I didn’t write last week, felt numb, in shock and not up to sitting up here in my study, let alone write. It has been a horrible start to 2018 and end to 2017. It doesn’t matter how much you expect something, it is always a shock when it happens.
2017 left us with my beloved brother Tony, taken into hospice care. I have written before about his fight against cancer, and had hoped the doctors had got it wrong. 22 years ago, Tony was given 2 years to live after being diagnosed with MID, a disease that gives him multiple mini strokes. Thankfully they had been wrong. So why can’t they get it wrong again, this time? I hoped. But they didn’t, they were right, they gave him a year this time last year and he lost his fight on January 4th 2018. He had wanted to die at home and his daughter made sure he had his wish and brought him home on New Years Eve. I spoke with him as much as he was able to talk, every other day, then every day up until he could no longer speak, the day before he died. I think we both knew because I had said I would ring again and he told me he wasn’t very chatty. The last words he said to me were ‘Loves you’ and I said the same to him with a lump in my throat. My heart began to break.
In a state of pain and hurt for my loss and that of his children, I have and am, trying to get back on track. Tony would tell me off if he saw me today. When he first told me his diagnosis last year, I was upset and angry, ‘It’s alright’ he told me calmly but it wasn’t alright. I wasn’t alright. He had been the only constant in my life from the beginning. The one I would go to, the one I would call on and he knew he could always call on me. He phoned me a couple of months ago when he had asked his daughter if he was dying. She told me he cried. My big bear of a man, crying. That day he left a message on my answer phone, I was at the doctors I think, saying he just wanted a chat. I still have that message but can’t yet listen to it. I am finding all of this incredibly hard. Not sure how to be, how to feel. At times like this family should pull together like Tony’s family, the family he made are doing. They should comfort and support each other and share the grief of losing a much-loved brother, or at least, much-loved by me. My own birth family is a very dysfunctional family, always has been and don’t talk to me, well not directly, so this would never happen. Not that I would have expected it, even at times of great heartache, they choose to continue their vendetta against me, but more on this later.
This past week has seen David having to have a third skin cancer removed, this time from his face. I know it is only a minor operation, or was and know he will be fine but the association with cancer, hospital etc. brings me to a halt. David having Prostate cancer, my sister Georgina dying from cancer as did my closest friend Mo, have left the very word sticking in my throat. I hate cancer and everything that goes with it. The waiting, the worrying, the fear and the what ifs’. I hate, in the case of PC, the side effects and lifelong after effects of surgery. It all makes me angry, sad and scared. To make it even harder my little dog has had surgery on a cancer and is now inoperable. Not in any pain but does have worrying days, between the normal happy ones. We worry about leaving her and she has become very clingy to me since having surgery, so we don’t leave her if we don’t have to. So Friday, having to be away from home for the whole of the day, wasn’t an option as David said. Marie, our daughter drove her dad to Swansea and I stayed at home with Ellie. It was a very long day. They checked in with me when they arrived, after surgery and before they left to come home. The house seemed strange without my husband, I think or rather know, that this is the first day I have been here ‘on the farm’, on my own. 9 years. Very odd. I knew I needed to keep busy, so wrote a blog for my family, those who loved Tony and his friends, telling of happy memories I had of him that they would not have known about. I had to try to overlay the grief with good things and so this helped me a bit. I only posted it on my page and not on my groups. David has to go back to see the consultant for the results and to have the dressing taken off and the plastics team to assess the skin graft, next Friday, again in Swansea. Marie will once again take him. She really is a good caring daughter.
The following week brings the next hurdle, the next PSA test and then, following on, will be the results of that at a meeting with the surgeon, who carried out David’s robotic operation to remove the prostate. As some of you know, these tests bring their own fears and worry. The ‘what ifs ‘ return in full force even though you try to ignore them, they are there. We will go together as we have done all through this horrible time, as it is a morning appointment and Marie will dog sit, we will go with everything crossed and a great deal of hope.
As I have said before, when PC strikes it takes no account of anything that is happening in your life at that time. For every follow-up appointment, the fear, the memories and the ‘what if’s’ rule my life.
I have been a bit selfish, haven’t been on my groups, commenting and supporting others. Couldn’t handle it with all that is going on. I am trying to be strong for my husband and my little dog. Cancer of any kind is a dirty word in our home. I know many others have it worse and I feel for them but I know that we have had our fill of pain, fear and hurt this year and it is only mid January. So sorry for those posts I have missed. I suppose in a way, the ‘nasties’ inflicted on my family, through the things done to me, are a cancer of their own in a way. Spreading, with lies and stories contaminating anyone who doesn’t know me but is told the lies about me.
One year ago, I wrote a blog on here that was commented on by my eldest daughter. The blog was telling of how she betrayed my brother and his trust in her, in the worst way possible.I was angry, hurt and ashamed. If people want you to write kindly about them, then they should behave better to you and others. I did not allow the comments, as they showed her for what she is, nasty, vindictive, a liar all in foul language. A week ago, the day I didn’t blog, because of being so upset at losing Tony, I received a nasty comment on the same blog that I had written a year ago. I allowed this comment. Accusing me of lying, talking rubbish and lying about my youngest sister and all from someone whom I have never met. Cowardly as she used a false name and email but I now KNOW who she is. I hate cowards, if someone has something to say that they believe to be true, they should at least write in their own name. No thought for the way I was feeling, no respect for my having lost someone so dear to me, no compassion, just nasty evil lies bad mouthing me. I wouldn’t mind if what was said, was true or if she knew me or thought they were true. But no. She doesn’t know me, only heard what some else has told her. I am not concerned re the content but really don’t need this now. Why wait a year to comment on this blog? Why now when I am grief-stricken? Because they think me vulnerable. They will know how I am hurting, both my daughter Lisa and sister ‘s, June and Trisha, know how much I loved my brother and know how I must be hurting. This comment showed me their selfishness, their lack of compassion and their cruelty. But most of all their lack of respect for Tony.
This was followed with a reply from a letter I wrote at the beginning of December to my now eldest sister June, putting it inside of a Christmas card, asking if we can get things back on track, as Tony would soon no longer be here. I felt we could help each other in our sadness and grief. My letter to her,was asking if the closeness we always shared, could be rekindled. June cannot read or write, I knew someone would read it to her, so I know someone put her up to replying in such a nasty manner. Why didn’t she reply before Christmas? Why didn’t she return my Christmas card as she did her birthday card? Why. Because the timing was right for any hurt inflicted on me, to happen now. She did not mention Tony, say how upset she was, just intent on causing me pain. Well, she needn’t have bothered, I am all hurt out now. You could, I suppose, excuse people, who try to hurt you when they are unaware of what is going on in your life, but these two acts were heartless to the extreme. I know who put June up to sending this letter and one day I hope they hurt as much as I am hurting now. Not very Christian I know but after 4 years of this, I don’t feel very Christian. I am now trusting Karma.
So January and February are bad months already, things gone and things we know are to come. Lots of worry, hurt, grief and loss bringing great sadness. The little girl in me is very evident.
I have noticed these past few months, that David has changed. In the past he has always been strong, almost dismissive of things that should have been of a concern but not now. He was anxious around this last procedure and is not the same as he usually is, today. He seems almost vulnerable, not something I have seen in him before. Marie said he was so eager to leave the hospital, the nurse had to almost order him to stay until he had been assessed. He says it was to get back to me and the animals but I am not so sure. Tony’s death has left me reeling, it has made me more sad than I had envisaged and David has been such a comfort to me. But the last week, things that have happened have made him so angry and disgusted that I know he worries about my health and how others have rendered me so unwell. I also think that ‘here on the farm’; we are safe. It is our home, our bit of paradise, where we live out ‘our fairytale’ that makes some people in my family, jealous of what we have. It is here that he holds me when I cry, comforts me during this awful grief and loves me through all of the pain and I do the same for him. Even when some around me try their best to destroy our peace. It is where we make our memories.
I have to remind myself of my blessings. Tony used to say how lucky I am, a wonderful husband and daughter, good friends and now once again family who care. I live in the most beautiful part of Wales in a lovely house surrounded by countryside, our lake and pond and numerous wildlife. Tony never saw this house but loved our previous home, a country cottage in Monmouth and visited regularly with Lin, his wife. Yes I am lucky for all of that but most of all because I have David to share it all with. Those trying to spoil it are not important enough to impact on any of that.
I will grieve for my beloved Tony, and refuse to let those trying so hard to hurt me at this horrid time, to succeed. Everything I have I have worked hard for. Everything I am I have worked hard to be. If they don’t like it, that is their issue not mine. I know I would never have done any of the evil things they have done to me but most of all, the past week has shown me that they lack compassion, empathy and pure decency to attack anyone when that person is grieving for someone they love. Unforgivable. It says so much about them and allows me to be pleased not to be part of the family they belong to. Family doesn’t tear each other apart.
Sorry if this sounds down but grief does that. It also makes you selfish and I understand and apologise for that. ‘ Karma will see, that the people who hurt others will get their just desserts’. I am beginning to hope this is right.
Carol Ann, a ‘real woman’.
Thankyou for reading x
carolannwright 