On Wednesday afternoon I was driving back from Houghton after a beautiful day shared with special people in the palliative community. Next to me in the car, was Nelly Cadala. I met Nelly when I was a rebellious teenager when she started working for my mom as a helper in our home. It is now 37 years later, and we’ve simply always been in each other’s lives and have worked alongside one another at the lodges since 1998. She’s my family.
I’m not sure if it is that time of year, my menopausal mood-swings or working on the fringes of life, but right there, on the M1 highway, sitting next to my old friend, I was filled with such gratitude for the people in my life that I battled to hold back the tears.
For a few months we’ve been planning a PPP(a palliative pool party). It was going to be hosted at my house where we could swim, drink cocktails and celebrate life and love. Unfortunately, in my wisdom, I also started renovating our pool just as summer started, not factoring in that the rains may delay the progress.
Days before our party, our pool was a sight to behold. There was no way it would be finished in time, but the show had to go on and so, I did something that only a person who is totally sociopathic or feels totally loved could do: I phoned up my sister-in-law and brother and asked to borrow their pool. I’m not sure how many of you have been so audacious, but I called and said, “I know you are not home, so please can I invite a few dozen total strangers to your house where we plan to drink sparkling wine and eat unhealthy food and ride some flamingoes in your pool.”
They graciously (or perhaps, naively andstupidly) said yes.
On the morning our people arrived, it was the first time since January 2024, when we had Zazen’s opening, that so many of our palliative people gathered in one space. I watched the interactions and it resonated with me that even if these guys mostly work for a variety of different practices, and should in theory be competitors, they are not. Even though there are many different levels of qualifications, I sensed that no one felt they were more or less important than another. I wondered what it is that gives a community this kind of health?
I’ve been part of many communities: churches, corporates, hospitality environments and schools, and somehow there is always toxicity, some self-serving aspect or ugly competition/comparison or division at play. With these people around the pool, I never get that sense. Of course, there are disagreements and conflicts, but it’s not left to stew. Maybe it’s because we are lucky enough to always be confronted by the big picture – literal life and death – so the small things are recognized for what which they are… small.
I’ve been reading some of Brene Brown’s work lately. I’m still deciding whether I like her or not, but her research speaks to me. When she was asked by Steven Bartlett (that fabulous man with the silky British accent) why her marriage has lasted almost 40 years, she said it is because of these three rules:
- Just keep showing up.
- Don’t buy into the bullshit that it is supposed to be easy.
- Ask for help.
Maybe that is the secret of this group: they just show up in the mess, to show up, not to please anyone or to make a shareholder rich, but because they understand the importance of the work. I often wonder, when I look at our motley crew, whether we are showing up for others because people who were supposed to show up for us failed us… and because of that, we are acutely aware of the importance of being there for people?
I also know, we all know, that it is just platitudes, algorithms, politicians and social media that sell the lie that life is supposed to be easy. The feed on your phone full of beach-ready bikini bodies and perfect marriages are blatant lies. You don’t see the swimwear model vomit and counting calories, and you don’t see the wife weep herself to sleep, battling her insecurities and his emotional unavailability. I wish we spoke more about this hidden epidemic of comparison. It leads to emotional isolation because we think we need to play these roles of perfection we are portraying on social media.
Perhaps because the people in the palliative community ask for help, their relationships stay relevant. They risk admitting they don’t have the answers. I know most of the time we don’t want to ask for help, but in this harsh narrative where we work, you cannot do anything else. I watch these guys, who are not in the same practices, chatting about how best to control pain, deal with a loony family member, share a truth a family doesn’t want to accept and graciously share time, medicine, advice, grace, information.
I saw something similiar during COVID too, and I wish the health industry could remember that time when health care workers dared to be vulnerable and dared to ask each other for help. I recall one of the pulmonologists at Netcare Sunninghill once sitting on the service stairs shaking, her head in her hands, and ugly crying. Next to her sat a physio, just resting her hand on her shoulder. The horrible reality of that brutal first wave forced people to risk portraying their real selves
People ask me at least once a day, how I can do this job (particularly around palliative care) and every time I answer:, “How can we not?” Where else can you experience such honesty? It’s really the one safe space where there is no room for, or point, in gaslighting, empty rhetoric or fabrication. No one pretends anymore when they have weeks left to live. It’s wonderful to work with people who want to live their lives like that too.
Towards the end of the party, four of us stayed behind, squeezed our imperfect bodies into our cozzies and had some tequila. Now that I write about it, it sounds like the start of a bad joke: An Afrikaner, a Xhosa, an Indian and a Jew walked into a bar… but we sat and talked about hurts and rejection, incredible wins, crazy families, and challenges of life that come from all kinds of places, whether you are black, secular or gay. We laughed at some of the weirdest families we’ve met and reminisced about patients that have left such deep tracks in our souls that we are scared to risk our hearts again. In that pool, floating on that pelican, chatting to these phenomenal women, is where I felt safe and heard.
This is the memory of our borrowed pool day that will stay with me. This messy, colourful, imperfect gathering is exactly what keeps us real, not the easy days or the filtered photos, but the to show up for each other, even when it is hard, the asking for help (even if it is to borrow someone’s house), and the courage to keep it real and not buy into the insta-ready lies.
I think this is why I love this work, because in the end, healing does not happen in hospitals or in boardrooms, but in community – one honest, broken, messy and deeply human connection at a time. And of course, it never hurts to add a pink flamingo floatie into the mix.