Look good, feel better

Day 68. Round 4 day 5

Today I woke into the freezing cold morning to attempt for the third time an event called “Look good, feel better,” a workshop for women with cancer that apparently takes place all over the world. The first time it was scheduled was on the day of Nicki’s funeral. The second time I was supposed to go I was so sick (from the belly shot) that I nearly went to the hospital instead. Today, was a day 5 that was blissfully belly shot free (because I don’t need to get my levels up so fast, and because the side effects of that shot keep getting worse, they let me skip it this time). So I tried again. Melissa picked me up, we drove to town and picked up Naomi, and the three of us wandered shivering into the hall decked out for our arrival.

My very first impulse was to leave. I was one of the youngest women in the room, and geeze we looked like a sick and unhappy bunch. I’m not that good in a room filled with strangers in the first place. On a day 5, in a room filled with strangers with cancer, I was frozen (and not just because of the southerly chill). What is the small talk you make at an event where the unifying theme is a potentially deadly disease? “What are you in for?” “What’s your prognosis?” “What did you do before chemo?” Melissa and I made faces at each other while we drank weak tea out of styrofoam cups and ate packaged cookies on card tables. I have never been in a room with so many bald women. Of course, I’ve never been so bald myself…

After an eternity, we were released from our chatting stations and asked to sit at the big U of tables. We found our names and the make up that had been chosen for us from a form we filled out when we were probably all feeling a little less battered.  Naomi and Melissa pulled up chairs behind me, Melissa making more faces at me and Naomi encouraging me to be more serious. Leigh, the woman who was so kind to me when I got my wigs in the first place, took centre stage with Cheryl, a gracious bald woman in the chair in front of her as model.

Leigh taught us how to take off our eye make up gently so as not to lose more eyelashes than we needed to. She taught us the benefits of toner. She cracked jokes about being old and wrinkly. The volunteers—one for each two of us in the chairs—gave us facial massages with creamy moisturizer as Leigh walked us through a relaxation exercise. In between, I talked with the women on either side of me. Bella was in for breast cancer. Stage 3. But several years earlier she had been treated for lymphoma--“So really I’m just lucky to be here every day.” She told me, “I feel great today! I figure as long as you keep a positive attitude, you’re not really sick.” I never heard her say anything that wasn’t cheerful and kind in the two hours we sat next to each other. Her hair was gone and she had painful red patches on her arm about which she and Leigh mused cheerfully.

Leigh taught us how to draw in fake eyebrows: “You’ll have no power in a room unless you have eyebrows. I’ve seen it happen—people’s eyes will just slip right up over your head and you’ll lose them!” and how to put on eyeliner to make up for missing eyelashes. She teased about the eyeshadow palates of the 80s. Rebecca on the other side of me had been at the workshop before a couple of years ago because she’s been in treatment for four years. Brain, pancreatic, ovarian cancer. “I don’t know anything about breast cancer,” she told me earnestly. “It must be so hard.” She told me that the most important part was to stay cheerful in the face of the cancer. “It’s hard, but more days are good than bad. It’s just so important to be grateful for what you have.”

Kathryn, my volunteer, put emerald green eyeshadow on my eyes and she and Naomi consulted about the colour and shading. Leigh asked Naomi why it was so important to spin mascara in and out of the tube and beamed at her when she got the right answer. Kathryn said, “When you put your hair on, this look will all come together.” I’d never heard that sentence before.

Leigh taught us how to put on our blush, and she explained why we needed to use lip liner. Cheryl at the front was glowing by now, bald and resplendent in her work suit and lipstick. Leigh taught us how to use hats to add girth and colour and how to always connect our heads to our shoulders so that it didn’t look like we just had a basketball floating over our shoulders. By now the laughter was easy and the chatter rippled around the room. When Leigh pulled a blonde wig on Cheryl’s head, we all gasped and began to clap. Leigh urged us to look around at the glowing faces of the well-made up women around the room.

We were beautiful. We were relaxed and chatting. We had pulled on our wigs or turbans. We were friendly with our neighbours. We looked healthy.

I do not tend to care about make up. I don’t know which way to stroke moisturizer on (always upward and out—“Do whatever you can to combat gravity.”). If I hadn’t been so fond of Leigh and her ebullient spirit, I would never ever have attended a day like today. But oh, the transformation in our spirits over the course of those two hours. The shift from a room full of sick women to a room full of cheerful healthy (looking) faces. I would not have believed it if I hadn’t seen it happen, hadn’t felt it to me. Leigh told us to walk out into wind with our heads held high. To not have to answer another glum, “And how are you?” because we all look so good.

And the truth is, it was an honour to be in a room with these 30 sick women, balding and pale and glassy eyed, and to admire their spirits and optimism in the face of such difficulty. What a helpful reminder that even when we are faced with significant trials, even when we are coping with life and death issues, when the Big Questions are the ones that are unanswered, unanswerable, there are other, small, beautiful pleasures. Sometimes it is not solving the biggest problems, not about curing it all, that counts.  Sometimes it’s just spending time with your daughter and your best friend, putting on something pretty, connecting with someone whose spirit shines more than the bronzers. Tiny moments of sparkling delight, even in a basecoat of sadness, still create the contours of a joyful life.

At the end, after we had our wigs and our lipstick just right, they drew raffle tickets, and I won. I’ve never won a raffle in my whole life. And there, with women with stage three and four cancer flanking me and offering their hearty (and heartfelt) congratulations, I really did feel like the luckiest woman in the whole world.