Updating her Facebook ‘‘status’’ is far from simple, Ann Barrowclough writes.
Facebook now invites me to share an update. Previously it asked me what was on my mind. If I enter an update it will announce to the world I've updated my status. I'd be so lucky: widowed and lonely to happily married, alive (sort of) to dead? What exactly is one's status in Facebook as opposed to the real sense?
T.S. Eliot's women of Canterbury in Murder in the Cathedral were ''living and partly living'', like many of us, especially those I periodically join down in the oncology day unit at Dunedin Hospital, reclining like Roman emperors in comfortable adjustable chairs with various toxic potions entering our bloodstreams and wondering about getting on with one's life or not as the case may be. There is not much inter-patient conversation in there, unlike the aqua jogging pool which provided endless camaraderie.
Wondering about the vacuum in my life I responded to a brochure inviting people to attend a support group for those with cancer. Having previously been a member of a self-run ovarian cancer group (we used to have lunch at the Gardens cafe and lots of raucous laughter) I was interested that this group had two facilitators.
I mentioned I'd been thinking of a bucket list, but this didn't go down too well as a couple of group members had embarked on trips and become ill en route. The emphasis seemed to be on supporting members through the hard times.
''I hear you saying you've been finding it tough,'' reflected a facilitator to someone who reported experiencing ups and downs, whereas the group was apt to focus on the positive and offer suggestions, only to be warned that: ''We are not here to provide solutions.''
So I popped back into my cage and didn't mention that I had rather hoped to find someone to go for walks with or maybe the odd coffee at the Gardens.
I left feeling I should meekly await the summons from the Grim Reaper instead of reinventing myself as I'd been contemplating, maybe by following the example of a couple of recently widowed friends who had bought camper vans and were having a great time exploring pastures new, or maybe even swap the old Raleigh 20 for an E bike.
Not that it would be all that easy to reinvent oneself in one's 70s. Weight loss has required some new clothes, then there will have to be a new hairdo when the hair returns and one can stop wearing beanies or Gloriavale-style head scarves, maybe a change of colour? Maybe a change of exercise regime? T'ai chi or yoga instead of pilates? Or Steady As You Go or an easier walking group? Maybe one could get a pet, alter the house? There's always the garden, my one creative outlet.
''Your garden needs to be lower maintenance,'' say the kids.
''But I like to have flowers to pick,'' I argue, not brave enough to add that the plants are my pets, my babies. Today I saw a peony I thought had disappeared shyly reappearing in its usual spot after I had done a massive clean-out of invaders in that area giving it room again to emerge with spring.
Will I emerge with spring, I ask myself, or is it an ongoing case of living and partly living, a few degrees removed from the old reality, if there ever was such a thing in the working life of a workaholic as full reality? Now it's retirement, widowhood, treatment regime, otherwise life as usual.
Weird really, when friends commiserate with one having been ill or in hospital and one has to explain that no, I haven't actually been ill or in hospital, just getting treatment to manage what nowadays is considered more a chronic condition than the killer it used to be.
''I wouldn't want to know,'' they say, ''ignorance is bliss''.
Maybe so, good luck to them! Meanwhile, to what do I update my status?
-Ann Barrowclough is a Dunedin resident.
