Breaking the habit of a lifetime, I decided to read some of the online comments about a column I wrote last week. A column in which I said that, given Andrew had plunged the royals into an existential crisis, Prince William, as future King, should step into the breach and stop leaving all the heavy lifting to his father King Charles. I said William appeared to be a most reluctant King-in-waiting, that he and Kate conducted too few royal appearances and it was time for him to man up and tackle the unprecedented threat to the Monarchy. All of this I truly believe as a monarchist who is desperate to see the institution survive. And of course I expressed the utmost compassion for Kate and William in their battle against her cancer, as well as understanding over his decision to take time out from royal duties while she recovered.
I Know Cancer's Cruelty -- I've Lived It Too
It was a column that provoked a good deal of reaction from readers, many of whom considered my criticism of the Waleses unreasonable. One recurring theme of that criticism was how unfair it was of me to ask William to do more when Kate has been so ill. What did I know about cancer, readers asked, or, more pertinently, about a loved one suffering from it. 'How would you feel in his shoes?' one person demanded in anger. Well, as it happens, I do know a lot about it. Because I have walked in William's shoes. I lay down beside my beautiful big brother, holding his hand on the night in the 1990s when I lost him to cancer, and heard his final words: 'I love you, Mandy. See ya'. He used the same 'See ya' phrase to my parents and his children, giving us all a glimmer of hope that we would meet again after the unbearable sadness and loss we suffered.
The Call That Changed Everything: 'He's Dying'
I remember with horrible clarity the moment I received a phone call from my dad in Australia at my London office. He never called me there except in an emergency. He said: 'Come home, Mandy. Michael has cancer, he's dying.' My big burly brother, who had always protected me, even to the extent of chasing away unsuitable boyfriends down the street with a loaded shotgun, was a shadow of his former self, wearing a mask and linked up to an oxygen tank. He was so thin I hardly recognised him as he sat in his living room barely able to speak or even breathe. I will never forget the sickening thud after he attempted to go alone to the upstairs loo - and fell back down the stairs.
Nor how I would kneel - as an adult in my 30s - in my childhood bedroom at night praying for Jesus to save him. Nor how the only sound in our small bungalow came from my parents' bedroom where my mother was quietly sobbing and my father trying to comfort her. That and the occasional click of her rosary beads as she, a devout Catholic, prayed for a recovery that would never come. He had incurable mesothelioma, a type of cancer caused by asbestos exposure. As a boy he had cut bricks with an asbestos blade. He earned good money doing 10-hour shifts at just 17, and would arrive home covered in deadly grey asbestos dust. It can be as long as 40 years before mesothelioma shows itself. It finally got him as he was about to turn 41 - younger than Kate was when she was diagnosed at 42. Before the terrible back pain started - that was the first symptom - Michael had been more contented than I'd ever known him, happily married in a lovely home with two young children.
He was a pharmacist, and thought the pain was down to standing for hours in the pharmacy he owned. When he learned the truth, the doctors told him and his young wife that he had six months to live at best. He lasted four. I spent most of that time with him in Perth as his strength waned. I will always cherish our last Christmas Day together, when he and his wife arrived at the family home, his legs wreathed in white surgical bandages. He was gasping for air, bravely saying he wanted to prove to me he wasn't a 'goner' yet. He died two days later. The cries of his young son as I cradled him the morning after Michael died will never leave me. As only a child could, he was pleading: 'Why didn't Dad tell me he needed a new lung, I could have got a weekend job and saved up for one.' I remember thinking at Michael's funeral - which was stacked to the gunwales with hundreds of his friends - that a sister should never have to bury her big brother. Thinking how he would have hated that fact it was a scorching 40C - he never liked hot weather. My only consolation was that in the depths of his deep, cold grave it would be cooler. There was no saving Michael; the slither of asbestos in his lungs from when he worked in the brickyards decades earlier did its work and taught me more than I ever wanted to know about the insidious nature of mesothelioma.
Yet the truth is, I was already no stranger to cancer. A few years before Michael's diagnosis, I found myself sitting in a cramped room with a consultant telling me my cervical cancer had spread and I needed a complete hysterectomy. So in my mid-thirties, I learned there was no chance of conceiving the children I had longed for. Worse, in those days I was deemed too old to adopt. I think the reason I am telling you the story of my brother's death is I would like to suggest we should all perhaps pause and think before we criticise. We are all quick to judgment and, as a columnist, I have rained criticism on those I felt deserved it. In some cases I have regretted doing so, and said so in print. With social media the temptation to impetuously cast down those you disagree with can be instantaneous and hard to resist. So, to all you keyboard warriors out there, I just want to ask you to pause before you start typing. I do understand the pain and trauma caused by cancer. I have pictures of Michael and me together by my bedside and on the desk where I write; in fact just about everywhere. I have shed a million tears over Michael's death and expect I will shed a million more. The grief over his passing will be with me for the rest of my life.