This phrase is taken from Christopher Reid’s poem Exasperated Piety from his collection A Scattering, which was created as a tribute to his wife, who died as a result of cancer in 2005.

It is no coincidence that this came to mind today. This day a year ago, my sister was diagnosed with cancer, from which she died less than five months later. When I first saw her a few days after the diagnosis, we were both overwhelmed by our sadness and distress. I was also acutely aware that my sister had now entered a world that was instantly unshareable, and which progressively alienated her over the next months from those of us who remained in a world she had hitherto inhabited.

Susan Sontag describes illness as ‘the night-side of life, a more onerous citzenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick.’

Yet, although the gap between the kingdoms is narrow, those who are suddenly transported from the land of the well to that of the ill very quickly realise the meaning and the isolation that this entails. Christopher Hitchens described is as follows:

‘I see it as a very gentle and firm deportation, taking me from the country of the well across the stark frontier that marks off the land of the malady.’

I will never know what my sister’s experience was. She chose not to talk about it. I became increasingly aware, and guilty, of the gap between our worlds, one that seemed to widen every moment of every day of those few short months.

A Hospital Odyssey is an epic poetic and mythical journey through illness by Gwyneth Lewis, which focuses on Maris’s experience following her husband’s cancer diagnosis. Maris journeys alone to the Otherworld, separated from Hardy, and explores an imaginary and surreal illness landscape.

The voice throughout is that of Maris:

‘I want to capture what it is to care

for someone you love who’s very ill,

how quickly you age as you see them suffer,

you’d do anything to make them well,

but you can’t.’

‘What do you say when someone you love

is dying and there’s nothing you can do

to stop it happening, and you’re alive

and well, nowhere near through

adoring , and you can’t follow?’

CQ