I feel sick. I feel sick at the end of every day now, my digestive system battered by stress, my body the victim of unwanted change. There are internal and external signs, marks made and left as if to be read at a future date, like the rings of a tree trunk, a sort of physiological archaeology. The sickness fuels the anger, the anger the sadness, and we are back forever in a position of working, working hard at fixing, solving, changing, just trying to make it all better.
I am taken by surprise by a photograph: of the past, before the cancer. And here now, I have my very own moment of stark clarity, that those moments, since forgotten, were of a time so foreign, so full of a joy, of minor tribulations and niggles and disagreements, so full of everything and nothing at the same time, and never, ever again, to feel as I felt in that photo.
The feeling that this is the southern most point, that the low can't be lower, that the daily fight through acres of this confronting pressure must get milder, that really there must be a corner soon, a lifting of something, a change that enables, an end to the sickness.
To look at my children, fighting their own dark and difficult fight. The eldest almost completely despondent, saved thankfully by the simplest of childlike pleasures: animals, paint, cartoons. The youngest fuelled by affection, soaking it through every pore, with a love for the world that can wash my heart clean.
But: there is a core around me and in me that is my concrete foundation. The people. Here, there, close, far. Some I know well, some barely at all; I am excited, about all of them, I can see hope in the future because of them, and I think we all have a place. No great complex expectations, only joyous, positive anticipation. I have realised some of my value.
Because of my children and the people I will not wither. I would miss too much; and then, really, when all is said and done, quite what would have been the point of it all.
