Wednesday 31st December

I went for a run this morning – and a swim, not in the rain this time, which was just so like how it’s supposed to be. At least, that’s how it felt.

So many times, though, things are not as they are supposed to be. Especially for us. Not any more.

At least, that’s how it feels J

Maybe one of the things we have to accept about life is that the ‘supposed to bes’ are not absolute. Things have to change. Things will change. The test for us, as human beings, is to adapt to the changes and make our way through what is left.

Mum and Dad have both gone. And yet, they are still here in so many ways. Sarah said something that showed she finds the same experience that I do: just out of the corner of her eye, Gran is there. It is so much like that all the time for me – Mum is just around the next corner, or in the next room. She has gone, but she hasn’t. She will always be here.

Things are often like that, not what we expect.

I have had a similar reaction to me with this chemo. So many times people have told me that I look good. How else am I supposed to look? Today, Charnelle’s dad, who hasn’t seen me at all during the process, said a similar thing and added that he didn’t know what to expect.

That explains how I feel a lot of the time: I’m not quite sure how I’m supposed to be responding, or even what people expect of me. Sometimes I think that people expect me to be in a sick bed, or looking really haggard, or just being very circumspect about life. The closest I get to being in my sick bed is to be sleeping more than I usually do, because I feel tired a lot of the time. I’m not quite sure about the looking haggard thing, except that Carl is quick to tell me when I look very tired. I know that I am quite conscious about taking things a little easier than usual and not rushing around too much doing too much exercise. Perhaps that is being circumspect, I’m not sure.

I do know that, from the beginning of this cancer thing, I have not been sure what is expected of me, how I should be reacting. I have just gone ahead and been me and done things the way I have. (There is not a song coming on here, although strains of My Way do echo somewhere in a recess of my brain.)

I’ve also said, from the beginning, that there is only one way of doing this and that is to forge ahead, taking each hurdle as it comes. I think I have done that. I know that I continue to do the ‘one step at a time’ thing.

After all, there is no other way to climb a mountain.