#tom lubbock

[dabacahin]

“The mystery of summoning up words. Where are they in the mind, in the brain? They appear to be an agency from nowhere. They come from unknown darkness.”

— Tom Lubbock, Until Further Notice, I Am Alive

[dabacahin]

First of all it was scary; now it's all right; it is still, even now, interesting.

My true exit may be accompanied by no words at all, all gone.

The final thing. The illiterate. The dumb. Speech? Quiet but still something? Noises? Nothing?

My body. My tree.

After that it becomes simply the world.

— Tom Lubbock, Until Further Notice, I Am Alive (Granta Books, 2014)

(Image: Art work with tree and man — Prophet, 2001, by Marion Coutts. Thank you, Ms. Coutts and NearSt.)

[dabacahin]

Marion Coutts: “We are home”

Cancer scarcely allows you time to look at it, let alone get used to it. Tom’s is a high-speed disease with full, motorway pile-up repercussions. It does not pause to allow you to admire the view from anywhere. How many times do I think, Now we are really in trouble. Well, on this page I say it again. Now, we are really in trouble. And this time I mean it more than all the previous times. But there will surely be another time when I will mean it more still and this time will seem as nothing. This time will seem manageable or benign in retrospect. We may look back on it and laugh, though I suspect we will not find quite the right vantage point to do that.

Back at home I am ranting. We need another strategy. This one isn’t working. Maintaining the thinnest facade of a functioning family that tries to act as others do – plan ahead, drive somewhere, go on holiday, relax – is beyond us. We are smashed. Insecurity jams the gears on every action. Each time we are toppled. I feel a fool over and over again for trying. Easier please to abandon the pretence. Easier surely, to stop. Stop and not try.

In the middle of my outburst Tom interrupts me. I am frightened. What? I have not heard this before. He is my balance, my bar, the surface on which I put my feet, the edge I trace my hands around so I can see where I am going even in the dark. I am frightened, he says. He is right to be so. I repeat and repeat. I am here. We are here. I am here. We are home.

— from The Iceberg by Marion Coutts

[dabacahin]

“We live in a slowed-down part of one of the biggest, fastest cities on earth. The day has been perfect. It is nearly nine in the evening. From my bed I watch the sky’s incremental bands: dark, deep, pale, wan, white, gold, slide separate into each other. The moon is a crisp paper-cut. The air is silent but for birds. Nothing. It is wonderland. He has survived. I have survived. Ev has survived. We are not unchanged. We are scathed.”

— Marion Coutts, The Iceberg

(Photo credit: Marion Coutts. The author with her husband Tom Lubbock [1957–2011] and their son Ev [Eugene] in 2009. Thank you, Ms. Coutts and The Telegraph.)

[dabacahin]

Tom Lubbock: “I wish I were with you both”

Operation 1

29 September 2008

I am to be the first operation the next morning. Knobs are attached to my head, to guide the equipment [to remove a brain tumour]. A Stealth MRI scan. I'm trying to make precautions against the remote possibility of death or total mental incapacity. Going into tears as I imagine the future when I won't be there – I mean, when I think of Marion and Eugene, of him having no memory of me at all later in life. I lie up writing quite late.

I wrote to Marion:

"Of course, I don't really believe I will die or lose my mind tomorrow. But with the smallest chance – I wouldn't want to leave you without telling you how delightful, how wise, how kind you are. I've often wondered about the unfathomable process that made you; wondered, when did she learn this, where did she pick that up? – wondered, because you seemed to have a sureness that I felt to have been there from the beginning; though it must have been a formation out of many lessons, experiences, decisions. And recently I've tried to apply these thoughts to Eugene, to his mysterious unfolding. How sure I am that you and he, together and in your individual selves, will go on well. I wish I were with you both, to see this and take part in this."

To Eugene I wrote:

"Darling Eugene,

Nobody remembers anything before they were two. You won't remember me. And I don't have much idea about who you are – or who you will be, at the age at which you'll be able to understand this letter. I never imagined you would be very much like me. But I did often imagine going out with you, going to see things, walking and talking, asking questions, making jokes, having arguments. In the last few weeks, just as Marion and I have been getting this news about my brain tumour, you've been picking up language so fast. The little chats we have in your bedroom, when you wake up at 6am, and I go in, and you're standing in your cot, pointing something out that's taken your interest: it's a great moment in the day. As I'm writing this, I'm fully expecting to survive this operation. But there's a very small chance I won't survive, and so I thought I should have a message ready. I grew up without a father. It can be done. It would have been much better if we'd had more years together. But knowing you, at one and a half, I feel that whatever happens you'll be OK. I want to praise you for being a wonderful baby. Well, that's all I know about you. You have done everything well, so far. Go ahead, Eugene, my only child.

Whatever you're doing, I love you. I so strongly hope you'll never have to read this message, or if you do, I'll be alive and reading it next to you. But now, not knowing the future, I say goodbye to you, I kiss you, all my love, Dad."

— from Until Further Notice, I Am Alive by Tom Lubbock

[dabacahin]

Tom Lubbock to Marion Coutts: “I send you all my love”

But M: you asked for a love letter. Have I ever written you one? I remember, at the beginnings of us, we were very cautious of the word, even though it seems so obvious to say it. And then in getting us to get married, you managed through a process of joking – "Shall we get married?" – joking, joking, until it became inevitable. And then into getting us to have a baby – "It would be such fun" – until somehow, I can't remember how, I was overcome. It all came true. And now all I want is: prolong, prolong – though of course an open-ended life would suit us so much better. I send you all my love from the middle of the night. Hold on to me. Hold on to us.

— from Until Further Notice, I Am Alive by Tom Lubbock

[dabacahin]

Marion Coutts on Tom Lubbock: “He loves. He is loved. He has loved. He will be loved”

Yet I keep saying to people, You have got to realise that we are having a very good time. I am saying this while explaining that Tom has this thing and everything, the whole attendant works, gunning for him. I repeat it many times, especially at the beginning, and though I know it to be true, I can see they don’t believe me. I can tell by their eyes, their ever-ready nodding and murmuring. It’s good you are so strong. You’ve got to be positive. I give up after a while, but it continues to annoy me and I nag away at trying to find a form of words for having a life consistent with this paradox. I don’t succeed. The sentence – We are happy because we can hold totally opposite positions in equilibrium in our heads at the same time, though you might not realise beforehand that this is possible – is not one you can use in many conversations.

He is dying. Yet within the context of us, this fact can seem irrelevant. I might sometimes say, So what? This is not the same as denial. It is simply that our understanding of each other is unchanged and will not change until this is over. It sticks to us like spray on skin. He loves. He is loved. He has loved. He will be loved. Being with a long-time love is having the shape and expanded sweep of their person annexed to yours. It is a psychic extension that generates surprising patterns through which things pass unnoticed, move, switch and flood back. It is as near as thinking, as regular as breathing and yet you are not quite aware of its limits. Knowing your own limits, where you yourself begin and end so well as to be dulled by them, its pleasure derives precisely from the ambivalence of not knowing where the edges lie, yet feeling at home.

— from The Iceberg by Marion Coutts

[dabacahin]

“I’m in a happy-ish state.”

— Tom Lubbock, Until Further Notice, I Am Alive