Arrrrgggggggggh!

The past few weeks have been, in all honesty, somewhat utter shite! You know how you suddenly have those periods where every time you turn around you gasp and then think AAAArrrrrggggggh?! Well, that’s what it’s been like.

It all started with some tragic news about a work colleague who’s wife suddenly died on holiday. She wasn’t old at all, only in her mid 40s and whilst she had been ill for a long time it was never something tragic or where you thought her life would be cut short as a result of it. It hit people hard as she had worked in our company for a while too. I never knew her but to see my friend and both their families so hurt by her loss had us all in bits at her funeral. And you know he is truly grieving now, after the funeral, when it all hits him properly. I just want to sit in front of him and have him off load just so that *I* can feel less of a useless ornament and a bit more like someone who is helping. But you can’t can you…there’s nothing anyone can do to take that grief away.

And THEN I find out that someone who I once knew from working on a previous account is in the last stages of cancer and has been given a few more weeks to live. What??! How do you deal with something like that if it happened to you? To know when your days will be up? That you won’t actually be here for the next birthday or anniversary or that trip to New York you’ve been prattling on about for years to anyone that’d listen? Would you suddenly feel like you should have done more? And faster? Would you spend your days just writing will after will and tying up loose ends? How do you actually even register that thought? Some people have reasoned that at least he is able to “sort things out”. Hmmmmm…I dunno. I’ve been thinking a lot about he is feeling recently and I concluded that, for myself, I don’t actually ever want to know in advance of when I will go. That’s a fairly stupid thing to say I guess as I reckon about 99.9% of folk don’t. It just makes me think…shouldn’t we be doing all the things we want to do RIGHT NOW?!

And THEN…last week we find out 3 colleagues at work are trying to nurse their partners / family through various stages of cancer. I know what you’re thinking…never work where I work. But seriously, these people bounce into the office and bounce out. Like technical tiggers. Full of life and fun and smiles and behind it all they are going through such a hard time its hard to comprehend. Balancing hospital visits and treatments with their own workload. All of them wanting to work around their partners treatments and all of them showing grit and determination and a positivity that is genuine. Full of matter of factness. Why is it every time you turn around these days someone ELSE has cancer? IT is shite!! And hard. And horrible. I then wonder if statistically I am due someone very close to me getting it? Isn’t it one in 3 these days? How shite!!!!

I know it’s the circle of life and we are now at an age where we will come across this more and more. You hear of older people saying “I’m ready to go now” because they feel they have lived. I’m not (totally) bonkers and I know death will one day come to us all. But it would just be SO good if cancer could just finally get cured and people wouldn’t have to suffer so much. And we could all live happily with family and best friends in our pineapple under the sea.

So yes, the last few weeks have been utter shite and what I really wanted to say was…..ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHH!!!