Аманда Палмер - The Art of Asking; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help

He’d been to a doctor, he said.

They’d misdiagnosed him up to now.

It was cancer.

Bad cancer. Leukemia.

They’ve given me six months, tops, he texted.

It’s over, beauty.

My head stopped working.

I walked down the hill. The yoga teacher, Nigel, and one of my other new British yoga friends, Max, were sitting on a stone wall, laughing in the sun. Max was playing a Spanish song on his guitar.

They could see my eyes were red and beckoned me over. I didn’t want to avoid them. I wanted to tell them. But how could I explain this? They barely knew me, let alone knew who Anthony was and what he meant to me. They’d probably think I was being a drama queen. They probably wouldn’t believe me.

I just got a text … I said. I think my best friend is going to die .

I looked at them, and they looked at me. They saw me.

Nigel reached his hands out and held me. The sobs came from the bottom of my gut. I stood there, rocking in Nigel’s arms, so happy that these two strangers—of all people—were the ones I’d encountered.

We stood there for a few minutes, saying nothing, while I cried into Nigel’s neck and then calmed down. Max offered to play me a song on guitar, and I sat on the wall, holding Nigel’s hand and losing myself in the sound. Then the reality of it would hit me again.

Anthony is going to die .

I had to leave.

I was barely able to think. I walked to the pay phone in the retreat office and called Neil collect.

Anthony just texted. The doctors told him he’s going to die in six months, Neil. I have to get home. Fast .

Oh god. My love, I’m sorry .

I need your help. I have no cell service here, just the pay phone. Can you help me? Can you help me change my ticket?

Yes, yes of course I will. And you mean … He hesitated. You’re fine to let me pay for it?

Of course , I said. It’s fine… I’ll pay you back .

I’d rather you didn’t pay me back, Amanda. Just let it go. I love you. Now let me hang up and see if I can book you a flight. When do you want to leave?

First thing in the morning, the earliest flight you can get. I love you, too. Neil?

Yes?

I’m sorry , I said. Thank you. Thank you for helping me. I’m sorry .

Amanda , he said, listen to me. I want to help. I know how much Anthony means to you. I want desperately to help. All you have to do is ask .

I hung up the phone and packed my bags, feeling blank and blurry. The next morning, before leaving for the airport at sunrise, I walked off the retreat property, into the woods, to find a stick.

The trip back to Boston took about twenty-six hours—a bus ride, a ferry, two planes. When I got to the first airport, I walked catatonically into a news shop and bought a blank journal, sat down at the gate, and started writing. Everything I could think of that Anthony had ever told me, every piece of advice, every stupid skit we’d made up together, every memory, no matter how small. I boarded the plane and kept writing, unable to stop.

That ink flowing to the blank pages of that book was my lifeline, my IV, my only escape from collapsing. In that moment, I understood something about my writer husband that I’d never understood before. I had a small glimpse into the act of writing something down as a direct, very viable escape from pain. I had no desire to publish this writing; I wasn’t thinking about an audience. I just needed to do it, or else I’d weep and not be able to control myself. For the first time, I experienced the physical truth of what it felt like to dwell in the act of creation as a direct escape hatch from an unbearable reality.

If I stopped writing and started thinking, I’d start crying and wouldn’t be able to stop, or make sense of my thoughts, so I kept the pen to the paper and barely lifted it for the entire journey.

Neil picked me up from the airport, and together we drove to the hospital. We sat for a moment in the parked car, and talked.

I can’t leave again. I’m going to have to cancel the whole European tour , I said, staring out the windshield onto the gray wall of the hospital garage. And the Australian and the New Zealand tours. I can’t go, not while he goes through this .

My mind started to race. It’s already on sale, Neil… thousands of tickets have sold. Jesus, honey, this is going to be so fucked. The fans will get it. But it’s going to lose tons of money if I reschedule, and I won’t be earning anything… and… the band… I’m going to need to give them some money to bridge the gap… they’re all going to be out of work on three months’ notice, I need to pay them, and—

Darling, slow down, slow down. First of all, don’t worry about the money , Neil said.

I’m not worried about the money , I said. You’ll help cover it, right?

Of course I will. Wait, hold on… He looked skeptical. You mean you’re fine just letting me help? he asked.

Yes. Honey, I’m more than fine. This isn’t like last year when I hit the black spot. This is easy .

Why is this easy? he asked.

It’s impossibly easy… I said. It’s Anthony .

It hurt enough.

I got up off the nail.

The second time I saw Anthony cry was about ten years after I gave him the letter about Laura.

He needed chemo, they said. Thirty-six trips to the hospital, and he couldn’t get there and back himself, because the side effects made him too tired to drive safely. His friends scrambled into action, and a carpool was organized so that everyone could take turns driving him to and from the treatments.

Neil seemed scared of my sadness, afraid that he was going to do the wrong thing, say the wrong thing, react in the wrong way. But I could feel how much he really wanted to help, to see me. Neil and Anthony had become a lot closer, but I still didn’t know if Neil understood what he meant, how big it was. All I wanted was to plug Neil into my brain and show him the entire history of our friendship. The love.

All my life, Anthony had been my go-to, the person I’d gone to with every sorrow, every problem, every heartache.

The only person I really trusted to understand how I felt about Anthony’s cancer was Anthony, and I couldn’t call him and collapse. That was out of the question; he had cancer. Asking for his help on this one wouldn’t really be fair. I felt a kind of loneliness I’d never felt before.

I was driving him home from one of the first treatments. We were on the freeway, and I was deliberating whether I should drive in the slow lane (he was feeling nauseated and fragile) or the fast lane (he also wanted to get home and back to bed as soon as possible). It had been a relatively normal drive for the first ten minutes—you know, as normal as it can be when your friend-who-had-just-been-given-a-death-sentence is sitting silently next to you steeped in chemicals and you’re trying to maintain a stable state of mind. We were approaching a patch of traffic.

Get off , he said.

You want me to exit here? I mean, I can. But…

GET OFF. GET OFF . And he tried to grab the steering wheel and pull the car over to the right.

HEY! Hey. Hey . I snapped. Watch it. Seriously. Don’t kill us .

Then he hit the glove compartment. Really hard.

I don’t want to go through this, Amanda .

And his voice choked and his fist hit the glove compartment again. And again, and again.