JIM STYNES I nearly ruined our marriage
In the third extract from his soul-baring book, Ji
HOW Sam and I met still makes her laugh. It was at a pub on the end of a pier in Cairns. I was sitting at the bar with a handful of mates on the last day of an end-of-season football trip. Looking over my beer, I noticed a gorgeous young woman. Just at that moment, she turned towards me, caught me looking and smiled. I was smitten.
What I didn’t know was that Sam, then 20, was in the bar to meet a family friend she had not seen since they were 13.
She smiled at me because, although she knew very little about football, she somehow recognised my face and for an instant thought I might be her childhood friend.
She walked around to where we were sitting and the smile faded from her face. ‘Oh, sorry,’ she said. ‘You’re not Stephen Pollard.’
I offered to buy her a drink — an offer willingly accepted by a broke university student — and we started chatting. Sam later told me that she had been unimpressed by the company (‘Ugh, footballers’), but had warmed to my genuine smile. I established that she lived in Melbourne and had a win when she mentioned her surname.
‘Ludbey?’ I asked. ‘ Any relation to Wayne, the newspaper photographer?’ Of course, he was her brother, and she relaxed slightly, thinking to herself, he must be all right if he knows Wayne. We had a few laughs, and when we parted, Sam took my phone number but would not hand over her own. IT WOULD be weeks before I saw her again. A gilt- edged invitation arrived in the mail for ‘Jim Stynes and guest’ to attend a state dinner at Victoria’s Government House with Ireland’s president, Mary Robinson. I thought of Sam — but how was I going to track her down? Fortunately, one afternoon at football training, I noticed Wayne, taking photos. He was somewhat mystified when I told him I needed his sister’s phone number.
My first date with Sam was unconventional. After canapés, we were ushered to a cavernous Government House dining room, where I was seated at one end of the most enormous table I had ever seen.
To my consternation, Sam was shown to her seat at the extreme other end of the table. We didn’t get the chance to talk all evening; we just managed to pull a few faces at each other. But in a way, the unorthodox date acted as an ice-breaker.
Sam and I dated for a few months, broke up for a few years, and then got together again when she came to my 30th birthday party. I still didn’t know if she was the one, but I liked her plucky attitude.
The first time she came to watch me play a game, she waited outside the changing rooms along with the other wives and girlfriends, as was the custom. After about 15 minutes she had thought, I’m not going to stand here and wait for this guy at a changing room door; it’s so belittling — and so she had simply turned on her heel and gone home.
But I nearly blew it with Sam towards the end of 1998. I didn’t know whether I wanted to retire, play on, or perhaps go back home to Dublin and have one last fling at Gaelic football.
We discussed the issue one night. ‘Dublin?’ she exclaimed hotly — which was not surprising, given that it was the first time the possibility had been raised. ‘How long for?’ ‘Oh, only two or three years,’ I said. ‘Right. And what happens with us?’ Pressed, I replied, ‘I’m not sure that “us” is going to work.’ She was not impressed.
‘This is ridiculous,’ she said. ‘ If I genuinely felt you didn’t want to be with me, then fine, let’s break up. But I’m not getting that from you. We’ve put too much into this to end it now. Get over yourself.’
I had been in a few long- term relationships, but whenever they had become serious and I had expressed doubts, the women had opted to walk away. This was the first woman who had not only refused to accept my dithering but had thrown it back in my face. It had a powerful effect on me, and I agreed. Why not have a proper crack? That night, Sam basically told me, ‘You’re not going to treat me like this. You have no idea who I am, and it’s about time you put some effort into finding out.’
Ludicrous as it must sound, I had never managed to tell Sam that I loved her. Back in Ireland that year for Christmas, we found ourselves in a pub in Westport on New Year’s Eve. We had a great night, tipped in a few pints, and, as we tottered back to our digs, she stopped me, grabbed me by the
‘We’ve put too much into this... Get over yourself’
shoulders and stared me in the face, frowning playfully.
‘Jim Stynes, we’ve been together for three years now, and not once have you told me that you love me.’
‘Well, I’m not going to say it now that you’re telling me to,’ I chortled. That’s how stubborn and immature I was.
It took three more weeks. It was on a brilliantly sunny day in Rome and we were visiting the Vatican.
As we made our way inside St Peter’s Basilica, the stirring harmony of the choir’s singing surrounded us. We climbed the steps up to the cupola and stepped out to an exquisite view. A ray of light was glistening off the roof below, and beyond the metal rail, one of the world’s great cities lay sprawling before us. I leaned across, quietly spoke into Sam’s ear and then leaned back, certain it was the perfect moment.
‘Aarggh!’ she cried, ‘I could throw you off this roof. After all this time, after all these chances, and you tell me on the roof of the Vatican!’ But her tears told me that she wasn’t really annoyed.
From the moment we were back in St Peter’s Square, Sam had decided in her delightfully enthusiastic manner that marriage was now on the agenda. Again, this brought out a renewed stubborn insistence that I would not be pressured.
It was ridiculous. One weekend we stayed in Olinda at the house of our friends Mike and Bernie Dolby. Their beautiful old home, Candlewood, featured a viewing room perched near the top of a hundred-year-old tree.
In the evening, Bernie asked Sam if she would mind ducking out to the room, because she needed to discuss something. ‘But it’s freezing up there,’ Sam protested.
Bernie handed her a beanie, scarf and Ugg boots and they made their way up to the lookout, where there was an aerial view of hundreds of candles that formed a heart and the words ‘Will you marry me?’
I proposed to Sam that night with a Claddagh ring. She had to agree this time that i t was a romantic masterstroke. We drank champagne into the night and were married in the summer of 2000. By the time cancer came along, there was very little room in our lives for romance. I was carried away with what I wanted to do in life. And there was every chance might have pulled too far apart, it not been for the roadblock t cancer created.
I never stopped to consider Sa perspective. After an 18-hour day, would sometimes ask, ‘Did you m me, honey?’ I would reply, ‘No, I di have time to think about you.’ I wo actually say that.
SOMETHING had to give, and something was me. But here was catch: to learn that lesson, it took a months living with cancer, du which time Sam had little option to place her own needs to one side support me.
There were the constant visit hospitals and waiting rooms, w endless forms to fill in. Sam had negotiate hospital car parks, cafet opening times, which kitchens ser food I could eat.
She began to know the name nurses, knew to make sure the or lies had bed extensions for wh came out of surgery.
At the snap of a finger she could relied upon to produce a list of medications I was taking. She lear the names of the drugs, their funct and the relevant doses. She lear how to give me injections.
Sometimes she almost seemed t a step ahead of the doctors, wh
n my e we had that am’s , she miss idn’t ould
that s the a few ring but and s to with d to teria rved es of rderen I d be f the rned tions rned o be hich meant I didn’t have to focus on the detail. Changes to my diet meant changes to the shopping list.
‘I can’t just load it all into one trolley, you know,’ she sharply reminded me one day.
‘I have to get the organic fruit and vegetables, then your special bread from the bakery.
‘Find some bee pollen, quinoa and agave syrup, and whatever new foreign ingredient you want.
‘And when I get home, do you ever say thanks? No, you just pick on me because I’ve bought a packet of chocolate biscuits for the kids.’ She was spot-on. In October of 2009, Sam and I would endure what proved to be the nadir, but also the turning point, in our relationship.
We went to a birthday dinner on a Friday night. It was a wonderful meal with charming company, but it deteriorated when I kept harping at Sam about how we needed to leave, given that we had planned to take
She threw the car keys at me and burst into tears
the family down to Rye later that night. Perhaps it’d be better just to enjoy the moment and head off the next morning, she suggested.
But I was adamant, and I badgered her in front of her friends.
When we walked in the front door later that night a huge argument erupted, startling my parents, who were babysitting.
Sam threw the car keys at me and then delivered a withering spray at my father, blaming him for being such a male chauvinist role model. She then burst into tears.
The result of steroid medication or not, my behaviour had been intolerable and Sam decided that I should spend a week living with my parents, 15 minutes down the road.
My desperate need to be in control had left me with no control whatsoever. But that week gave me time to reflect. One thing I knew was that I loved Sam and wanted to make our relationship work. The thought of life without her horrified me.
That week out of home was like lifting the lid off a pressure-cooker.
By the end of the week I think that we were both pretty relieved to be reunited. THAT night, we spoke frankly. I explained how I was ashamed of my behaviour towards her.
I did not want to use cancer as an excuse, but I was finding it exhausting to maintain a positive mindset towards overcoming the disease.
Sam accepted that, but, ‘this is stuff that existed before you got cancer, ’ she said.
‘You’ve been the one going out there and living the life you have always wanted, whereas I’ve been left to support your dreams. That’s not a partnership.’
We both came away from that talk with renewed belief that we could get through this testing time in our lives, and that we’d be closer than ever.
During the first half of 2010 I became better at offering Sam more respect and trust, and I stopped trying to get her to live her life the way I expected.
It all owed us t o have some important and, at times, confronting conversations. We discussed a funeral plan and my will; we went through our financial affairs, which had predominantly been my realm.
We mapped out a plan for her to be self-sufficient in the event that I was no longer around.
Sam was still scared about my health, but she was strong.
It helped that I was feeling robust i n mind and body. The brain tumours had been removed and I had recovered well from the surgery.
There was a plan to use an immunetherapy drug to tackle the two remaining tumours, the ones in my duodenum. Sam even had a dream in which my hair was back to i ts pre-cancer appearance; she saw that as a great omen.
I was beginning to feel like I had my wife back.
Now we were daring to dream that I might get my life back.