Tears on a plane

Saying goodbye to anyone you love is tough. Saying goodbye to my parents is very very tough. It hits me differently every time.I’m not a call every day girl or live close by girl and never have been; maybe this is the downside of our family’s emphasis on resilience and independence? Anyway, it just worked out like that.

My parents aren’t call every day people either.  I never know what I’d say, for one thing.  I always knew I’d travel, then I landed overseas and didn’t come back, except for visits.
Childhood in one country, adulthood in another.

Saying goodbye is never easy. It’s even harder when life’s curve balls keep coming.

Cancer is part of our family and my parents are super brave.  Now, we are all, the diagnosed, the treated or being treated and the monitored.  We are all now carers of people living with cancer.  For my liking, we are far too familiar with hospitals and their machinations.  Being with Mum and Dad during a small part of Mum’s big C journey, seeing her handle it with courage and honesty has been a mix of scary, reassuring, and inspiring.

Strange, how living with cancer is both normal because it’s so common yet abnormal because it demands a new normal to be created…and ultimately accepted. A new normal for carers as well as patients.  Treatment disrupts lifestyles either temporarily or forever more.  Scans and check ups creep into lives like tax bills; always there in the diary, we know they are coming and we don’t really want to think about them or the possibility of having to pay more.  Isn’t getting cancer in the first place, enough?

Worries, thoughts, about relapse or recurrence, hover around.  They are set aside for short bursts of positivity and focus on the important things, before appearing like a politician, front and centre, even if there is nothing new to say.

Saying goodbye is never easy.

Though I wouldn’t mind, if it was GOODBYE CANCER.

Acknowledgements