‘We’ll survive the distance’
Deborah James, 39 – cancer campaigner and host of You, Me And The Big C podcast – is shielding with her husband and two children. She is deemed clinically extremely vulnerable while she receives treatment for stage 4 bowel cancer, diagnosed in 2016. She’s written her letter to her best friend, Sarah Titherington.
Dear Sarah, Since we met on our first day of university, 20 years ago, we’ve lived in each other’s pockets, travelled the world, been each other’s bridesmaids and godmothers for each other’s children. And then came cancer... followed by the pandemic, which, for the first time since meeting, has kept us apart. I’m shielding, which isn’t fun, but luckily my hospital appointments haven’t been affected. But I know we’ll survive the distance. We don’t need gestures, but that doesn’t stop yours profoundly moving me: flowers after good scans; flowers after bad scans; a simple ‘I’m thinking of you’ message after my recent very public debate with Lord Sumption [on the BBC’s The Big Questions, the former Supreme Court judge said Deborah’s life is ‘less valuable’ because of her cancer]. You didn’t expect me to explain. In fact, I was OK, because I saw it as my chance to change the narrative around an important topic.
It’s not easy having a friend with cancer. None of us has navigated it perfectly. But it isn’t a sob story with you and you don’t know how much that helps. I rely on the humour you bring, telling me you’ll have my shoes if I die. It’s not our style to throw our arms around each other. But I ache to sit in a pub until closing time with you. It keeps me grounded hearing how you’re juggling your busy job with two children. I didn’t think I’d live to see 40 and now, here we are, with our milestone birthdays later this year. I’ve had my first Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and it’s making me feel like, maybe, we can plan our birthday celebrations. I’m daring to dream about the future again.
‘We’ve lost a precious year, but I’m going to make up for it’
Labour MP Abena Oppong-Asare writes to Edward and Epi Boateng, close family friends who’ve been like grandparents to her since her own died when she was young. She affectionately calls them ‘Aunty’ and ‘Uncle’.
Dear Aunty and Uncle, For most of my life you’ve fussed over me, fed me, given me advice, lifts around town and made sure I’m taking care of myself. Now here I am, making sure you’re safe and getting your food deliveries. I know it’s been hard staying indoors – as you have done, since you’re older – but I’m so glad you’ve managed it, especially with your pacemaker, Aunty.
Phone calls can’t replace our afternoons chatting in your living room, me winding you up while you feed me jollof rice and ask about my life in Westminster. It’s been a year since I saw you last, just two months after I became an MP [in December 2019]. Here I am, doing the job you encouraged me towards and always said I could do, but it kills me I can’t bring you into Parliament to see me in action. When I speak in debates, I picture you both in the public gallery; how proud you’d be, probably distracting me with your gleeful faces. I hate that the pandemic has robbed us of this precious time together. As you get older, I can’t help but think how you might not see what I achieve here. I worry it’ll be a while before we can have visitors in Parliament again. Life is busy, but I realise now how special and fragile every year is that we have together, and that what matters most is making time for the really important people.
‘Thoughts Of You Are A Tiny Glow Of Light’
Rachel Clarke, 48, a palliative care doctor and author, writes to her best friend Rebecca Inglis, also an ICU doctor. Both have been working on Covid wards and unable to see each other because of the demands of their jobs.
Dearest Bex, It’s been another of those days where I had to pull over on the long drive home. Tonight, I sobbed in a layby at the scale of the loss. I wept for the people we cannot save and I thought I’d never stop. You know precisely what it’s like, don’t you? That particular cruelty of Covid – the way it forces us apart at precisely those times when we need each other the most. The way it separates mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, as one lies in the hospital, so very far from the other. The way it spreads through speech and touch, our means of sharing our love and affection. The way our patients, from the moment they arrive in the hospital, may never see another human face again. We are masks and gowns who swirl above their beds. Our smiles, our attempts to show we’re more than PPE, cannot be seen but only imagined. How I hate this virus for stealing our humanity.To say I miss you, Bex, doesn’t even come close. On the very darkest days – when I feel battered by Covid, trampled by the country’s collective loss – the thought of finally flinging my arms around you is, despite everything, a tiny glow of light. Ever since medical school, you’ve been my inspiration. You’re a one-woman ninja force for life and decency.
When another virus, Ebola, caused catastrophic loss of life in Sierra Leone, you volunteered in a heartbeat to fly out there. You chose to risk your own life against an infectious disease that kills half of those it infects. Courageous? You’re the essence of courage. Oh – and you also tell the filthiest jokes, make the meanest cocktails and once performed a salsa in a gold sequinned minidress in front of the entire hospital. We both know that unless you’re there, in a hospital awash with Covid, it’s impossible to imagine the clamour and frenzy, the confusion and fear. Sometimes, it feels like the only point of stillness – the one moment of calm – is when I clasp the hand of a patient who is approaching the end of their life. The chaos recedes, I forget the clamminess and discomfort of my PPE, and I focus all I have on the human being before me. I give everything I can to help them know they’re not alone, that they are loved and they matter. And then I think of you. Of all of the NHS nurses and doctors and porters and cleaners who keep right on going – and smiling. You are the single bravest, kindest, brightest woman I know. Here’s to that moment when we go wild with cocktails – please let it be soon – my one in a million friend, my spark in the darkness. I love you.
Rachel’s book, ‘Breathtaking’, published by Little, Brown, is out now
‘Being apart hasn’t diminished our love’
Richard Ratcliffe, 46, writes to his wife, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who’s been living at her parents’ home in Tehran, Iran, under house arrest since last March. She is serving the final weeks of her five-year prison sentence for spurious charges of espionage, while Richard cares for their six-year-old daughter, Gabriella, at their home in London.
My dear Nazanin,
As you sit and wait at your parents’ home in Tehran, remember how far you’ve come. Soon you should be coming home to Gabriella and me, when your sentence ends on 7 March. Yes, it’s uncertain, and I’m fearful the Iranian government has more tricks up its sleeve. We have been told of recent threats. But your optimism is what we need right now. I really hope this nightmare may be nearly over and we might go back to normality soon – perhaps true for all of us in lockdown. It will be a happy homecoming, but happy ever after is a bit less sure. We both have our traumas after this. When you’re apart, you worry about what that does to a relationship and whether you’ll be able to understand each other again. It’s going to be a journey to reintegrate. Thank God the pandemic coincided with you coming out on house arrest so we can talk to you for hours – baking brownies over Skype – instead of our four minutes a week when you were in prison.
I know it’s been overwhelming for you to be exposed to the internet again. You’ve struggled to see our entire family album splashed over the news. But once you’re safely back on our sofa it will have been worth it. This period has forced us all to learn new ways in which to pass our time, reach out and show we care. Are you still sewing facemasks? Boris Johnson appreciated the woolly hat you knitted for his baby son, Wilfred. When this is over, hopefully we’ll be able to have another baby. We’ve promised Gabriella a sibling – a sister is her preference. Let’s make that happen.
When I told Gabriella Mummy’s sentence should be ending soon, she started taking her ‘magic’ dolly to bed, after someone told her it will make her wishes come true. She cuddles it to make sure you come back. ‘We’re nearly there my love,’ we often tell each other. We will survive and we will catch up on lost time. We just need to keep that in sight. For so long we’ve needed to be guarded when it’s come to looking forward to things. Soon it will be time to relax. There’s no point hoarding the injustices. In the end, it is the kindness that will linger.
Our relationship has been stress-tested, our lives truncated and it feels like we’ve been living in a parallel world to the one we used to know. But being apart hasn’t diminished our love. It’s there in the way we’ve held on to each other fervently and stood next to each other to the end. There’s a home waiting for you and we will get beyond this.