These are among the first pages in Robert’s sketchbook for his Illness & Healing series. The hospital experience begins with check-in and registration, and the waiting this entails. The station that handles this work, with its identical numbered cubicles, is set up for maximum efficiency. The wall clock reinforces this point. However only one of the five cubicles is being used, as the hospital is under-staffed. The emptiness of the check-in cubicles contrasts with the crowded-together bodies of the waiting family on the next page. They also sit by a clock. Time for them is more of a test and an ordeal. Waiting is an essential part of the patient experience: the patient waits her turn to see a specialist, the patient waits for treatments to take effect, the patient waits for news of her condition.
Robert created these images in January, 1989. In February he received a letter from Douglas How, a Toronto-based reporter and novelist, who was also a cancer patient, as was his wife, Jean. Robert illustrated a couple of How’s books and the two men had become friends. In his letter, How makes suggestions to Robert for possible paintings, based on the ordeals he and Jean had just gone through. Here is one of them: “1. The waiting room at the Cancer Clinic in Halifax. So prim. So proper. For many, the lobby for bureaucraticized death. Will it be like this at the Pearly Gtaes? Almost invariably two people waiting together: the stricken and someone to stand with them. The silence. As pervasive, as intimidating as the atmosphere of libraries or the parlours of great aunts.”
Douglas How is a professional observer of people and he kindly feeds ideas and shares experiences with Robert. But he is only one of a much larger network of friends and fellow patients with whom Robert is receiving feedback. Whether he intended it or not, Robert has become a channeller and spokesman for the experiences of others. His cancer project is deeply personal, but it has this other purpose, which functions like a community sharing stories with one another.
