Tag: hope

Let things come, let things go

…I think that peace is found in the life we lead up until that point.

One small thing at a time.

It’s currently 7:30 a.m. on a beautiful October morning and I am sat on the bed trying to get my breath back after the epic exercise of – walking upstairs. Things are not good at the moment.

I actually write many more pieces than I publish which often end up languishing in a folder un-posted for two reasons: the dreaded imposter syndrome and balance. When writing about something like incurable cancer it can feel hard to strike the right tone: write when things are absolutely awful and it’s too much for people, write in a light-hearted manner and it perhaps doesn’t ring true.

The last piece I wrote and didn’t publish I talked about trying to find a way to a good death. I will come back to this. But first an update.

Things are pretty bad right now, in fact the worst they’ve been so far. This comes as an added blow as the downwards turn has come hot on the back of what was, for a month or two hope that we had found a chemotherapy that was working towards maintenance of the cancer. Spoiler alert, it stopped working and the cancer is having a swift surge return and growth. I am back in a lot of pain and unable to move my head much. I have so much swelling in my neck now that it is hard to swallow and breathe. I do not look like me from all this swelling and I have almost completely lost my voice and so I do not sound like me either.

I have to admit, I am finding it all a bit hard at the moment. When I look in the mirror and see something so alien looking back, when I open my mouth and barely anything comes out and being unable to do anywhere near as much as before without being wiped out and gasping for breath, it’s hard to not wonder – just what is left of ‘me.’

I feel I am being stripped away, unwillingly, bit by bit and I find I spend an awful lot of my resource just putting my mind to trying to deal with this, to decipher who I am anymore. There are days where it is too much and I find myself among the huge waves of grief that feel impossible to navigate. Other days I am able to look at it all with a strange detached curiosity. Let things come, let things go – I must say this fifty times a day to myself. One small thing at a time.

‘Okay, what can I do, then?” is how I am trying to learn to steer myself from being just a great big wet puddle of despair and who am I? “What can I do?” 

On a practical note – not as much. I have to rest a lot more and some days it is as basic as; get myself washed and dressed and cook the main meal of the day and if I’ve achieved that, it’s a win. Other days I manage a little more. I have terrible feelings of guilt about contributing so little to the house these days, it’s something I can’t shake off having always worked and done my fair share before: let things come, let things go. The guilt feeling won’t give me more energy to change things – I attempt to release.

I am unable to sing with my singing group, but we have been meeting for so many years now, and as we say, we are more than just a singing group because of it, that, energy permitting we still meet but craft instead of sing. It is not the same, of course, but we get to see each other and be creative still, just in a different way.

But what of ‘me’ and my place in this world when everything is getting smaller, closer, more restricted? Well, this. I can still write and I have always promised that I would write truthfully about what I am experiencing in the hopes that it may further understanding and discussion about what is somehow still quite a hushed conversation.

Yesterday was a Big Grief Cry day. Today I am able to mentally stand back a little and think with curiosity. Warning, I shall now talk about death – and life.

I found myself a few weeks ago trying to explain what I meant when I said “To have a good death I think you need to find a way to be at peace with it happening.”

I was in the middle of a couple of weeks of all-consuming grief. Having thought that things were going well with treatment and then finding new cancer, I was suddenly unable to pull myself out of a huge low and yes, my thoughts did begin to focus on my death. I know a lot of people won’t want to hear that, but it is a reality and to deny it would be to be untrue. 

I am not afraid of being dead or what comes after. I am afraid of the lead up to dying. And the thing of it is; I just don’t want it to happen. I’m not ready. I don’t want it. There is too much I love in and about this world for me to want to leave it. 

I find that I get glimpses of truths, intangible, often slightly just out of reach bits of knowledge or belief that I catch small pieces of before they melt just out of fully holding. But there are things that feel certain and right and true sometimes.

One of these things is that we know that everything of the natural world has a vibration, an energy. I believe that our natural state is to give and live with positive energy and I think that is how we need to die too so that the vibrations we leave behind are kind and gentle and our passage from this place to whatever comes next is a positive one.

But this throws up a conundrum for me because the idea of being at peace with dying makes me feel like I am betraying the ones I love. It would be like saying I am okay to leave them – and I am not. I still rail against this. I don’t want it. I am not ready. (I can hear my Darling Husband interjecting now in my mind saying that I am jumping ahead anyway as no one is talking about being at that place yet – and he is right, of course.) So this is where I find myself being pulled back and forth between believing I need to find peace and not wanting to yet because it feels like I’d be saying it’s okay. 

I guess I am talking about these things precisely because I have always said I want to talk truthfully about it all and let’s face it, we humans are dreadful at actually addressing this subject in any way other than flippant throwaway comments.

I know it makes most people feel horribly uncomfortable but maybe it would help us all if we really could find some peace with these thoughts sooner rather than later.

So, what can I do? I will try as hard as possible to leave pockets of positive vibrations wherever I can. Maybe with these posts, with my nature writing newsletter, by sending a loving message, by tidying just one drawer in the house. Some days it may be that I am having a bed day, but I can still focus loving thoughts out into the world. These may seem like the tiniest of things but I truly believe that if we all lived this way it would have a huge impact on the world. Ripples of love and positive energy would flow out in concentric circles reaching far wider than we can imagine.

From everything I have heard, learned, the things I feel and those glimpses of truths that dance just in sight but a little out of reach, I would like to offer the reassurance that I really do think that the final act of dying can happen in a positive way and with peace and I think that peace is found in the life we live up until that point. So fill your world with love, kindness, fun and curiosity and I believe it will all be okay in The End.

P.S. Despite the subject matter above, I’m not planning on going anywhere anytime soon. I am starting a new chemo this week and will not give up hope. X

P.P.S. October is Breast Cancer Awareness month and so perhaps I will try to post more pieces throughout it. I am always curious as to what people want to actually read. Is it the truth, as above or do people just want to hear the edited highlights that you see on most cancer adverts that to me do not represent the enormity of it all, but put a shiny veneer on the subject – the old, fought the battle and won now I’m completely new person story? 

Hints of crumble and hope in the wild

And there is hope showing itself again with the return of what was thought lost and done.

Late July and it seems as if the bees and butterflies have finally abandoned a long lie-in and are out and about. Like a lot of people, I have been struck by the drop in numbers this year; it has felt palpable and overtly obvious. But today, sitting in an on-off shade as the sun is drawn in and out from large rolling white clouds, I have seen a small resurgence of bees, butterflies and hoverflies. No, not as many still as previous years, but enough to give me hope.

They are particularly taken with the wild oregano which is flowering with dusky pink frothy heads. It is a bit of a thug of a plant really, spreading itself widely, taking over long grasses and liking surrounding the bases of trees and hedge lines. But I let it do what it wants for the very purpose of knowing the sustenance it gives to insects. It is also a delightful scent that gets released as you brush up against it; warm, slightly spicy and invoking of warmer climes.

Spires of hyssop are also beginning to flower in blue and white and these too pull in the pollinators.

Our garden has gone a little wild and rogue this year as I haven’t been able to do as much as usual. Part of me is desperate to get it back under some kind of control, another part is enjoying sitting back and watching what happens and who arrives amid the chaos.

The culprit’s back end

A month or so ago we had dreadful trouble with a deer who had found a way into our garden. It would come in at night and chomp its way through various plants. Its favourite snacks seemed to be the Japanese anemone, geums, pink sorrel, strawberry plants and the young thin branches of the apple tree I planted last year. Now, as much as I encourage wildlife into the garden, we had to draw the line at this. So it was that we spent a few weeks putting off planting out our vegetable crops while we tried to figure out where the deer was getting in and then putting things in place to try to stop it. This saw me each morning doing a round of the garden in my pyjamas, dressing gown and boots stealthily trying to see where the deer (who was found lurking under the trees on many occasions) would suddenly dash off to and run away via. If anyone saw me, I must have looked quite insane and this view likely compounded by the putting up of fencing at possible entry points adorned with bells, ribbons and shiny strips to try to put the deer off. My covert dashes in bedwear failed, however Darling Husband managed to spot the place of its egress and successfully close off access.

Now, I sit and see that against the odds of munching decimation, everything has grown back fully and flowering. And there is hope showing itself again with the return of what was thought lost and done.

Japanese Anenome

I picked the first plums and blackberries today, the latter though deep, black and soft, were face-pulling-ly tart; too early and without enough consistent warmth to sweeten them. There is a bramble which always grows within the branches of the neighbour’s apple tree which hangs over our fence. The spiny stems adorned with wild fruit lying next to swelling apples, always makes me think they are producing some kind of hybrid ready-filling for an apple and blackberry crumble.

Blackberry and Apple

I know most people wish days away in the later months to hurry spring and summer forward, but I have a kind of aching love and comfort in autumn. I do not long for the days to pass quickly to get there, every day is to be savoured, but I am not one to fear or dread the changing of the seasons to the one where I feel most at home.

And I’m not even sure that we have seasons any longer. We often appear to have each one every month for just a few days at a time. Change is happening, it is undeniable and it is hard at times not to see only the negative shifts. But nature continues to show us there is hope and we must build on that, and perhaps a starting place might be to make sure we also notice the good and the hopeful. Never lose sight. Never lose heart.