MODERN FAMILY
When the actor Greg Wise’s sister, Clare, faced incurable bone cancer, he moved into her flat to care for her during her final days. This is his story…
How the ties that bind us shape the way we live and love
Watermelon juicer, bed builder, smoothie maker, pill auditor… when someone you love is diagnosed with an incurable disease, you adopt myriad roles. You’ll be unqualified for nearly all of them, as I was when I began caring for my elder sister, Clare, but as I quickly realised – it’s about them, not you. And so it was for us. I the Sherpa, Clare the climber.
As kids, Clare and I spent huge amounts of time together. A tricky upbringing drew us close. Our house in Newcastle was the focal point for our friends and Clare, who was 18 months older than me, was our leader. She would deign us pirates or jungle explorers, and we’d spend hours in these imaginary worlds under her watch, gaining her the nickname ‘Clipboard Clare’ in her teens. Though my sister was a fiery redhead, she was fabulous. She went on to be a film industry executive and we lived on the same street – I with my wife, the actor Emma Thompson, and our daughter, Gaia, she with her beloved cat, Grably Puss. Emma’s mum, Phyllida Law, lived across the street.
Oddly, having spent so much time with her, I wasn’t there when Clare was first told she had cancer, in May 2013. She called me and I dropped everything. MRIS, chemotherapy, an operation to remove the cancer and a course of radiotherapy followed – it was an awful time, but by early 2014, Clare was cancer-free. Or so we thought. In September 2015, she was diagnosed with incurable bone cancer. She never panicked, but she was bloody furious; the bone is the most common site of secondary breast cancer. In October, doctors told her she had two years to live, but by the following summer, Clare was reaching the end.
In July 2016, I moved into Clare’s ground-floor flat to care for her. There was no decision to be made: she
didn’t want anyone else and could no longer live alone. I lived up the road and needed to be down the road. It was as simple as that. Clare didn’t want to be hospitalised and I couldn’t countenance letting someone I love die surrounded by strangers, somewhere that is, however beautifully set up, foreign.
I spent the next sweltering weeks wearing the same grubby shorts, adopting every role. On Thursdays, I’d do an inventory of Clare’s pills, and every Friday I’d cycle to the only pharmacy allowed to stock them to collect the next week’s allocation. The first morning I followed the doctor’s pill-popping protocol, I got Clare absolutely stoned. Lesson one: learn the point at which pain control becomes tripping.
Clare and I were great problem solvers (not crosswords, but actual in-front-of-your-eyes problems). Fortunate, really, because cancer threw up an almost constant stream of challenges that came with small but significant triumphs: drinking a glass of smoothie; getting out of bed and into the wheelchair; managing to take the plethora of polysyllabic pills without choking; successful tooth brushing. For all the problems requiring solutions, however, we had glorious moments: watching Clare work her way, very professionally, through a strawberries-and-cream ice lolly was one. On another morning, I nipped up the road and nicked my aged mother-in-law’s wheelchair. I got Clare into it, and we had a glorious 10 minutes in her back garden as the evening sun dipped behind the trees. Clare looked like Jackie Onassis in her sunglasses, and we watched the bees buzzing through swathes of lavender and sniffing the blooming roses. And I can tell you, it’s one of life’s great treats to wake someone and see a smile breaking before they’ve opened their eyes.
The days melded seamlessly into one. Clare and
I would chew the fat about films, friends, the news, how tasty my smoothies had become but, without an agenda, she found it hard. We’d switched roles: she was once the organiser, but now I was required to time feedings and tidy up – the bits Clare could see, anyway. Though I’ll never be ‘Clipboard Greg’, Clare needed me to be calm, consistent and capable. More often than not, I discovered, time is spent dealing with other people’s neuroses. To this end, a friend gave me useful advice: the dying person is the Centre. The First Circle around that, close family. Next Circle, close friends. Then outwards, circle-by-circle to friends, people-you’d-be-happy-tohave-a-pint-with, people-you’d-send-achristmas-card-to. The rule? You are allowed to throw shit outwards, but not inwards. The Centre can throw as much shit as their energy allows. Family can hurl excrement at friends, but none of us can throw shit inwards; above all, never at the Centre. I liked that analogy.
Though the only person permitted to throw shit to me was Clare, I needed time for myself. After difficult nights, I’d escape on my bicycle to run errands, but I didn’t take care of my emotional housekeeping. I went bonkers. On my own all day, every day, for 10 weeks. I’m not a superhero, I’m a brother trying to do the best for his sister. I’d be there for however long it took. When Clare died at 8:10am on 13 September, it felt like an act of love for me. On the morning she died, I held her hand and whispered, ‘We’ve done amazingly. Everything is taken care of,’ and she passed 90 seconds later.
Emma and Gaia were at the bedside within minutes. In the days that followed, we were united in grief. Clare was cremated in a mirrorball coffin at the end of September surrounded by seven friends and family. She loved 1980s disco, so we invited everyone else to a themed party two months later, on what would have been her 52nd birthday. This was our way of ensuring everyone could mourn and celebrate our beautiful, unconventional girl. Friends came from America and Australia; the love in the room was transcendental.
In the weeks that followed, I would walk through Clare’s home, carrying boxes, and be overcome by a rush of tears. Now, 18 months on, so many ‘bungee cords’ take me back to Clare. She’s everywhere, all the time. I walk past her flat every day. We are shaped by the heartbreaks we’ve had, and Clare, in life and death, chiselled various bits out of me. Now, there are Clare-shaped holes where something should be. I have no memory of life without her, no one to bear witness to me as a tiny person, an adolescent. I’m untied, ungrounded.
Clare taught me so much about how to live: be kind to yourself and those around you; live as honestly with yourself as possible; allow the moments not to go by unnoticed and uncelebrated; find a way to love and keep asking questions. People die. But the love, the joy, the wonder, does not.
Not That Kind Of Love by Clare and Greg Wise (Quercus, £16.99) is out on 1st March »
‘The first morning I followed the doctor’s pill-popping protocol, I got Clare stoned’