[Lifestyle] A moment that changed me: I wrote 100 letters to my friend with cancer. It transformed our lives

[Mr.SnaPeR"]

 

When a new friend told me his diagnosis, we were as alarmed as each other by my promise to write. But it made him feel less isolated – and led to a whole new direction for me too

Alison Hitchcock
Wed 10 May 2023 07.00 BST
As soon as I said it, I knew it sounded crazy. “I’ll write letters to cheer you up through your treatment.” Brian, sitting opposite me in the pub, back in the summer of 2010, looked bemused. He had just told me he’d been diagnosed with bowel cancer and I suspect he was hoping for a cure, not a correspondent. But when someone tells you something that devastating, I don’t think it’s unusual to feel awkward, helpless, and to say something you later wish you hadn’t.

Not only had I said I’d write (who writes letters these days, for goodness sake?),
I’d said they’d cheer him up. So they’d have to be funny, and what is funny about cancer? Brian later told me he went home that night thinking I was a bit weird. I couldn’t disagree.

Brian and I had met six months earlier on a yoga holiday in India. I’d gone to take refuge from a job in the City of London that was stifling me. I was living in London in my late 30s, on the hunt for a new career and life. Brian was happily partnered with Neil, living in the home counties. We had little in common – but we got on well enough to stay in touch, and so came to find ourselves having a drink in a bar the day after he’d been diagnosed.

Brian said my letters kept him connected to a world he felt increasingly disconnected from
Over the next couple of weeks I tried to forget my offer of letter writing and hoped Brian had too. But a small voice kept saying: “He’s got cancer and all you have to do is write a letter.” So finally, shamed by my own conscience, I sat down with a large glass of wine and put pen to paper. My letter was very everyday: accounts of things I’d observed or overheard that I thought might make Brian smile, such as the women at the swimming pool debating whether the chlorine might fade their newly tattooed eyebrows and deciding to swim with their heads out of the water just in case.

That letter turned out to be the first of more than 100 that I wrote to Brian over the next three years as his cancer moved from stage 3 to 4, and he underwent surgeries, chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

As the months passed, and my letters kept on coming, Brian shared what my regular letterbox “gifts” meant to him. He had been shocked by how isolated he felt. He was no longer at work, with friends not knowing what to say, so saying nothing, his social life almost nonexistent. He said my letters kept him connected to a world he felt increasingly disconnected from. He would take the letters to chemo sessions, where he would share them with other patients and laugh together at my stories. Knowing someone out there was thinking of him was a real comfort, he told me.

As I hunted out stories, anecdotes and small joys that I could share, I allowed myself to be more vulnerable
But even more unexpected was how much I came to enjoy writing. I had never been a writer, but I became excited, not just for Brian’s reaction, but the whole process. Letter writing gave me the validation that what I was doing – making Brian smile – was worth something. But it also made me see the world in a different way. Every week I hunted out stories, anecdotes and small joys that I could share in a letter. I was forced to observe and listen more intently, understand more compassionately. And, as someone who had always been very private, by sharing so much more of myself through my writing, I learned to trust and allow myself to be more vulnerable. It wasn’t just Brian’s world that was changing – so was mine.

Brian was given the all-clear in 2013. My newly discovered love of pen and paper had led me to a degree in creative writing and the confidence to leave my City job and take on a role in a literary organisation. That same year I also got married, with my now best friend Brian the only man at my hen weekend.

But that still wasn’t quite enough. Brian and I wanted others to benefit from letters in the same way he had. So, in 2016, we set up the charity From Me to You to educate and inspire everyone who knows someone living with cancer to stay connected by sending a letter or card – so as not to allow anyone to feel the loneliness or isolation Brian had experienced. My excitable letter offer has now led to thousands of letters connecting friends, family and even strangers. Maybe my offer was not so wild after all.

From Me, To You by Alison Hitchcock and Brian Greenly (Spellbound, £9.99) is out now.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/may/10/a-moment-that-changed-me-i-wrote-100-letters-to-my-friend-with-cancer-it-transformed-our-lives