If I climb the heavens, you are there

Radiotherapy frightened me. It made me feel more unwell than I had ever felt before, and I knew I had eight weeks of it ahead of me.

Each morning I was placed with finely practised precision on a narrow bed, the huge machine arching above me, followed by a sinister synthetic buzz as it delivered its dose. The bed would then rise, to my mind dangerously high, as the machine slowly swung beneath me. Again the buzz heralding the dose to my back.

Apart from me and the machine the room was, of course, empty. Radiation, however necessary for me, isn’t nice and is best avoided by anyone who wants to retain their hair, their fertility, and the contents of their stomach. Although alone in the treatment room I was constantly being monitored. Small cameras observed by the occupants of the operations room. I think this was the loneliest room I had ever been in. It was coldly clinical, so hard-faced in its functionality.

It is only now as I write this that I recall the poetry of the Psalms:

… if I climb the heavens, you are there.

If I lie in the grave, you are there.

If I take the wings of the dawn

And dwell at the sea’s furthest end,

Even there your hand would lead me,

Your right hand would hold be fast.” (Ps 138).

Perhaps if the psalmist were alive today he would add: “In the cold of the radiotherapy suite, even there your hand would lead me.”

Many years before my treatment I had been given a rosary, a simple rosary with small wooden beads on cotton thread. As it had no metal parts I was able to take this rosary with me into the treatment room and whilst the machines danced around me I held this rosary in my hands and quietly mouthed the Hail Mary.

I recall at this time my own anxious mother, seeing how sick I was from the treatment, voicing that sentiment that is, by God’s grace, a voice that only mothers possess and saying, “if only I could take your place”.

And Mary, my spiritual Mother too, when all humanity was banished from the room, stood beside me and I was no longer alone.

At last the weeks of treatment were at an end and the young radiographer who had overseen the process from beginning to end came to wish me well. I thanked him and just then he said, “I hope you don’t mind me asking, but while you were lying on the bed I saw you on the monitors. I saw your beads and although I couldn’t hear you I watched your mouth. Would you tell me what you were doing?” I told him that I was praying the rosary, simple prayers to the Mother of God, because I was afraid. I told him that through the rosary Mary was with me and I was no longer alone and there was no longer any need to be afraid. I rook the rosary from my pocket as we were talking and gave it to him. I simply said, “Please”. He took it. The thing about cancer is regular check-ups, lots and lots of check-ups, and I became a regular visitor to the C.T. (computer tomography) and all manner of scanning departments.

It was many months, perhaps as much as a year later that whilst sitting in the waiting room I heard a familiar voice and, looking up, there, bounding across the room, was the young radiographer. “Hi, I’ve got something amazing to tell you,” he said. “My wife and I have been received into the Catholic Church. I saw you praying with your simple beads and I longed to know more.” He went on to tell me, “You know I had cancer too.” I did know, he had told me in the first week of my treatment to reassure me that the treatment worked. He continued “It is painful for my wife and me that due to the treatment I received we will almost certainly not be able to have children but we pray the rosary together.” He took the old rosary from his pocket, “Yes, your old rosary, and it is such a comfort to us, as it was to you… Do your remember? I want to thank you.” I was moved to my very core, and a tearful silence was all I could offer in reply.

But there’s more and God’s bounty is without limit. My regular check-ups continued and a year later I travelled again to the Radiology Department.

I hadn’t seen the young radiographer since his amazing news, but as I sat quietly in the waiting room his voice rang out again. “Mark, Mark”, his excitement was hardly contained. He checked himself, respecting the small room full of anxious patients, took me aside and in a whisper that was almost deafening proclaimed, “We are expecting a baby, against all the odds we are going to have a baby. Isn’t it wonderful?!”

It was wonderful; indeed it will always remain so. We embraced and now with tears on both sides, we allowed the silence to say it all:

Blessed art thou amongst women, and

Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Amen.