“You’re looking so well. You’re looking wonderful. You look amazing.” I was out at a dinner in Galway when a colleague I hadn’t seen for a long while approached and presented me with a tastefully arranged bouquet of compliments.
My teenage daughters tell me I am useless at taking compliments. They, meanwhile, are great at giving them. They often tell me that I “ate up” my eye-make-up application or that my outfit is “slaying” or – Jesus, my heart – “you look really pretty today, mum”.
Then they get annoyed because their reward for these kindnesses is my neutral facial expression. Or worse. Sometimes I raise a cynical, disbelieving eyebrow – or generally act as though their positive appraisal is crazily misjudged.
They get annoyed and tell me I need to learn how to take a compliment. And they might be right. (They are often right.)
I’m not sure who won the battle of the compliments
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And yet. “You’re looking wonderful.” There were a few things wrong with this picture. The first one is that I really didn’t feel fantastic. I’ve been self-conscious lately. My hair has gone from Don King-core, which I had really enjoyed, to a transitional, mumsy look while I try to grow it out. I’m not sure what look I’m going for. I am hoping I’ll know it when I see it. You know the way hope springs?
Most of the time I don’t care about my hair, which fell out during months of life-saving chemotherapy treatment. It hardly matters. I’m happy to be alive. And yet. A year-and-a-half since I received my cancer diagnosis, my appearance still sometimes lands like a surprise.
On less good days I look in the mirror and wonder where I’ve gone and who is this woman with short grey hair, spotty skin (a side effect of one of the tablets I’m taking) and a jaded look in her eye. I lost a bit of weight while not trying, a lifetime first, during my more intensive treatments.
Now I’ve put it back on – and yes, while most days my mantra is, “Hurray, I’m alive, sing hosannas,” I sometimes still feel the old shame that anybody who has ever struggled with weight and eating issues will recognise. Turns out the shame doesn’t completely disappear with a diagnosis. It goes deep, the shame.
It was one of those less good days when the woman told me I was looking wonderful, so that might be why it jarred. Also, most of the time, I don’t think about having cancer. I just live. And when these effusive compliments arrive, it’s a jolt, a reminder. You’ve got cancer, remember?
But the other thing wrong with this picture was how truly radiant the compliment-giver looked. When I tell you this woman was wearing a tailored, pale pink, linen suit, I think you might understand. She looked so dazzlingly stylish she might have walked straight out of the pages of Vogue. If Anna Wintour herself had been eating tapas with us in the Kasbah, a gorgeous restaurant above Neachtain’s pub, she’d have surveyed this woman approvingly from behind her designer sunglasses.
The woman slaying the pink linen suit was nearly 15-years-older than me, but exuded, from head to toe, that timeless elegance you sometimes read about in articles about older women. “No, YOU look amazing,” I gushed, speaking over her. “That suit! You are just so cool”. It was the battle of the compliments. I’m not sure who won.
The next day, I was being interviewed by Professor Brendan Kelly about one of my favourite subjects, kindness in the health service, as part of the Galway Arts Festival’s First Thought Talks. Earlier, Brendan told me he had a plan for the interview. It turned out his plan was to let me ramble on for an hour, yet another example of kindness in the health service.
Afterwards, a woman from the audience came up to me and said: “I’ll see your cancer on the breast and bones and raise you a liver.” Poker talk. I liked her style.
Julie was grateful to be on a trial of some new drugs which were working well. We chatted for a while. People had been so good and so kind but there was one thing that was annoying her. “The compliments,” she said. She was finding them hard to take. She told me about all the people greeting her with “God, you are looking marvellous!” Julie isn’t having a bar of it.
“I used to have shiny soft hair. Now I have hair that stands up looking like the brass wire brushes used on sheepskin coats years ago. I’m also missing most of my eyebrows and the pencilled brows get wiped off easily.
“The only thing worse than two wiped off brows is one wiped off brow. So, please don’t tell me I’m looking great.”
Her new treatment has virtually no side effects. Most days she completely forgets about her terminal illness. She just lives. “That is until I meet the ‘aren’t you looking just marvellous?’ people ... all I want is for people I meet to talk to me about the things they would have talked to me about before my diagnosis”.
So there you have it. Straight from Julie’s mouth and mine. Sometimes when you say, “you look wonderful” to people with cancer, what the people with cancer hear is: “We thought you’d be all wizened and yellow and gross-looking but you look quite normal for someone who has CANCER. And, by the way, don’t forget you have CANCER.”
We both know most people are kind and mean well. We’re also aware some people with cancer probably love a good compliment, so it’s confusing. Sorry.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to search the internet for “tailored pink linen suits for larger women”. There’s that hope again. Always springing eternal.
