Navigating the tropic of cancer

No one who can help it stays in Rome in August. Romans flee to beaches; Canadian expatriates go home. Seasoned travellers know not to go to Rome in August. The heat is terrible, and many shops and restaurants are closed. However, some Romans and expatriates have no choice and cannot escape to cooler climes.

One such ex-pat is my friend Hilary White, Vatican correspondent for LifeSiteNews. She has had two rounds of chemotherapy and is now waiting for a third. She is, in a word, stuck. She has no family but many friends among the expatriate community: priests, seminarians, theology students, tour guides. Most of these, however, have left Italy for the summer. Thus, one of the priests began to phone Hilary’s other friends and cajole them into visiting.

So here I am in Italy again.

Thankfully, Hilary does not live in Rome proper but in a seaside town a short distance away. It is crowded with darkly tanned people. The sun bites down on pale skin like a carniverous beast. We stay indoors as much as possible.

Our lives have settled into a pattern. I awake around seven o’clock and walk to the corner café for a coffee and croissant. Then, after a brief look at the Mediterranean, I return to Hilary’s flat to find her awake and then make a pot of tea. We either visit doctors’ offices or sit in the cool sitting room listening to classical music. Later, if it is not too hot, we sit under a sunshade on the veranda. Hilary reads. I memorize Italian vocabulary.

Eventually I make lunch, and after lunch Hilary has the traditional afternoon siesta. I try to nap too, but if I can’t, I continue to  memorize words in the method demanded by Signora Angelini long, long ago when I took her classes at Loretto Abbey.

When the shops reopen in the late afternoon, I do some grocery shopping, and if she is awake, I bring Hilary in her wheelchair. The sidewalks, however, were not built to accommodate it. When prudent, we keep to the roads. I push the wheelchair and Hilary cries, “Pot hole! Pot hole!”

At first I was terrified we’d be run over, but so far so good. Our one mishap occurred on Saturday when together we got the wheelchair up a hill, I pushing and Hilary rolling, and Hilary almost fainted. She is no longer allowed to help push her wheelchair.

After 7 p.m., if Hilary is feeling up to it, we roll along to the beach. Hilary sits on a rock and paddles her feet as I gingerly splash about. Sometimes we have gelato, and sometimes we don’t, and then we go home and I make supper.   

“I hate taking pills,” says Hilary.

Hilary takes a lot of pills. She also takes a lot of drops. The drops are painkillers of sufficient strength that the pharmacist will not refill even a very recent prescription. And, although I had no great hope of convincing a pharamicist to hand over opiates without a new prescription, I gave an operatic description of what my companion would feel like if she didn’t get them.

Hilary understands a lot more Italian than she lets on, but to the despair of all her friends, she refuses to speak it. That leaves me to do the conversational heavy lifting. The doctor forgetting to write your friend’s insurance number on the blood test paperwork is complicated.

Most conversations end with me saying, “Dobbiamo ritornare al medico? (Do we have to go back to the doctor?)” So far, the answer is always “Si.”  

And so our August passes. I hope I haven’t made it seem terrible. We are, after all, surrounded by incredible beauty. Stately villas and flowering trees rise above us. The Mediterranean laps below. We listen to music and we read. We drink tea. We wait together for Chemo 3.

(Cummings McLean is author of  Seraphic Singles.)