If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry.
I try not to re-read my blogs once I have published them. I write to take a build-up of thoughts out of my mind and release them into the world. At a much younger age, I learnt that this was a kind of therapy for me. Sometimes I would write about the serious side of life, the less serious, almost comical, and sometimes a mix of both.
Seven years ago, I started my walk along the Heysen Trail. Today, that seems like a distant memory. I need to be honest. The reason that I wanted to see it through to the end of that walk is that I’d partially convinced myself that walking the trail and fundraising towards mental health would miraculously cure mum’s cancer. It didn’t, and it still hasn’t, and below the surface, I always knew that it wouldn’t. That was a long time ago.
As foolish as that sounds now, it wasn’t at the time. I talked to one of the many gods that, up until that point, had never heard from me, and tried to make a deal. I will do this if you do that for me. I am not saying that I didn’t believe in the cause that I was walking for, which was raising awareness and funds for mental health, but I am admitting that I had hidden agendas and a hidden determination. Mum’s cancer diagnosis came shortly before I started that hike. We crossed paths on the highway while I was driving towards the starting point, her returning from the first bout of treatment. Mum’s diagnosis was kept close to the family and something not discussed openly. I was so naïve when I found out that my thoughts were that surely a little bit of treatment would mean that she would be fine and could carry on with life. Its mum, one of the strongest people I know. Cancer wouldn’t stand a chance.
Hearing that diagnosis coincided with the first time in my life I could remember seeing my dad cry, which shook me more than I thought. The average prognosis for this type of cancer was five years, mum was 57 at the time. I spent the first couple of days while walking solo on the Heysen Trail feeling angry, upset, and utterly helpless.
Multiple surgeries, endless rounds of treatment, countless flights to Adelaide, and more pain than anyone should have to endure has allowed mum to recently celebrate her 64th birthday. She continues to fight on.
I have never written about this because, put simply, it hurts, and I haven’t known how to put that hurt into words. I haven’t wanted to disrupt the privacy of others and felt that it wasn’t my story to share. I did what I thought was right, but deep down knew was wrong. I bottled it up, tried to show external strength while wanting to support those around me to the best of my ability. What it has taken me a long time to realise is that by doing this, I allowed myself to diminish a little, recoil back from society, and see the world with a lot less colour than I used to.
I know this to be true because I could feel it in myself. It wasn’t the kind of feeling where I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning, but the feeling of “fuck you world”. You follow the playbook, abide by the rules, and still get kicked in the guts. I have seen this time and time again, not just with my family but with friends and strangers alike. “Where is the justice”? It turns out there is no justice. You feel that life should follow the script of a movie, and when it doesn’t, you are somehow hard done by. In reality, the script of life is not written in Hollywood, it is written in everyday households, acted out by everyday people fighting their own battles trying to keep their heads above water.
During the last few years, we began to notice that Dad had been slowing. The quick-whited, active man that I look up to was slowing at a rate that wasn’t quite linear with age. Sure enough, as we sat around the dinner table shortly before Christmas in 2024, our thoughts were confirmed with a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease. It was one of those moments where we all just looked at each other and had to laugh, or we would cry. There’s mum, who is going through more cancer treatment, and now dad, with his own battle that he felt was creeping up inside long before a doctor had delivered the news. I couldn’t fathom how these two people, who were meant to be stepping into the next phase of life, now had to fight to keep some form of normality with a diagnosis that equated to lifelong changes.
Mum with cancer, dad with Parkinson’s disease. The cards of life were being dealt, and I couldn’t help but feel this overwhelming sense that they had been cheated. We had to laugh and we did, or we would have cried.
We have all heard the saying that people have it worse off, and it is very true, and you don’t have to look far to find it. There are many people battling cancer, starvation, and war, but this was our scenario, and there is no play-book. You only truly know the hard times you yourself or those close to you face, and can only lay imagination and sympathy to the hardships of others when it doesn’t affect you personally.
Seeing the effects on not only mum but our family as a whole has been heartbreaking. The roller coaster of cancer is a ride that nobody should have a ticket for. Once you are on that ride, it is hard to get off. There are sections where it slows and you can take in your surroundings, such as birthdays, holidays, and everyday life, but unfortunately for some, the ride speeds up again, and you’re all just hanging on. I recently told mum I had been doing some writing, and her response was the same as it has always been. “I don’t want sympathy, this is just how it goes sometimes”. A response that I have grown used to.
I know that talking is a great medicine, and I have always been open to mates and strangers approaching me with their challenges. I try to listen where I can, or offer my thoughts if they are warranted. I found that during these years, something in me expected reciprocation, which I know isn’t the reason why you should offer help in the first place, but in all honesty, that expectation was there. I wanted people to ask how things were going, yet I wasn’t prepared to raise the topic myself. How did I expect to hear back if I wasn’t going to speak?
Early on, I did talk with a few. I was looking to offload the mental baggage that I knew was weighing me down. Whether it was the uncomfortable conversation of illness, death, or something else entirely, I will never be sure, but they never raised the topic again. This partially led me to keeping these cards close to my chest, only talking with a few. Recently, I have been open to talking more. It turns out that if people don’t know, they won’t ask, who would have thought? It also turns out that cancer and the likes are so bloody common in today’s society that many have their own stories and are also looking to talk and release some of the mental baggage.
Terminal Cancer with a loved one can be extremely hard to talk about. You are grieving the inescapability of death while still trying to celebrate life. You want to shoulder the burden to give pain-free days. You want to trade your own good years to see them have a few pain-free ones, but that’s not how it works. You sometimes feel like you are floating in a tide of absolute uselessness while waiting for inevitability. You also feel that you should soak up all the time you have left while balancing work, family life and everyday commitments and feel the ping of guilt as time continues to slip by.
Seven years have passed since that original diagnosis. In that time, there has been relief from the monster that is cancer, but that relief was never brought on by some walker making a deal. It was made possible by the resilience of somebody fighting to live, to see their grandchildren grow older, spend time with their friends and loved ones, and experience the later years of life. Something that is a continuous inspiration.
I have been very fortunate to grow up having my parents as a constant in my life, people I could look up to or seek advice from. Some people don’t grow up with parents at all. I understand that life is not a fairy tale, and it is full of many ups and also many downs.
I wish that I could go back and have a talk to myself seven years ago. I would encourage communication, openness, and letting go of the held anger towards the imaginary fair, and not fair. I would seek those who have been through similar scenarios to speak with and not confuse openness with weakness.
There have undoubtedly been some hard times during these years for all involved, but there has also been light in the tunnel with mum still being present for holidays, birthdays, the birth of grandchildren, and many catch-ups or Sunday night pizzas.
It is strange in some ways how life plays out. I picked up the phone one day while working from the garage and called mum. Her diagnosis steered me to re-evaluate my time, my place in the world, and the role I wanted to fulfil in it. I told her that I wanted to quit my carpentry job and open a gallery to chase photography full-time. With a mortgage and our family recently welcoming a little boy into the world, this seemed like a far-off dream. She simply told me to do it and that no matter what, we would be ok.
Her encouragement, along with my families was all I needed to hear at the time. An early memory of renovating the gallery space was that mum would finish her treatment in Adelaide, fly home, and pick up a brush to help, whether I thought that was a wise decision or not.
The results are the gallery I am in today. The studio has been so much more than a place to work from. It has allowed me to spend time with mum or sit and have a coffee with dad during the week and solve the world’s problems. It has provided a space for greater connection over the last few years than I possibly could have had on the jobsite, not only with my parents but also friends and family.
No matter what happens in the future, I will always look back on this gallery as one of the best decisions I have ever made.
There is so much more that I could write, but maybe I will save it for another time. I just want others who are going through this scenario or one similar with a loved one to know that I hear you, I can try to understand you, and I am always up for a chat, something that admittedly I wasn’t that good at for a long time.
Cheers,
Doddy.
