From here

So, where do we go from here? It’s difficult to know, to move on without you and a while ago it seemed an insurmountable task. A memory keeps coming back to me, from the night you left me. Your cousin and her husband had arrived and I will always remember them for the kindness they showed at that time. The funeral director had pulled up outside the house and as I looked outside, I cursed the sun for daring to rise, having already taken the battery out of the clock on the wall. However, despite my great efforts nine months have passed by and still you are gone.

I think it’s fair to say that not a day has gone by when I haven’t thought about this blog, just as not a second goes by when I don’t think about you, even now. I have desperately wanted to continue and have now got to the stage where I don’t know why I haven’t kept up writing. Writing is what I do, I write, everyone knows that. Sitting here tonight has been a stark reminder of why I stopped, remembering just how hard it is to talk to you in this way.

I think to continue this story further, delving into the past is going to be required so I’m going back to the story of how 1944 hurtled to 1977, continued on along side each other and then crashing into each other in 2004.

Bear with me if I repeat things I have already talked about, of course the benefit of hindsight may catch me too. You’ll also forgive me if my memory has failed me, as it often does.

Death's suitcase

I've learned a lot in the last few weeks but it still doesn't cease to amaze me how someone as wonderful, charasmatic and larger than life as you could be gone without trace. And without trace it is, as it seems that as we come to the end of our lives we pack a case for our final journey, we put in death's suitcase all the things that are the essence of us.

These things are the unimportant things that we put no value on in life, your smell, your voice (although that was something I could never get enough of), the way your face creases up in expression, the little things you did, your mannerisms. All the things that made you, you all packed up to be taken in an instant like you were.

Thank goodness for photos, audio clips and old film, the memories we make along the way and the things we steal from death's suitcase to help us on our journey in grief.

These are the thoughts I had while watching an old film of us in Paris last year. I wish we'd had time to steal more from death's suitcase but the time to leave came too soon.

Is this a normal way to feel?

Answers?

Another week, another set of problems. The trouble is this time I'm not sure I want the answers. Your mood hasn't improved very much but now that comes with other problems. You are very unsteady on your feet, it's almost as if you are drunk.

We mention it to the oncologist, or actually I do and get shouted at by you for doing so. You feel as though I have betrayed you by saying these things to the doctor, I hope you forgive me.

The oncologist is as concerned as me, I think he could see the change in you too, they want to send you for a brain scan as it could reveal the answers, answers I'm not sure I want to know.

You also can't drive, you're frustrated and I guess you feel like your last little bit of independence has gone from you.

So now it's more waiting, waiting for the scan, waiting for results. I'm not sure it will mean if the cancer has spread to your brain, I was too afraid to ask.

Is this a normal way to feel?

I've forgotten what normal is, I wonder what we talked about before this? I wonder what life was before this, I have forgotten.

Limitations

This week has been a lesson on limitations and I have reached mine. Let me explain.

I love the very essence of you and everything you stand for, you're like a cooling breeze through a barmy hot day. No matter what happens in life, you stay calm, never a raised voice, never a rant, nothing, just you, breezing through it all.

This is the essence of you and who you are, the calming influence. It's that very bit of you that I fell in love with.

I've had to remind myself of this fact all week because that bit of you I love has gone, and I just hope it's not gone forever. It might even be fair to say you appear to have had a complete personality transplant and it's terrifying. I've never known you get cross but this week everything has made you mad, especially me it seems. I'm walking on eggshells.

You've gone out this evening with friends to watch a rugby game and I'm so glad to have some peace, It seems I do have limitations, even though I think I can deal with everything, actually it's more like I can deal with everything as long as you are you.

Right now you're not and I could scream and shout at you but I try not to.

Is this a normal way to feel?

Tomorrow

When you're a child, all that matters is tomorrow. Tomorrow I start school, tomorrow it's the school play, tomorrow it's Christmas, tomorrow I'm going to a party, tomorrow I go up to big school, tomorrow I'm going to see a band, tomorrow I'm going to the pictures with my boyfriend, tomorrow it's my birthday. That's the stages the children are in.

Now we find ourselves living in the same way. Let's have a break before we go for the results. Our friends made some dreams come true before the chemo started, let's have a couple of days away between chemo sessions, let's have a weekend with friends.

We are like children again, living for the next thing and not looking beyond. Is that a bad thing? probably not and we'll stick with it for now.

Acting like a child, not a bad thing surely.

Is this a normal way to feel?

Chemotherapy

And so the hell on earth that is chemotherapy begins. No matter how much people who have had experience tried to prepare us for how awful it was going to be, nothing could have prepared us for this. How can something that is designed to make you better, make you so very, very ill.

Friday was chemo day and you were superb, I thought you were one of the lucky ones. By Saturday night you were feeling a little ill, Sunday you felt fatigued all day and by Monday you couldn't get out of bed.

For all we had prepared for how ill you would feel, to see you with a mouthful of ulcers, unable to eat, with no energy for anything is horrendous. It certainly makes you ponder on life, quality or quantity? We already know it isn't a cure and what's the use of having longer to spend it like this.

What I wasn't prepared for was how emotionally fraught you would feel, I guess it's easy to be philisophical about dying when you feel so alive, when you're feeling half dead it's a little more difficult. It's so hard to keep you positive and yesterday you sobbed, I've never seen you like that but can totally understand how you feel. I sobbed too, but I waited until I had gone out and sobbed in the car in a supermarket carpark.

All of these feelings after just one session, Friday it starts again.

Is this a normal way to feel?

Living the Dream

I've been neglecting the blog a little, maybe that means we're coping better. I doubt it, I think it just means we have been coming to terms with things.

I still can't get over how brave you are, how accepting. I still feel so cheated and you do too, it's so difficult.

But I refuse to talk about you as if you are dying, I can't think of you that way when you are so very much alive and that's why it's time to start living the dream. That's why I haven't been writing, we've been having fun living.

A family holiday last weekend, making memories and doing things we've been putting off for various reasons. It was so great to see you smile and laugh, even though you found it tiring.

There will be time for tears.. Later. Now is not the time, now is the time for living, having fun and living like there's no tomorrow.

Is this a normal way to feel? I sure hope so!

Cottage Cheese

Yesterday was an awful day and I wondered how I was ever going to get through this and watch you go through the worse time of your life, at what would be the end of your life.

Today is different, your children came the other day, it was lovely to see the relationship you have with them. While I've been searching the net for new treatments and pioneering therapy your daughter has been looking up alternative treatments.

Flax seed oil and cottage cheese she said. I thought how can cottage cheese cure cancer and I must admit I dismissed her thoughts. Today I thought I would look for myself and found an interesting website.

I'm going to share it with you, in the thought that people in my position may be reading this page and taking as much comfort from my words as I am getting from typing them. Click here if you would like to read about the alternative therapy we are going to try, it's called the Budwig diet.

Will it work? I don't know, but it's not going to do any harm. They've already told us they are going to try chemotherapy to shrink the cancer and although we still believe this is still the best option, cottage cheese and flax seed oil is not going to hurt it is?

You? Today was a good day, the steroids they prescribed are kicking in and you're feeling well, the colour is back in your face and I walked in the room earlier and much to my dismay you were cleaning the windows.

I'm smiling, we've laughed. Is this a normal way to feel?

Watching you sleep

I woke early this morning and lay there watching you sleep. You're so beautiful to me and I really could burst with love for you.

Positive thoughts we said, to concentrate on life and the things we can cram in. I want to stay positive, I really do but lying there watching you sleep, listening to you breathing and the trouble that simple act is causing you is breaking my heart.

The thought of you being in pain, the thought of you suffering and struggling for breath. I'm finding myself thinking about how the end will be and I'm scared it's going to come sooner than we hope.

I thought I'd come to terms with losing you, I thought I'd come to terms with you having cancer and now I have I have to come to terms with how hard it's going to be in the end.

Tears are falling, you wake and look at me. "Look at you, silly sausage" you say. I wipe the tears, paint on my smile but the thoughts are still there and I seem to be incapable of shaking them off today.

I wonder what you're thinking behind your smile and I wonder if this is a normal way to feel.

D Day

After all the waiting we should be getting some results. Tomorrow is D Day, assuming they don't move the goalposts again.

Part of me, and you I'm sure would rather not know, the outcome is scary and no matter how much I try and prepare my mind for what may be the worst possible news I just cannot envisage losing you.

You have to be ok, I'm not sure I can face my life without you. I know you're getting worse, your breathing is affected, you can't eat and everything is a huge effort. I keep telling myself all that might be worry, anxiety maybe and not the cancer, it's not working.

You've found a lump on your wrist and your stability and dexterity has been affected, since a cough two weeks ago you are suddenly very ill. I'm scared and for the first time you've admitted you're scared too. You cried, I cried, it's ok to cry, even if you're my big strong man.

They say this is a normal way to feel.

Moving the Goalposts

The 3rd September, just a couple of weeks ago now but it seems like a lifetime. A million thoughts, a barrage of tests, the whole scale of emotions, a biopsy,tubes, blood tests, more worry and a CT scan, at every appointment they tell us they’ll have answers at the next.

But then they keep moving the goalposts, we’re still waiting and you’re so brave. Cancer is such a scary word but you don’t complain or grumble even though it’s clear you’re feeling dreadful, you don’t take it out on your loved ones, even though you feel cheated and frightened. All you do is worry you are being an inconvenience.

That really is the last thing you are. You’re kind and funny and even when you’re not much company there’s nowhere else I’d rather be than by your side, even if that is just to sit and watch you sleep.

It’s a rollercoaster, up and down feelings, one day we wake up feeling positive, throwing positive chit chat back and fore, talking two years down the line, getting married, extending our family, holidays, seeing the children growing up. The next day the black cloud is back and seeing just to the end of the week seems impossible.

We’re told this is a normal way to feel.

He taught me how to laugh

This is me, Katie Crunch. Actually as you may have guessed this isn't really my name, it's a name I was given in college for my inexplicable ability to find trouble and mishaps wherever I go. The years have passed but not much had changed, my ability to veer from one disaster to another had been so well practised it became part of my character.

Many years, various disasters, two children and a few hundred miles later then one day all this changed. I'd met a man, a real gentleman, just what I needed and the most stabling influence I had ever met in my life. He taught me how to laugh again, something that had been long forgotten and he taught me how to slow down enough to take in the wonders of every day, enjoy my children and to just generally enjoy 'being'.

Last week after five years together the crushing news came that this man, who brought so much into my life has cancer. Suddenly, after taking laughing for granted for so long I remember what life was like before I met him and I'm scared I'll forget how to laugh again.

He's being tough, worrying about everyone else because that's what he does. He worries about being a burden on me and I wish I could put him inside my head with the myriad of thoughts I have and show him how I feel. That every second spent in his company is an honour.

We're told this is a normal way to feel.