Facing the Dragon: Meeting Life’s Challenges Head On – Elizabeth Lancaster

Elizabeth Lancaster began her working life as an occupational therapist in Australia until she unexpectedly found herself in a writing course in New York, whilst living there with her husband and two children. After she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, writing became essential in her acceptance of and coming to terms with the unpredictable nature of her condition. Elizabeth Lancaster is now a freelance journalist and also the author of Marzipan and Magnolias (Finch Publishing). Elizabeth Lancaster addressed The Sydney Institute on Tuesday 5 April 2011.

 

FACING THE DRAGON

ELIZABETH LANCASTER

My topic tonight conjures up images of swords and courage and fearlessness. I don’t know that I can claim such courage, in that my dragon had to beat me about the head a number of times before I was forced to acknowledge it was there. Dragons and denial can sometimes make strange and protracted alliances.

Marzipan and Magnolias is, in part, about my circuitous and reluctant path towards acceptance of a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. There is, however, a second theme to the book, which is perhaps of equal importance: that of the powerful influence of the mother-daughter relationship. I believe that all women have a mother-daughter story to tell.

It is integral in shaping who we are and is perhaps predictive of how we respond to life’s unpredictable events.

I began writing this book as a way of sorting through a difficult period in my life when a number of things had come together. My father had died, and I was struggling with deteriorating health and the emergence of worrying neurological symptoms. The backdrop to these events was the complex relationship with my mother, which involved keeping secrets on both sides. My brain had become like one of those kitchen drawers we all have – full of too many phone recharging cables. I needed to somehow unravel the cables to make sense of it all.

First, some background to the story to put it in context. I grew up in a somewhat eccentric family, the only girl (and most favoured daughter) among three brothers. Within that eccentric family, my mother was the chief eccentric, a larger than life character who felt, and feels passionately, about many issues. But by far her most passionately held beliefs are about religion. Mum could best be described as evangelically atheist. This has provided a strange structure or perhaps anti-structure to our family’s approach to death. We don’t “do” death in our family. So the curious thing is how something that isn’t there – this anti-structure – could cast such a long shadow. Curious too, that it manages to almost “book-end” the story, opening with my mother’s refusal to attend her father’s funeral when I was seven and, late in the book, my father’s death and complete absence of a funeral.

It wasn’t only my mother who was eccentric. Dad was also quite unusual – but in a less voluble, more clenched teeth, neurotic fashion. He was the world’s most unlikely real estate agent and spent his working life tormented by clients who were obviously determined never to buy a house.

My teenage years saw the real estate slump of the 1970s. Parenting didn’t come naturally to Dad and he carried the financial burden of four children heavily. He’d come home from work every day a defeated man. Still, nothing irritated him more than clients ringing him at night, regardless of how desperate he was for a sale. My father was a great impersonator and when my mother would call out to him that a Mr or Mrs Blogs was on the phone he’d be doing loud impersonations of them as he approached the phone. Even better if they were foreign because he could do their accent as well. Whilst this enraged my mother, who thought he should just focus on closing a deal, I was captivated by his skill. I became fascinated with foreign accents – a fascination which would end up influencing the direction of my life.

My brothers and I had a lot of independence growing up, as I think all of us who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s did. The one time each year we were forced together was for the annual drive north for the summer holidays. The Pacific Highway was clogged with caravans and Sunday drivers, including my mother. If you add to the torture of fifteen hours on sweaty vinyl car seats, a brother with motion sickness, a flatulent kelpie, a duck with attitude and Mum at the wheel, it didn’t make for great family bonding.

Still, my mother was a very important and influential figure in my life and I enjoyed the position of most favoured child. This had ensured some degree of insulation from her unusual responses to emotionally confronting issues. So I was not prepared when things became difficult when, as a young adult, I took myself off to Europe to finally immerse myself in foreign accents. Things became more difficult when she realised I’d fallen for a German, named Martin.

And so began an internal tug of war for me – the struggle to achieve my own independence, while at the same time, trying to find a way to break through the emotional barriers which had developed between us.

Being on the other side of the world made it easier, but I could feel the tension building when I announced I was moving from London where I was working to West Berlin to be with Martin.

It was while living in Berlin that I had my first episode of multiple sclerosis – a bizarre experience in which I lost my ability to taste on the right side of my tongue, as well as my ability to swallow. I had worked as an occupational therapist on neurology units of hospitals in Sydney and London, and I knew this was not good. It was 1985 and MRI scans were only just becoming available. The existing technology, such as CT scans, did not show up the telltale plaques in the brain which point to a diagnosis of MS. So back then, the diagnosis was made only after a number of episodes, hence the “multiple” in multiple sclerosis. The doctors mentioned that MS was a possibility but when the symptoms resolved after about a month, I was able to put it behind me and carry on as if nothing had happened. It would be many years, before I would receive the formal diagnosis, by which time Martin and I were married, had two children and were living in New York.

New York was a really defining period in my life. I had the freedom of not working, and the children were in school. On a whim, I enrolled in a writing course in Manhattan, which turned out to the most exciting thing I’d ever done.

So I was busy enjoying my life, practising my writing, when MS reared its most unwelcome head again. After this, things began to ramp up but I didn’t want to know about it. Even as my health began to deteriorate after our return to Australia, I refused to acknowledge it, disregarding the significance of small episodes. I had revealed my diagnosis to only a few people. And Mum was not one of them.

So it was from this point, that the two themes – mother-daughter and MS become entwined. My attempts to ignore MS and conceal it from my mother were ultimately futile. It finally tackled me to the ground with a very nasty episode in which I lost my vision and balance and ended up in hospital.

Even after the neurological deficits resolved, I was extremely weak for many months. Physically, I could manage very little. I could, however, sit at the computer and write. Although I was tackling difficult issues at times, writing provided me, simultaneously, with a sense of escape and also – somehow – a sense of control.

In a way I wrote the book almost backwards. I’d write a bit to try to make sense of it. But after each section I wrote, I needed to go back to work out how I had arrived at that point. So I’d write a bit more, which made me question how I’d arrived at that point, and so on. In the end, I drilled back to that scene at the beginning of the book: being seven years old and recalling my mother’s refusal to go to her father’s funeral. That was a bit of an “a-ha” moment because I realised it explained or predicted much about my mother’s unusual reactions to emotionally confronting issues. And, in turn, allowed me to recognise those parts of her which are reflected in my own personality, particularly in relation to my diagnosis of MS.

Writing this book led me to another intriguing discovery. Memoir is about recording life experiences. Yet somehow the writing can become entwined in events yet to be lived; it can point to action that needs to be taken, to conversations that need to be had.

The writing process and the subsequent conversations with my mother allowed me to understand her better. Almost imperceptibly during the writing process I also found a way to come to terms with living with MS.

I realised I had always been afraid of being defined by my illness. It gradually became clear to me that the only person defining me by my illness was me. It was time to come face to face with that dragon I’d been avoiding for so many years. And consequently, through the writing process, I had found a way to accommodate MS as part of my life.

Extract from Marzipan and Magnolias

 

After dinner, the phone rang. Martin answered it, then spoke in English so it was clear overseas call. I could tell straight away from his voice that something was wrong. He looked at me but it seemed to take forever for him to get the words out.

“It’s your mother. Your dad has passed away.”

Even in that moment I was irritated by his use of the euphemism. Why not just say “died”? But by the time I took the phone, my throat was so tight I couldn’t speak. Not that it was necessary as Mum launched in, talking at a million miles an hour.

“It was pneumonia,” she said. “The old man’s friend they used to call it. He didn’t suffer. I thought he wasn’t right before you left, but I didn’t say anything. After all what was the point? He’s really been gone for a year, when you think about it and Martin needed you there. But he wasn’t right —he died three days after you left…”

“What? When did he die?”

“Three days after you left. Remember I said I wouldn’t let you know if something happened. It’s been difficult not to tell you and we’ve had to keep the whole thing quiet in case one of your friends rang you in Germany…”

My mind was as frozen as the wind outside as I tried to calculate precisely how long ago he’d died. So while I’d been answering polite questions from Martin’s relatives about my father’s health, he was actually already dead. It was as though I’d been existing in some parallel universe.

“What about the funeral?”

“Oh, there’s no funeral. He’s already been cremated, but I didn’t go. None of us did. Dreadful place, the crematorium, evil. I didn’t want to tell you, but Tim said it’s getting so long that if I didn’t tell you he would.”

I was struggling to process the information.

“Why didn’t you let me know sooner?”
“Remember we talked about this before you left.”

She was right. But we hadn’t exactly talked about it; she had simply announced in her most matter of fact tone that if something happened to Dad she wouldn’t tell me until I got back. I was used to such comments from Mum. She always said something to that effect before I travelled, even years before when both my parents were fit and well. Other people’s mothers might say, “Make sure you phone straight away if you need anything.” My mother says, “Just enjoy yourself and I won’t bother you if anyone dies while you’re away.”

“Do you want me to come home?”

“No, Heavens, no. What for? I’m fine.”

She sounded over-amped, like someone on speed. When I hung up Martin asked me what I wanted to do.

“I want to be near the water,” I said.

The kids were already asleep, and Doerte stayed with them while we drove to the ferry wharf. The howl of the wind was so loud we didn’t bother trying to talk. I looked out over the black ocean and wondered which direction Australia was from where I was standing. It was literally at the other end of the earth.

That night I felt elated that Dad was free of that place. The indignity had ended. Then the numbness set in. We continued our daily routine of going over to the house and sorting things into boxes but I had the sensation of being contained in a pressure cooker.

I kept telling myself that it was good news, a release for Dad, for all of us after a year of torment. Why did it matter that I hadn’t known? Why did it matter that there was no funeral? At night I’d lie awake in bed and wonder that I felt nothing. Nothing except the incessant tingling in my legs. I wondered if that’s what a DVT felt like. There’d been lots of press about people developing a deep vein thrombosis on long flights and dropping dead. But I didn’t recall tingling being a sign. And surely I wouldn’t have one in both legs. But every night there it was – tingling from toes to thighs. The days dragged on. Finally I told Martin I had to go home—it didn’t matter that there was no point. I just had to go home.