Brian - clouds.
The dark ones are many and random, some anticipated and others when you least expect them like when you see a fit couple of your own age group enjoying life or doing something as mundane as the supermarket shop. You get the clouds descend every time a cancer advert comes on telly and when you see a collector for MacMillan out on the streets. Constant reminders of a life once free of illness and your current status cause more clouds to descend and it all becomes too much.
So how do you deal with it? You deal with it like this......
You pause. You take stock of your life. You remain thankful for all those good years you’ve had and you switch your thoughts to terminally ill children in hospital whose only ambition is to make it to a sixth or eighth birthday. To the young men and women in their 20s or 30s cut down by serious illness which means they will never reach the joys of the years you have nor see children grow or the years pass. You count your blessings and remain thankful. You do not concentrate on the old men in rude health in their 70s and 80s and do not bear grudge nor become jealous because that is deeply negative and only brings more clouds.
Above all, you realise and keep telling yourself that you are nobody special, no matter how much you might love yourself - and that every one of us will follow the same exit but at different stages. We will all pass. What we must do at whatever age we are is wring every last drop of joy from our lives no matter how dark and pessimistic the future seems - no matter how bad those consultsnt appointments go. Sometimes, the fear will overwhelm you - it often does me - then you take your mind as per previous and thank your lucky stars that you’ve made it this far in a world where a lack of opportunities for millions means an early death or starvation, or oppression, or war.
Cancer or not. We are the fortunate few. We know our fate. We don’t want it but we have the power to plan our futures however uncertain. Millions don’t and never fulfil their potential because they take life for granted. We never will. The reason is because WE ARE GIANTS.
Bazza