. Its about 16 years
since I had a cigarette.
MF: Did it start in the lung?
NO'F: Yes it did. It makes no difference. I remember Charlie Haughey
showing me his X-Rays and you could see at the edge of them a
big pale grey expanse. That was where he had smoked.
MF: If there are people who have cancer or loved ones who have
cancer and passionately believe that the treatments are going
to work for them, there is the possibility that this could cast
a despair over them.
NO'F: My despair is my own, their hope is their own. Their spirituality
is their own. My way of looking at the world is my own. We each
end up differently facing this common fate.
I wish everybody out there a miracle cure.
Every single professional will tell you that they cannot say how
long it will be... and it is my choice not to go the route of
chemotherapy.
Funnily enough I don't care about losing the hair. What I do care
about is that sometimes I see people frightened or repulsed and
that is why I went and got a wig in which I look like a rather
striking but elderly chorus girl.
Now I am beginning to put the auld bald head out there and I still
have a few eyebrows, but what do I want them for? I don't care
about anything any more. I know everyone says the hair matters,
but that is not true. You can put a little cap on or something
for the hair. That is irrelevant compared with having to leave
the world behind.
MF: You said it wasn't so much you leaving the world as the world
leaving you.
NO'F: I thought there would be me and the world, but the world
turned its back on me, the world said to me that's enough of you
now and what's more we're not going to give you any little treats
at the end.
MF: Like...
NO'F: Like, let's say, adoring nature. Music is not quite gone,
but I'm afraid it will go if I overdo it. So I'm trying to listen
to as little as possible.
One of the reasons I went to New York was to hear live music,
which I did the night before last -- a wonderful string quartet,
and thanks be to God my heart responded because if I had had to
sit there listening to Schubert's quartet Death and the Maiden
meaning nothing to me I really think I would have thought I am
going to throw myself under the subway train, but it wasn't. I
came out elated. There's things left.
I still occasionally like food and above all I like sleep and
what I am hoping for, and I don't think this is going to happen,
but if I could have this I kinda hoped there was some kind of
way of fading away, that you lay on your bed and you were really
a nice person and everyone came and said goodbye and wept and
you wept and you meant it and you weren't in any pain for discomfort
and that you didn't choke and didn't die in a mess of diarrhoea
and you just go weaker and they say you might emigrate into some
other organ.
Mine is already in my liver and I don't know what that means,
but if that means that sometime in the middle of the night on
your own as you must be, you know you are just about to go into
the dark that's what I want.
(Weeping)
NO'F: It was well worth doing, you are sure it won't give people
despair.
MF: Well, just on that point, because you have travelled your
journey now in your head and in your heart, and I don't want to
give other people despair because people do get cured from cancer,
many many people, the majority of people do and I don't know if
you can give people advice.
Ireland
