Margaret Innes

New Worlds: Reading, Writing and the Imagination

Category Archives: Death


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Ian Hamish and Ukraine: A blog

This is a story about how unexpectedly one morning I opened my email to be asked if I would moderate a comment on my blog Stepping into Eternity: Stories of my Family where I wrote about my uncle, Ian Innes-Sim. A Terry Joyce in England had written Hello, I am doing some research into Ian Innes-Sim as he was recorded as being part of the 2nd Rayleigh Scouts. Can you help? I said I could, we exchanged emails and out of that exchange comes this blog.

Terry’s researches revealed that as a scout in May 1937, at almost fifteen, my uncle was part of a three man team that won the Local Junior Marathon. Later in July of that year he was a Patrol Leader who went to the World Jubilee in Holland where he would have seen Robert Baden-Powell give his farewell speech. Then in July of 1939 he joined the SS Test Bank as an apprentice marine engineer, following in his father’s profession, at the start perhaps of hopefully a good life. Barely two months later in September of that same year World War 2 was declared, and three and half years after that in January 1943 my uncle, as an apprentice in the Merchant Marine, died at the age of twenty when the ship he was on, the Oakbank on voyage in the south Atlantic, was torpedoed and sunk. He and the captain were rescued by the U-boat that sank them, but both died when that vessel was itself sunk by the Allied forces. I am very sure the shock of my uncle’s death began the slow unwinding leading to my grandmother’s own death five years later. I do know from my mother how very proud she was of her son’s scouting achievements. He has no known grave and I only have one photograph of him, possibly taken when he joined the Merchant Marine and which is attached.

I sent a copy of this picture to Terry, and he replied with an image of the logbook from the 2nd Rayleigh Scouts from 1924 -1944 recording the names of the scouts who fell in action during WW2. It was a simple typewritten list of nine names, six from the RAF, one from the Army, another from the Fleet Air Arm and my uncle from the Merchant navy. There is a note written on the bottom of the page in green ink: ‘They were strong & beautiful in their lives and are an everlasting example to us.’ Terry had also sent the link to a YouTube video of the jamboree in 1937 and considering what was to happen, it’s poignant to watch. Who knows what the fate was of so many of those young men in the film, my uncle among them? My uncle is commemorated on Tower Hill Memorial, which is maintained in perpetuity, as it says, by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. How many of his fellow scouts’ names ended up on memorials around the world as well?

While I write this story of loss and grief, I think of a news item I saw just a few days ago, young men in Ukraine manning checkpoints against the Russian invasion. They were university students, like my uncle just twenty or in their late teens, given three days training, and then sent with a gun to protect the capital, the nation. There was other reports of young Ukrainian men and women, also new soldiers, getting married in the midst of war in their uniforms, hugging each other before fighting. According to news reports, many of the soldiers in the Russian army are conscripts, young men also, some with only a few months training, who did not know where they were being sent or who they were expected to fight and kill. I think of a Ukrainian woman giving sunflower seeds to one of these young men so when he died the bright yellow flowers might grow from his body in the nation’s soil. I think also of the maternity hospital in Mariupol bombed, a pregnant woman rescued and taken to another hospital where both she and her child died. She had begged the doctors to save her child’s life.

William Blake wrote in one of his poems, “The strongest poison ever known came from Caesar’s laurel crown.” Everything that is happening in Ukraine now is proof of that line. When both the young Ukrainian or the Russians soldiers die in combat, it’s likely their names will end up on memorials in their countries just as my uncle’s and certainly numbers of his fellow scouts did after WW2. When the civilians die in the shelling, just as the soldiers have died fighting, it will again be for the delusions of power and egotism of leaders like Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and his inner circle. Again it will be everyone else who will suffer the ongoing grief. I am asking myself why the delusions of men like Putin have to cost so much in other people’s lives, not just once but over the generations. Who will be accountable for this and why is it still happening now, why it can’t be stopped? The best place to ask these questions would be in the criminal court in The Hague, should Putin and his inner circle ever end up there to answer for their war crimes.


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8 Radiation Therapy Blues

During my first radiotherapy session, the PA system in the radiation room was playing Elton John’s Bennie and the Jets. Later it was Whitney Houston’s Greatest Love and in between any number of songs I didn’t recognise. Sometimes there was silence. Lying on a hard bed, hands above my head holding onto handles, being radiated with high energy rays, was an uncomfortable but also, puzzlingly, an out of body experience. A friend of mine who had gone through the same treatment said she would imagine she was on a beach and the whirr of the equipment was the sound of the surf. Because I was asked to hold my breath at certain times, I found myself concentrating on my breathing. The radiation therapists would position a small screen in front of my eyes. It showed a blue bar about two thirds of the way up and a yellow bar that moved up and down with my breathing. When asked to hold my breath I had to put the yellow bar into the blue bar so it turned green.

While this sounds mind numbing, it was the only thing I could concentrate on while I was lying there being radiated. For their own safety, the therapists had to leave the room while the radiation was being done. I was there alone with the sound of the machine, and either silence or whatever music was playing. It was a little like floating in some extra-terrestrial no-man’s-land, not quite like the star child in 2001: A Space Odyssey but still an experience that disconnected me from myself. The worst of it was the passivity. I just had to lie there and I couldn’t move. ‘Stop wriggling,’ I was once told by one of therapists and she was quite right. For this therapy to work, I had to stay still for the rays to find their right mark. If I had an itch on my nose or in the middle of my back, it was just too bad. It was bliss to get up, put on my blue gown, genuinely thank the therapists, who were all skilled professionals and very pleasant throughout, and leave.

There is a ship’s bell next to the nurses’ desk in Radiation Oncology. When your treatment is finished, it’s tradition to ring it. I gave the bell a good clang twice on Monday, had my photograph taken by one of the nurses, saw everyone applaud (also the tradition), thanked everyone, left my thank you card with the nurses and went out into the waiting area where my partner was waiting. We weren’t quite free yet, I had to see the medical oncologist. As she had been for every appointment I had had with her, she was stylishly dressed, competent, professional, thorough. She was pleased with my test results, advised me to keep walking, and made an appointment for me to see her four months later.

Then we were free, escaping out to the car park, dispensing with our masks once in the car and on the road home, seven months after the sonologist had said to me during my scan, ‘I’ll just get the radiologist.’ Even my hair is growing back though I can still clearly see the shape of my scalp. Little spikelets cover the top of my head like a fine, soft, and very close crew cut. My hair is darker than it was, which is a bonus though I would never recommend chemotherapy as a treatment for grey hair.

So for now it’s done. Thanks to all the readers of this blog for your generous and kind comments, all the feedback, and the friendship. It’s been a privilege to share the experience with you all and the most wonderful support throughout. My strongest hope is that you only ever have to read about cancer treatment and if you do have or even have had this experience, give you all my best wishes for a complete recovery. Thanks again to all the medical staff who were fantastic. And thanks to Medicare, which is so important for the nation’s wellbeing.

That closes this blog. The next one, I hope, will be on the subject of something wholly cheerful and happy. Best wishes to all.


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9 True Heroes and on coming back to life.

The true heroes I have met during this whole progression from diagnosis to chemotherapy are many. There are the medical staff. Canberra has its issues and problems in the health sector, they’re often in papers with talk of dire consequences for both patients and staff. I can honestly say I have not met with any of those problems. From the ultrasound sonologist at the start who made her good pick of my tumour to the registered nurses in the chemotherapy suite who know how to insert a cannula without hurting you or leaving you in discomfort for hours, all these people have been professional, competent, careful, concerned, pleasant. A special shout out to the breast care nurses who have been uniformly brilliant. Then there are the volunteer ladies who take the trolleys around in the chemo suite, offering tea, coffee, fruit juice and as many biscuits as I could want to eat while stopping for a chat. In between are the administrative staff who book the appointments, make the phone calls, send you the referrals. The complexity of the whole process, the fitting together of medical procedures, tests, follow-ups, actions, and aftermath is like a kind of three-dimensional, time-based Lego building plan where everything has to fit together. What’s at stake is not a structure to admire for its intricacies and beauty but someone’s health and life. For me so far and for now, it’s worked and this is my thanks.

But besides everyone listed above, there are other true heroes who are closer to me: generous and good-hearted friends who were there when I needed them; people who read this blog and were themselves generous enough to write messages of support and affection; and my partner, for whom no amount of thanks will be enough.

There were times in my first few days after chemo when I wondered if recovery was possible. That passed and before the end of the first week I’d gotten my mind back. I still found chemo doesn’t leave the body that easily. It has a taste and a smell, especially in the first two weeks after infusion. That taste was the first thing I noticed in the morning and there was hint of its smell in my clothes. I thought it was a curious taste and smell, a mix of the chemical and the human, a mirror to the purpose of the therapy itself, to kill the active cancer cells in my body. Those cells may be dangerous, even deadly, but they are still something my body makes, they are a part of me. That is what chemo has to do, remove the toxic part of me with its own toxicity. This is what every cancer patient having chemotherapy has to deal with. So I’ll always say, people don’t ever lose their battle with cancer; it’s the treatment that loses that battle.

During the second week after my first infusion, when doing something so ordinary as putting the washing on, I realised I was walking and moving with a sense of some energy. By the beginning of the third week I found I had my sense of optimism back, the pleasure in just being here. My walks into the nature park were getting longer and longer. Sitting at the computer now, writing this blog, glancing out at the autumn colours in the garden and seeing small groups of magpies foraging for insects, is to feel very alive.

I still have two chemo sessions to go, the next today once I have posted this blog. What I’ve taken from this whole experience is something I would say to anyone who is about to go through it for themselves: never forget who you are, what you like to do. A mind can take you anywhere and you need to indulge it. For me, next it will be walks in the autumn sunshine and Jane Gardam Old Filth novels as soon as the ACT Library service delivers to me all of her books I have on reservation. In the meantime my cycle of chemo and recovery goes on for another four weeks. Not too long now. The end is in sight. My next blog probably won’t be for a fortnight or more while I try to think out in greater depth what this all means.