As the daffodils come into bloom this year, I am reminded that April is Daffodil Month, the Canadian Cancer Society’s awareness and fundraising month for cancer. And then I can’t help thinking of the heart-wrenching memoir I recently finished reading, Still, I Cannot Save You: A Memoir of Sisterhood, Love, and Letting Go (McLelland and Stewart, 2023) by Kelly S. Thompson.

The book opens as Thompson, an officer in the Canadian military, waits to meet her sister in a shopping mall. Christmas music plays in the background as Thompson wonders if, this time, her older sister Meghan will show up. Meghan, we learn, is an addict and as such unpredictable and unreliable. And she also survived cancer as a very young child. She’s also thin, and three inches shorter than her younger sister. Genetics or the impact of cancer and chemotherapy on the development of a three-year-old? Impossible to know. 

As the years move forward, Meghan sobers up, finds a man, has a child, and marries the baby’s father, an abusive alcoholic. Thompson is medically discharged from the military due to her own bout with cancer. She too marries, learns she can’t have children, lives with depression. 

Through it all, the sisterly closeness that eluded them through Meghan’s addiction slowly returns. Just when they are closer than they’ve ever been, and as Meghan welcomes another child, she’s diagnosed with cancer again, this time a large sarcoma that had been hidden behind the growing fetus.  

With all the tragedy and hardship this family faces – both parents have survived cancer and the girls’ mother is coping with MS – it’s amazing that Thompson is able to write with humour about what must have been one of the darkest chapters of her life. At one point, Thompson sets about dying her sister’s hair in an effort to help her feel attractive. After letting the dye do its work, they head into the bathroom to rinse it out. 

“Alright, let’s hose you down,” I said, gesturing to the bathroom. 

“How am I going to keep my pyjamas clean?” …

“Just go in there naked. I’m your sister, what do I care? I’ll be in my bra and underwear anyways. Don’t want to get soaked.” …

She gingerly stripped down to reveal a padded Depend, convenient after having a child. Her breasts were pendulous, filled with milk, nipples white with colostrum. I could not take my eyes off them. “Well at least your boobs look great.” 

She gave her chest a gentle shimmy. “Yeah, I’m a regular porn star.” We giggled at this as I helped her shuffle into the bathroom, shocked at how she was rail thin yet simultaneously puffy. She sat on the supportive bathing chair and then leaned forward as I set to work with the extendable shower head, releasing a stream of inky brown from the tendrils that dangled over her face. That is, until I dropped the shower handle, cracking off the cover and sending water everywhere in a zealous spray, cascading blotches of dye across the walls, Meghan, and the bathroom. The incontinence brief hung limp with liquid and mascara ran down my face, pooling within the brown sludge at our feet. 

“There’s a porn movie in this somewhere,” Meghan said, laughing so hard she was gasping and clutching at her misshapen stomach. 

“What’s with you and porn today? Besides, I don’t think anyone in porn is wearing a diaper.” I was laughing too hard to control the shower handle … 

“Oh, you’d be surprised,” she said. And then we laughed even harder. 

I devoured this book in a couple of days. You should too, but make sure you have a box of tissues at hand.

Edited to add: I belatedly learned that Kelly S. Thompson is not an alumnus of the MFA program but a mentor! Oh well, I’d always figured once I was running out of books by grads I’d start reviewing books my mentors and directors—there are plenty of those too. Now if the grads would just take a pause from being so prolific …

Other books about family, for better and worse:

One Strong Girl: Surviving the Unimaginable—A Mother’s Memoir, by S. Lesley Buxton.

How to Clean a Fish: And Other Adventures in Portugal, by Esmeralda Cabral.

Run, Hide, Repeat: A Memoir of a Fugitive Childhood, by Pauline Dakin.

The View from Coffin Ridge: A Childhood Exhumed, by Gwen Lamont.

The Scientist and the Psychic: A Son’s Exploration of His Mother’s Gift, by Christian Smith.

The Minister’s Wife: A Memoir of Faith, Doubt, Friendship, Loneliness, Forgiveness, and More …, by Karen Stiller.

Peace by Chocolate: The Hadhad Family’s Remarkable Journey from Syria to Canada, by Jon Tattrie.

The Heart of Homestay: Creating Meaningful Connections While Hosting International Students, by Jennifer Robin Wilson.