Not long ago, I received this email from David Jones of
Sheridan, OR:
I am writing on behalf of my wife, Carol Jones, who was a subscriber
and diver. I am sad to report that she died this past December and so will
not be renewing. The sea meant much to her and diving allowed her to be
close to it in a way that she loved. She greatly valued Undercurrent and
I wanted you to know that. (I do some work with an NGO that seeks to
protect the oceans—The Marine Conservation Biology Institute—but I am
not a diver.) You might enjoy the attached article, which was written by
noted author and her diving buddy, Sallie Tisdale. If it helps only a few
people think more about the oceans than they do now, it will have served
a purpose all of us value.
* * * * *
My dive buddy, Carol, is floating 50 feet under the surface
of the sea. We glance at each other every few minutes, keeping
track. We have been diving off a little island called Southwest
Caye, 35 miles from the coast of southern Belize, for several days. She and I swim quietly through the warm water, over
sandy plains and coral boulders. We see sharks and garden eels
and blue parrot fish motoring madly against the current. Carol
likes to stand as she might in a museum, hands folded, gazing
into the crevices of the coral reef. Right now, I’m hanging
upside down, peeking under a ledge.
After several minutes, I look up and see that Carol is
making one of her favorite faces: pursed lips, hands on hips
in pretend exasperation. She catches my eye and shakes her
finger. I get the message: “Pay attention.” She does not mean
the fish.
Carol and I have been diving together for six years. She’s a
natural, as she is with most physical activities, and a few times
a year, we take off for distant shores. But three years ago, in the
same week she was elected to be the first woman judge in her
rural western Oregon county, Carol was diagnosed with stage
IV breast cancer.
We’ve made four dive trips since then, and on each outing,
Carol has more bluntly asked me to watch out for her. For the
first time in our long friendship, we are both saying out loud
that we need to attend to each other - - something we’ve always
done but never really acknowledged.
Before the trip to Southwest Caye, with her fatigue worsening,
Carol said, “I can’t imagine getting on an airplane
right now.” She was in the middle of a chemotherapy cycle. I
reminded her that I was starting to come down with a cold. An
old shoulder injury and a strained ligament in one of my knees
were also bothering me. “We’ll just adjust as we go,” I said. “But
I’m getting too old for these red-eye flights, that’s for sure.”
“Enough with that talk of age already,” she answered.
Carol is 53; I am 51. We met in college when she was 18 and
I was 16 and dealing with sudden independence. A self-possessed
woman with a head of thick, curly hair and a wry sense
of humor, she intimidated me. That she felt shy and unsure of
herself, she says now, makes me laugh out loud. Neither of us
recalls clearly how we became friends. While I was rearing children,
Carol worked on fishing boats. While I was writing books,
she went to law school and started a solo practice in criminal
defense. But even when we were living in different states and
saw little of each other, Carol felt inevitably a part of my life.
She has always had the endurance of a sled dog, a comparison
she would find flattering. (Carol considers dogs to be better
creatures than most humans.) She’s hiked and camped and
kayaked, often alone. Once, when we were camping together
in Oregon’s Strawberry Mountain Wilderness, she told me she
had never been afraid; she wasn’t sure what that felt like.
Continuing the Fight
When Carol was diagnosed, I was working as an oncology
nurse. Her cancer had been stealthy; it had spread to her abdomen
and bones before it was caught. We calmly talked about
what to expect, but in private, I cried and struggled. I was juggling
roles, both friend and a cancer nurse. Every cancer, and
patient, is different, but the prognosis for stage IV breast cancer
is bleak; only half the patients are alive two years after diagnosis.
I knew this too well.
Carol began treatment with Arimidex, a new oral chemotherapy.
She felt almost normal and went right back to work.
The drug took. The tumors didn’t disappear—they won’t,
because metastatic cancer is chronic—but they didn’t grow
either. She hated the idea of being seen as a “sick” person, a
“patient,” the idea of her crowded life—with her new role as a
judge, her mob of five dogs, her huge vegetable garden, her
many friends—becoming just about cancer. She hasn’t felt the
urge to start checking off wishes on a life list. She likes her life
as it is, and most important, she likes herself in it.
Her powerful engine of health has paid off. After several
months of treatment, we went on a dive trip to Belize’s
Turneffe. We planned a little more carefully than usual for
emergencies. We both got travel insurance in case we had to
cancel. She carried pill bottles, something she’d never done. Carol was raised a Christian Scientist. This in part has made it
hard for her to accept the pharmacopoeia of cancer; she resists
taking the support drugs that help with nausea and fatigue.
She told me, “I don’t want any doom and gloom.” We did
what we always do on our trips: dove two or three times a day,
and then I loafed in the hammock in the afternoons, while she
dragged a banana-yellow kayak into the water and glided up
and down the lagoon.
Back home last winter, Carol suddenly found it difficult to
swallow. Tests revealed a tumor wrapped around her esophagus.
Her throat had to be dilated and that led to an infection. Carol
spent days in the hospital and needed radiation to shrink the
tumor. The Arimidex had quit working.
We went diving off Bonaire, and then Carol started intravenous
chemotherapy. She and her husband, David, began planning
an African safari, a trip she had dreamed of for years. As
they worked out the details, her hair fell out, she vomited, and
she learned what fatigue really meant. The night before she and
David were scheduled to depart for Johannesburg, she spiked a
fever of 102. Many patients would be hospitalized at this point.
Carol is not like many patients.
“It is not safe for you to be on an airplane,” I told her. I was
scared for her; I knew the risks. I wanted her to be safe, but
how could I suggest that she stay home? How could I not? She
left four days later with a bag full of scarves and antibiotics.
An Inspiring Anniversary
On Southwest Caye, we make small accommodations. Carol
has less tolerance for the heat; she sleeps a lot and is slow to
wake in the morning. There is persistent pressure in her chest,
and now and then I see her touching her sternum, looking
thoughtful. With cancer, every sensation is a symptom. But,
as always, we take off our shoes and never put them on again.
Carol makes friends with Ninja, a little terrier mix, and he
comes to our cabin at daybreak to talk dog talk with her. I read
trashy mysteries; Carol takes her Margaret Atwood novel to lie
negligently in the sun. She finds a machete one day and tries
to harvest coconuts. We notice the palm trees around our cabin
are filled with grackles; in the mangrove, we spy a small green
heron. The big sky changes constantly: heaped clouds and rainbows,
rainsqualls and stars.
Sitting in the overheated shade one day, she tells me,
“Today is the third anniversary of my diagnosis.” We are quiet
for a moment. “I thought I might never leave the hospital,” she
continues. “I just wanted to enjoy the little things—what was out
the window. When no one was around, I would putter around
the room. I actually felt peaceful.” We have never spoken of
this before; usually we are more glancing, touching the difficult
areas as delicately as you would a sore tooth.
Morning and afternoon, we walk to the dock and climb
into the dive boat for a quick, bouncy ride through wind-driven swells. We get into our gear and roll into the clear water, sinking
down like peas in honey. I can forget a surprising number
of worries underwater. We take our time, pointing out a cowfish
and two huge crabs shuffling back and forth in front of a
crevice like gunfighters at high noon. The diving goes mostly
as usual, but one day Carol feels something off in her regulator
and signals me. I ask if she wants to surface, but she says no.
We swim close together for the rest of the dive. I have needed
her help underwater before; I am glad to be able to return it.
There is new vulnerability in her, to match mine. She now
knows what fear feels like.
In the evenings, we spend time at the tiny bar on the pier,
watching the sun set and telling fish stories. One of the young
couples on the island wonders if we are sisters. We laugh and
say no, old friends. “Friends for 34 years,” I say. I can see by
their faces that they don’t really understand that kind of time.
We have been friends longer than they have been alive.
Carol walks along the sand each morning. “The morning
light,” she says, and doesn’t need to say more. Her appetite
for the sky, the edge of the sea, for the world, is constant and
steady; she walks along the wrack with solid grace, looking
down, looking up, back and forth.
One afternoon, Carol and I kayak out to the shallow reef.
I’m pathetic in a kayak, clumsy and slow. Carol patiently rudders
in the back. We tie up to a buoy and snorkel for a while. I
find two Caribbean reef squid hanging in the sun-dappled shallows
like mottled bread loaves with big silver eyes. She finds the
biggest scorpion fish we have ever seen.
As we head back, we talk about summer camp. She was in
Camp Fire Girls, I was in the Girl Scouts, and we both cherish
those years. We talk about the special friends we made and how
they eventually slid away. The sky is hot and blue, and ahead
of us, the tiny island lies flat on the sea. I feel buoyant, almost weightless on the waves. “Were you ever homesick?” she asks. “I
never understood what that was about.”
Between dives, we talk about where to go next. I make lists
while she dozes. Our plans are more theoretical now, and the
big trip to the South Pacific we hoped to one day take seems a
long way off. Cancer has become part of our friendship. Some
things have changed, but the biggest difference is common to
every long-lasting friendship—the visceral reminder that our
bodies are temporary gifts. Not knowing what comes next, having
no idea at all what comes next, means anything is possible.
Perhaps I will be hit by a truck, or my heart will stop, or there
will be a shadow on my next mammogram. Life is dangerous.
We take our last dive of the trip. We glide slowly over the
grand architecture of the reef. When we reach the wall and the
deep blue water, we swim away. I try to turn a cartwheel, then
a somersault. Carol lies on her side, an odalisque in a wet suit.
Then, at the same time, we spread our arms out, like wings,
and pretend to fly.
P.S. from Ben: Carol died on December 26. Sallie Tisdale
sent this message to us in early June. “I haven’t been diving
since the trip described in the story, because she was too sick
after that, had several crises and I can’t yet imagine diving without
her. We were perfect buddies and best friends and it’s hard
to think about yet. I am considering getting certified as a buddy
for disabled divers, as I really was beginning to do that for her
and it feels like I can’t dive just for my own fun anymore. But
I’m not ready yet.”
This article, originally titled, “An Adventurous Woman’s Fight Against
Cancer; When cancer interrupts a lifelong friendship, two women
find solace in the sea - - and the strength to accept the unexpected,” is
reprinted with permission from Reader’s Digest. Copyright 2008 by
The Reader’s Digest Association.