In the Pink

This week my university celebrates Pink Week - a series of events all designed to raise as much money as possible for Breast Cancer Research. I myself was fortunate enough to attend the Pink Week Ball, hosted at a secret location half an hour outside of Cambridge. It was a heart warming event. Lots of laughter, lots of smiles, and plenty of pink. Baby pink dresses, cerise shoes, sparkly bubblegum balloons and any other shade you could imagine.

The week is obviously for a great cause, which helps add to the spirit of the events, but it also raises lots of difficult feelings and thoughts that can be hard to face. I was fortunate enough to have an absolutely outstanding teacher in my high school. Philippa Madams. What a woman! She was a somewhat unconventional teacher, and I distinctly remember one lesson we spoke about the Matrix and the real possibility that we are living in a purely imagined universe. We also spoke about Buffy the Vampire Slayer quite a lot. She may have been my Classics teacher, but she was so much more than that. Alright the life lessons didn't come in the form of conspiracy theories, but what she did so successfully was foster our enthusiasm for thinking, especially thinking outside of the box. She gave me a real love of Classics as a subject that seemed to defy boundaries and boxes, outlasting the limits of its own antiquity.

During my sixth form years she was unfortunately very ill. She had already been through a lot of emotional trauma, which made the blow of cervical cancer seem even more cruel. We only saw her on and off and our lives were filled with supply teachers who had no hope of living up to a legend. There was suggestions that she was getting better, and I knew with all my heart that she was a fighter. And she did fight. She fought it off. But the cancer came back. In that cruel, insidious way that it has, hiding in the recesses of your body and waiting to pounce. And this time it had come with a vengeance. A purpose. An aim to deny the world a little bit of that legend.

I was on my gap year when I found out she had slipped away. She had not long turned 40. As is the way I took her death in a selfish light and bemoaned the fact that I had failed to see her. I had written her a letter, but it hardly confessed all I felt about her, and how much of an impact I knew she had made on my life. She had steered my course without even knowing it. I made my appearance at the funeral, and I can recall with such vivid detail the moment her mum stood up to speak. It was an emblem of the cruelty of fate, the workings of the world, the upsetting of the 'natural order'. It was not fair.

Of course I cried. I had been fortunate enough to know little death in my life before that, and so it hit me particularly hard. But it was also hard to take because she in my mind was the strongest person I had ever known. She was always overflowing with life, brimming with bubbly laughter. She was the centre of attention. She was the marmite of the staff room - but I was on the side of those who loved her, earnestly. I still maintain contact with my old school and my other classics teacher who works tirelessly not only in keeping the Classics community alive, but in honouring the memory of Miss Madams. The school help to raise money for the hospice who helped her live out her last few days, and I could not be more proud of Melanie for all her hard work and support. Philippa would be loving it.

There are many things I do in my life which I owe to Philippa, or which make me think of her. Not least because I study Classics, or I starred in the Cambridge Greek Play which she had always run as a school trip. But more importantly because she taught me and all those who had the pleasure of her person. She had instilled in me a desire to do something good every day. It didn't have to be life changing. It didn't have to shake the world. But something, just a little something, that would brighten the world for that moment, however brief. Carrying the shopping, opening a door, offering thanks or a smile, or a shoulder to cry on. Anything you could do to make the world just a little bit brighter. That was the Madams effect, something science cannot explain, which has passed into the world of myth and legend. Madams, we miss you.