‘I might not have had cancer, but I’ve fought it every day’
Rachael Bland’s untimely death has brought back sad memories for Jeffrey Knopf and his young daughter
The day my wife Tara discovered a lump in her breast is seared into my memory. It was a Sunday morning in 2009, and I was downstairs with our nine-month-old daughter Ruby, when I heard a scream. Tara ran down the stairs in a towel, white as a sheet. “What’s up?” I asked.
“I’ve found a lump,” she replied. The next day, we went to hospital so she could have a biopsy – and my strong, intelligent wife looked like a little child. She was already broken. What we couldn’t know then was that the next eight years of our lives would come to be defined by cancer. Tara would soon be diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 37, and we would spend the rest of our time together hoping, fighting and crying. The news of Rachael Bland’s death this week brought the pain of losing my wife flooding back.
From the start, Tara was determined that she was going to beat the cancer and that our daughter would have a normal childhood. For a time it looked like that might be possible after it went into remission. But in 2015, it returned with a vengeance.
Ruby by then was five-and-a-half and I decided to tell her Mummy was very ill. “Mummy’s had cancer before,” she replied, to my surprise. She had been so young when Tara was first diagnosed that we had never discussed it with her. How could she know? “Because when I was little I can remember Mummy having short hair.” Children pick up on these things.
Not long after then, doctors gave Tara months to live – a year if she was lucky. Through sheer will, she lived for another three years. But the cancer caught up with her in the end.
Those years were incredibly difficult and precarious. Tara never wanted to talk about dying so instead we lived with an elephant in the room. We had many happy times, but they were tinged by the cancer, which was always there and could cause something to go wrong at any point.
In her final weeks, this time last year, I knew Tara was dying. She started to go yellow from jaundice, and lost her appetite. It was heartbreaking to see her cry because she couldn’t physically eat the cheesecake she used to love. Doctors said there was nothing more they could do. Friends I had met at a Maggie’s Centre support group for family and carers of people suffering with cancer, who had previously lost their wives, told me I should start getting my house in order, because these were all the signs it would happen soon.
Unlike Rachael Bland, who wrote a memoir for her son Freddie, Tara refused to write a letter to our daughter: doing something like that, she said, would be admitting she was going to die – and she still wasn’t ready. But I insisted we make a silver pendant for Ruby with Tara’s thumb print on it, which arrived just in time for Tara to give it to her the last time she saw her.
I prepared for Tara’s death by shaving off my big, bushy beard. I wanted my face clean shaven so my wife could see me as I was the first time we met.
Lying on a bed in the hospice next to her before she passed, I thanked Tara for being a wonderful wife and mother, for giving me a daughter and for fighting for so long. Now, I had to tell her to die. Her eyes were closed but she was restless, and you could see she was wrestling with her demons.
“Tara, it’s time to go,” I said. “The time has come to say goodbye.” She calmed down and passed away soon after. I’ve been incredibly upset, lonely and angry since. I’m not angry with my wife, I’m angry with the cancer. I’m angry Ruby doesn’t have a handwritten letter to remember her Mum by and that they won’t be able to share landmark moments together.
Being a father to Ruby has its challenges and, 11 months since we lost Tara, there are still times when it gets too much. When I’m upset, Ruby gives me a hug, rubs my arm and says, “It’s OK, Daddy.” The past haunts me, but I have to keep moving forward.
There will always be sad times: a bit of music comes on the radio that Tara used to like, or I see an old photo of her, and tears start to form. I may not have had the physical manifestations of cancer, but I have fought it psychologically every day. Watching my wife for those eight years was like seeing a beautiful flower slowly fade.
My main focus now is to make sure Ruby has a happy childhood, despite losing her mum. I know that is what Tara would have wanted.
As told to Cara Mcgoogan
‘I’m angry that Ruby doesn’t have a letter to remember her mother by’