Teva
Harrison died on the unseasonably cold, final weekend of April 2019. She was
42. She died of the disease that had plagued her for the past five years, the
disease to which she refused to surrender her spirit, the disease she fought
with her voice and her art. Metastatic breast cancer stole Teva Harrison’s body
from this world. But her voice and her art and her spirit are very much alive.
I
didn’t know Teva Harrison, not like many other people in Toronto did. My lady
had bought her book, In Between Days,
because it had had such rave reviews and many of our friends spoke so highly of
her. The book wasn’t in our house because we were intensely curious about
cancer; it was in our house because it was written and illustrated by Teva
Harrison. It’s a lovely book, on many levels.
I
later met her through mutual friends at a Dolly Parton concert. She was a beautiful
woman: with dimples and deep-blue eyes and a sparkle that my friend Alex Molotkow described as “Glinda-like” (as in,
The Wizard of Oz), which is incredibly
accurate. But she was beautiful primarily because of her spirit, her empathy,
her radiance and charisma, all of which was instantly evident to anyone who met
her. Her friends are mourning, privately and on social media, but what’s
striking is the number of journalists who are also mourning, people who
interviewed her for only about an hour, an hour they remember intimately with
deep affection. Because you didn’t forget a conversation with Teva Harrison.
In
2017, I was writing a biography of Gord Downie, who had decided to do a final
tour with the Tragically Hip after being diagnosed with terminal brain cancer.
Downie had only given one interview in the last two years of his life. I didn’t
(yet) know anyone living with a terminal disease, and I wanted to talk to Teva
about her book and the act of being very open about living with an incurable
disease. Downie’s act was so unusual because most people retreat into the
shadows after such a diagnosis; Teva’s work questioned what we as a society
suffer when we let people just disappear, when we refuse to talk about disease
and our own mortality, what we try to consciously ignore. Downie’s act was one
of defiance, and millions of Canadians were swept up in his journey. Teva’s
work was equally defiant, and considerably more candid and explicit.
I
had no idea if she had any strong feelings about Downie and his work, but I
asked her if she would talk to me about discussions of death in the public
sphere. I also wanted to gain some insight into an intensely creative person
determined to “use it up, use it all up,” as Downie’s hero Raymond Carver wrote
during his own terminal diagnosis.
In 2016, Teva had told Chatelaine’s Katie Underwood, “I don’t want to talk about cancer
all the time. I want to talk about art, books, culture and politics — the same
things I was interested in before. I don’t feel like a dying person,
so I’ve had a hard time getting into the mindset that that’s essentially what I
am. But not yet.” And in a phenomenal speech she gave in 2016—the text of which I’d argue is even better
than her book—she said, “When we have art and conversation about illness and
disability, we’re giving give to a crucial part of the human experience. By
listening to these voices, we can gain a truer perception of our own advantage
and luck.”
I was lucky to have a chance to listen to Teva Harrsion.
I spent the summer of 2017 talking about death with other
people who were watching a friend and colleague and national icon fade away in front
of them. Most of our conversations ended in tears. My conversation with Teva was
just as emotional and moving and funny and sad, and I felt buoyed as I left her
house that afternoon, ready to see so much of the magic in everyday life that
she saw all the time.
She complimented me on the colour of the dress shirt I was
wearing; it was the illustrator’s favourite shade of blue. I had to confess
that I wore it on purpose, because it was on the cover of her book. I knew what
joy she brought to many people suffering in the same ways she was; if I could
bring the tiniest bit of joy into her house in exchange for a bit of her
precious, precious time, I figured it was the least I could do.
Teva
Harrison
June
28, 2017
At
her house near Bloor/Dovercourt
Does the
Tragically Hip mean anything to you, as someone who grew up in America?
On
the record (laughs)? No. But I see what they mean to other people. As a kid,
they didn’t make it to where I live. I see what place they occupy for so many
Canadians, and it’s amazing to me how diverse the people are who find something
really meaningful in their music.
Your book
came out one month before Downie’s diagnosis became public. Did the news strike
you as odd or meaningful, in any way, when someone with a terminal diagnosis
decides to go on tour?
It’s
so different for all of us, what one person is capable of. I have a friend who
has metastatic breast cancer like me, and she had no evidence of the disease
for a few years. She was living normally. Then she took a hard downward slide.
She’s been going through this inner conflict about, ‘Was I being able-ist, with
being so vocal about being able to do X, Y and Z?’ You don’t know what someone
else is capable of. There are ways to manage to still do things, even though
you can’t do everything. I have to take proactive rest; I’m betting the same is
true for Gord Downie. He has to factor in how many things he does in order to
do the really fantastic public things he does. That’s just based on my personal
experience. It’s hard, though. My book tour was hard. I’ve never been a
musician, but I can only imagine that it’s more physically taxing.
How far did
your tour take you, and what demands did it place on you?
I
made it to Dawson City and Whitehorse and Yellowknife and Vancouver and Calgary
and Edmonton and Montreal. My publicist knew I needed rest days. It was a lot,
but it was worth it. It’s about deciding if it’s worth it to you, and wanting
to have the experience. I didn’t want to say no to having interaction with
people around the work. I expect that’s probably universal, wanting to engage
in the most meaningful moments while you have the ability.
Did you
watch any footage of the Tragically Hip tour, or were you remotely interested
in seeing someone play it out publicly?
I
didn’t, and if I thought about it that way I might have. I don’t know any of
the songs, you know? All of my friends were going to shows and sobbing in parks
and it was a beautiful thing that I didn’t know how to tap into, because I
didn’t grow up with [the music]. It felt like a real gift to everybody who got
to be there.
What do you
think it meant to those friends, that they wanted to experience it publicly?
Like
in all these parks and places? It was an interesting moment. It’s uniquely
Canadian in a really charming way.
Whenever
you have death of a beloved artist, as fans there is something very selfish
about it. We want more from them. These people have given us so much, and we
want another book from them, to see them in another film, we want another
record.
One
more show!
Yes, and
this stuff last summer was a whole other level of processing, of witnessing the
in-between days in front of us, and having that shared experience. ‘You want
one more show? Well, now you’ve got one.’
It’s
incredible, I think. I can see it as being both generous and selfish. If music
was my life, I would want one more show, too, in the same way that I want to do
so many more drawings and write so much more. It’s special. We don’t get that
wish fulfillment often. We don’t have warning. Nobody knew that would be
Prince’s last show in Toronto [in April 2016, mere weeks before he died.] I had
tickets to Aretha Franklin, and she had to cancel [Franklin died a year later].
You write
about how, for the first year, you didn’t tell anybody about your diagnosis who
didn’t need to know. Did you have any trepidation about talking about it so
publicly?
I
did. When I started doing the work that turned into In Between Days, it was really just for me. It was a way of
processing. I think I’m lucky in that I was raised by people who believe deeply
in doing things that have some positive outcome or benefit to the community. [My
family are] socialists from way back! When people suggested to me that the
drawings might be helpful to other people, I thought about it a few ways. I
thought I could have only a tiny bit of time left. What am I afraid of? How is
being public going to make it worse? Whatever I was afraid of was just gone.
Before this
happened, were you a very private person?
I’ve
always been more private with the dark stuff. Which is not unusual, and social
media encourages us to share the good stuff and keep the rest to ourselves.
I’ve never felt like people needed to know the bad parts. Then I was in a
position where it was so bad, so dark, and I was so sad, and I felt alone with
my feelings. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to share the work, because I
thought if someone else is feeling alone with their feelings and they happen to
pick up my book and it makes them say, ‘Yeah, me too!’ then maybe that’s worth
it.
You are—no
offence!—of limited celebrity. What do you think it means when someone who
plays a large role in the culture goes public in such a performative way?
We
don’t talk about it. There is benefit to this being more public. I don’t
consider myself a celebrity at all! I feel fantastic and honoured to have
written a book, but that doesn’t make me as public a person as someone like Gord
Downie. I’m sure you’ve read Susan Sontag’s Illness
as Metaphor, about the way we kept silent, as a culture, about cancer. You
know, [doctors] didn’t even used to tell people who were diagnosed that they
had cancer, because they didn’t want [the patients] to worry about it, and [doctors]
knew they were going to die anyway. But not talking about something doesn’t
make it less scary, it makes it loom larger.
You’ve
said, “We’re encouraged to slip away because people generally prefer it that
way … What is lost when we allow sick people to disappear?” What do you think
society loses when we don’t acknowledge illness?
I
think we lose the depth of the human experience. How can we live with only one
side? The extremes of emotion—extreme joy and extreme grief—are where our deepest
commonalities exist, no matter where that joy or grief comes from. That’s where
we meet. By not talking about it, we are limiting the depth of our connections
with other people, our own opportunities to feel and live. But I also think we
lose the stories and knowledge and experience of a person. We don’t have as
much of a sit-around-and-tell stories culture. Maybe that’s part of why Gord
Downie being so public is so meaningful to people, because he’s a major
national storyteller, one of Canada’s biggest. That warm invitation that
storytelling gives, that foundation of community, is part of what we’re losing,
part of what we’re trying to hold on to.
During that
tour, there were many lines scattered throughout his work that suddenly made
our ears perk up. It had always been there. You talk about being on the subway
and suffering invisible pain; if you had crutches or something, people would
offer you a seat, but nobody knows your story.
Having
illness in the public sphere creates compassion, because we can never know what
these hidden stories are that everybody has. It could be depression, it could
be your organs, it could be anything that doesn’t manifest itself on our
exterior shells, and we’re trained not to look beyond the surface. But the more
these stories are shared, we can build compassion. Not even medical stories:
you don’t know what’s happening in people’s lives, or how they came to live in
this city, what they’ve lived through. [We go on a tangent about Kathleen Hanna
and Lyme disease, another invisible ailment.]
You found a
lump and went to the hospital. Do you think you could have been diagnosed
earlier?
I
try not to dwell. I applied sometime before for the Ontario early detection
program, because of my family [history]. But [the cancer] wasn’t
first-generation, and I came three points short of their algorithm to get an
early mammogram. I had early ultrasounds, which are supposed to be good, but
they didn’t catch this. It’s possible that if I had access to more specific
tests that it might have been caught earlier. Misdiagnoses happen even more
often when we’re younger. We’re not put through the same level of tests older
patients are put through. It’s why I slipped through the cracks. It wasn’t
found until I was Stage 4.
Is there an
age at which it’s automatic?
Yes.
I think it’s fortysomething. But we have no idea how long I was walking around
with cancer.
Breast
cancer is so common I can see why there would be routine tests. But I can’t
imagine there is for brain, colon, oral cancers.
No.
It can take a long time to figure out what’s wrong with somebody. Some cancers
are really sneaky. Pancreatic cancer hides, and is difficult to diagnose. [Note:
pancreatic cancer is what took Sharon Jones.]
You’ve said
you have “more hunger for life and experiences,” and you write, “I really have
nothing to lose. So I am going to say yes even more. Live like a tornado, when
I can. I’m going to suck the marrow out of life and see what I’ve been
missing.” When you talk to people in public forums, do you hear the flip side
of that? Can it give people a complex or worry that they’re not doing enough?
I
don’t think it’s a flip side. I think it’s connected. I feel like that feeling that
you’re not doing enough drives you to do too much, or as much as you can. I’m
about to have a show at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, I’m working on a new art
project, I’m writing another book, I’m writing a cook book, I’m collaborating
with Jordan Tannahill on his project—you know? It’s frantic.
Why do you
think that is?
Because
I thought I had a lot more time to do it all. Sometimes people say, ‘I don’t
know how you do it. I could barely get here today.’ Sometimes I’m that person who can barely do it. It
depends what you’re willing to do, and how important it is to you. Obviously
there are times when you simply can’t, when you have mobility issues, for
example. My palliative care doctor gives me Ritalin to use if I have a speaking
engagement and I’m so tired I can’t do it. It’s not ideal, but there are ways
to fake it.
Regarding
pain medication and opioids, as a creative person, how do these palliative
medicines affect your creativity?
Not
anymore. The opioids don’t have the same effect they had in the beginning. They
just take away pain now. In the beginning, if I suddenly had to dramatically
increase my dose, I would experience that again, but it’s so gradual now. In
the beginning I had problems with it moving around so dramatically; it was
trying to find the right levels and the right drug combinations. I also use
medical marijuana, and that’s more likely to take away some of my [creative] impetus.
But sometimes I have to eat! [Cannabis increases appetite.] It’s a very strange
thing. I used to not be a person who liked to take pills for things. I liked to
be really clear. I’ve had to accept that it’s part of the recipe for getting
through the day. It is interesting how the body changes, how you slide into new
normals.
I hear a
lot of creative people, many of whom have mental health issues, who worry about
prescribed drugs dulling that edge, not allowing them to access the parts of
their brain that are so brilliant. But you’re saying that was more of a hump in
the beginning.
Yeah,
but it will come up again. When there are changes to my status with my disease,
I had some progression and the tumour in my liver grew to the size where it was
pressing against both my stomach and my ribcage. It hurt so much that for a
while I had to double my opioid dose, and for that period of time I was barely
a person. That was just a few months ago. It’s shrunk back down with a new
treatment. You have to be highly adaptive. If you’re not able to roll with it,
it could make you crazy. You have to accept that it’s difficult.
You’ve
talked about rest being a torment, as white noise that accumulates until you
require a creative release. Do you think that’s common, or unique to you as a
creative person?
I
think it’s a common experience, but then again I haven’t had a lot of people
echo it to me. A lot of people talk to me about anxiety, though, and that’s a
facet of anxiety. Almost everybody I’ve been close to who had cancer has talked
about their anxiety and how they manage it. Whether or not they describe it as
white noise, there is something that is pressing.
Did you
have that before your diagnosis?
I
had it before when I was not in the right place, if that makes sense. When I
make choices or not be doing enough creatively. I don’t experience as much
white noise as when I’m successfully creative.
I’ve heard Gord
Downie talk about this a long time ago, before any of this, about how in
between records or writing spells that this hum just builds in his head until
he starts writing.
That’s
exactly it! It’s like off-gassing.
You’ve said
that opioids take the pain from a level 7/10 to a level 3.
Yes.
But it’s a bit of a misrepresentation. I regularly get chided from my
palliative care nurse for undermedicating myself. [The state of having] fully
no pain leaves me a little cloudy. To get to that point I’d have to take so
much more, to get to the point of no pain. Then I’d need that much just to get
to 3 again. There are strategies around switching which opioids you’re taking
for a period of time to resensitize you so you can stay on lower levels. That’s
to avoid some of the side effects of opioid use, like constipation and
sluggishness. I take a little bit less than I probably could, but not
necessarily should. I don’t think I would value my time as much if it was just
passing by. Maybe I wouldn’t care as much.
I’m sure
some people do that.
And
there’s nothing wrong with that, nothing at all. I’m sure my nurse is right
when she says I should be feeling no pain.
I’ve been
reading a novel by Hugh McLennan, The Watch That Ends the Night, and in it
there is a character who’s had a brush with death, and it’s up to her husband
and her lover to decide whether to risk a medical procedure to extend her life.
They decide that she “must be enabled to live her own death,” because “her life
isn’t completed yet. She wants to paint more pictures.”
It’s
a strange pivot. I’m 3½ years into this, and I’m still not reconciled. It makes
me understand why they didn’t tell people [they had cancer]. It changes how you
live. In some ways for the better, in some ways for the worse. You’re
simultaneously living your life but engraving your own death. Which feels like
it should negate itself in a way.
There’s a
positivity in your book, yet fully acknowledging the dark and imminent end.
That’s
part of why the subtitle is “living with cancer.” Because it’s not about dying.
It’s a book about getting life-altering, heartbreaking news and figuring out
how to move forward and still live with joy and with wonder. And getting the
most one can out of what’s available. In a way, [my husband] David and I are
lucky that we don’t have kids, because it means we can do things now that we
probably wouldn’t be able to do. We can spend money going on amazing trips.
Whereas a lot of people I know who are living with late-stage cancer are also
living with a lot of debt or responsibility with their kids, all of these
things that are also wonderful—kids, more than debt (laughs)—but are
potentially hindering their ability to live their death out in a fully
beautiful way, to the best of their potential. That to me is really
heartbreaking. I do think that making dialogue wider and getting people talking
more will make it more possible for people to speak up for themselves, even in
the context of their own relationships, to self-advocate.
