The Staircase Letters Read Free

literacy groups in Manitoba, first as a volunteer tutor, then a fundraiser, a writer of grant proposals, and an organizer of workshops. (Could anyone have been better qualified to show others the joy and value of reading?) Tireless in this, that fall she was recognized with a Canada Post Literacy Award as one of Canada’s top five educators in the adult literacy field. The ceremony was held just three days after she learned she had terminal cancer and had announced her retirement, though no one knew why. In a picture of her with Martin, her husband, taken that night, she is seen flashing a smile so dazzling you would think she had just been granted a vision of the beyond. Maybe she had.
    By late autumn, however, Elma’s situation had worsened. Hopes were raised by one set of tests, dashed by another, and debilitating radiation treatments and chemotherapy sessions were ordered. The lung cancer, diagnosed that September, was beginning to spread to the brain.
    Her next letter, in November, was addressed specifically to Carol, though I was co-recipient.Responding to what Carol must have said privately about her own treatments, Elma wanted to know more. Her rational scientific mind managed always to surprise me, for she could talk about and analyze her own distresses as though they were someone else’s, even when I was aware of the pain and fear she was feeling.
    Dear Carol,
    I’m always thinking of you, and what’s been happening. I wonder if you have been on a chemo treatment called Etoposide (also called VP-16 and Vepesid)? This one makes me so susceptible to infection the whole time I am on it, which will be to the end of January, at least, if I live that long. I take it by IV at the hospital for almost a whole day, three days in a row in a month, and it has to be “flushed” constantly, day and night for three days, and I’m lucky if I can doze for even ten minutes before it’s “up again, girl!” Not only does this deprive me of three days, I am often too tired to want to see anybody for a couple more. So there goes almost a week out of each month.
    I still have to be very careful of balance, since that was the really big part of my brain affected. There are possible emergency treatments for this spot, but in general they avoid messing with the brain again for at least a year. Sooo—given the six months prognosis, and the brain’s involvement, I’m working to a tight schedule right now. Martin says he’ll kill me if I use “window of opportunity” or something similar one more time. He thinks I’m into enough windows on the computer!
    Would you be willing to tell me something about the chemo you’ve had/are regularly having? I’ve always been fascinated by medicine and would, I think, have been a doctor myself if I hadn’t wanted kids. Besides, I was lacking in the necessary stamina, and those were different times, eh?
    There’s an anecdote I’d like to share with you and A. I have always believed in something, if only that “good” and “god” are basically interchangeable terms, and have zero to do with a god who has any involvement in this world, even an impersonal one. DefinitelyI think there is “a power greater than myself” as they say in AA (and even there you can use alcohol as the power, if that’s all you can manage).
    But do I love arguing both sides of anything! Well, my grandson Andrew had asked his parents about cancer, dying, etc. I later got him alone, with dad John off to one side, and asked if he had any more questions for me. “Yes, actually I do.”
    First he asked about the effects of radiation. Second he asked, “What gender are your doctors?” Even John’s eyebrows went up at that one. I said so far one male and the rest female, and he said, “That’s about what I figured.” This is a kid who had to be rushed to emergency with asthma from infancy, so a medical interest is natural.
    But he had one more question: “Do you believe God always existed?”
    I said,