Monday 9th February

I worked like a demon today to meet a deadline – and it felt good. It was also damn exhausting.

This was a different type of exhaustion, though, from the one I’m used to in the past few months. I didn’t feel simply exhausted and just that my body wasn’t coping properly, I felt wired up and tired out from concentrating too hard, sitting at the computer too long and focusing so much on what had to go where and how to say certain things.

Tonight I feel the same – tired because it’s late and I really do need to sleep sometimes, but not just sommer exhausted. Maybe, just maybe the chemo is starting to lose its grip J

I can still taste the chemo taste, though, so no bells and whistles yet!

Mum used to quote Ecclesiastes often: ‘To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven.’

So true. And so necessarily philosophical – sometimes you just have to wait for the moment to arrive, or for the purpose of something to reveal itself.

I suppose this whole ‘feeling myself’ thing is just another thing for which I just have to wait. It will happen in its own time, when it is ready to happen – when my body has finally said ‘Ciao’ to the Red Devil.

Every-so-often, the harshness of the drug is brought home to me. The doc said, the other day, that I should have a bone density scan – not a bad idea at my age, but also specifically to provide a base line measurement when they check again because the chemo can cause damage there – which will only be detectable in about two years! Seems amazingly far away.

And yet, again, time is only relative.

It’s nearly 9 months since Mum passed away – and yet it feels as though it was yesterday that she was still here. We will go to the farm this weekend to scatter her ashes. So sad, so very sad.

I still miss her all the time.

Maybe, with more time, I will miss her less, but I don’t know. Maybe not actually less, just less frequently. I really don’t know, though.

She was so important to all of us.

When I witness the intensity of the effect of the events of last year on those close to me, I want to cry over and over. So, so much that will affect all of us in so many ways for so, so long.

Maybe, eventually, there will be the time when it will not be quite so bad, quite so harsh, quite so immense.

Till then, we all continue to take one day at a time, to deal with what is thrown our way and to continue to battle through the aftermath.

Never alone, always there for one another. The value and strength of family is part of who we are and what makes us stronger.