“Be strong. Be hopeful. Seize the day boldly and shape it to your own ends and never be surprised if it sprouts a hundred different obstacles for you to overcome. Your treasure will never be given to you. You must know yourself, stay true to yourself and wrest your destiny from the grasp of life.”

AUTHOR UNKNOWN

“Don’t fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have.”

UNKNOWN

It’s important to spend as much time with someone who is terminally ill, but I have chosen to focus on both because that’s important too. It would be easy for me to spend every waking moment in the hospital, but my family and I are choosing not to do that. We’re doing other things so that we get to spend time with each other and me time. Our physical health is just as important as our emotional health and so we’re concentrating on both.

This time round with my father everything seems different. I don’t seem hung up on feeling guilty about not seeing him all of the time. I’m not panicked about what will happen either, or what I’ll do if the worst should happen.

My father on his part although he seemed ready for the inevitable, he’s changed his mind now from wanting to end his life in the local hospice to wanting treatment. I know he still knows that his long-term prognosis isn’t good, but he has decided he wants more control over what happens to him.

I think the not knowing, the waiting, the coming and going and the in-decisions is making me more tired. It’s the uncertainty of the outcome and watching my father struggle, that is adding to how I feel. Give me a conclusion and I’ll deal with it any time. Give me uncertainty and I’ll go round the block a few times. I don’t usually work this way.

I am eating and sleeping okay (that’s important) and don’t feel stressed about it and as I wait for more news from the hospital, I’m relaxed about the next step.

“This is an important lesson to remember when you’re having a bad day, a bad month, or a shitty year. Things will change: you won’t feel this way forever. And anyway, sometimes the hardest lessons to learn are the ones your soul needs most. I believe you can’t feel real joy unless you’ve felt heartache. You can’t have a sense of victory unless you know what it means to fail. You can’t know what it’s like to feel holy until you know what it’s like to feel really fucking evil. And you can’t be birthed again until you’ve died.”

KELLY CUTRONE

There comes a time in every one’s life when we reflect back on our relationships and it usually happens around the time we know some one we love dearly is terminally ill. It’s so hard watching that someone fade-away. We all have our ups and downs but without the ups or downs I believe we would have no meaningful relationship. Relationships are about expression; we have to be able to express ourselves.

It would be so easy to look back and pick fault or feel guilty about something we’ve done or said to someone terminally ill, but I believe that is unhelpful and counterproductive. We usually react because of something that’s said that isn’t right, that doesn’t make us wrong.

We’re made to feel guilty, but what we don’t usually bring into the equation is that we behaved in a certain way because we didn’t always have a choice. If we had a choice that situation would never have arisen and we wouldn’t be feeling guilty. We all have to be responsible for the way we behave, regardless of whether we’re the one who is terminally ill or we’re watching someone who is.

On a conscious level as we go about our lives, we don’t stop to think how we behave or what we say to people. It’s only when we look back (but not many of us do), that we see that we could have done things better and that’s when the guilt sets in. I take the view that it’s better to get things right now rather than live a life, then worry later about what we’ve said or how we’ve said it.

So the next time you feel guilty, think about whether you’re really responsible. Remember it takes two to work a relationship. Although we could have always done better, so could the other person.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for continuing to support The CP Diary. Things will be back to normal shortly. I will be thinking of you all.

As a child I lived in fear of the reality that my parents would one day not be around me anymore; but back then I didn’t have the knowledge and the beliefs that I do today. My mother passed away what will be 5 years on the 25^th May this year. I have always believed that she will go to spirit, but will still be around me as I live my life and make my choices and I believe my father is now getting ready to do the same.

The last five years have been the most difficult years. I have blogged on here about the problems I’ve faced. My father’s health has finally taken its toll and will soon start his own spiritual journey, in the hope of finding my mum. He’s very calm and peaceful right now.

I cannot believe that we are at this place where decisions have to be made so that arrangements can be made for him to live out his last weeks peacefully. It doesn’t seem real. I am not afraid to lose him, I know he will be around me as I go about my life; what is quite scary for me is watching him fade away. I have always struggled.

I have never been good around illness. I’ve always shied away from it since I was a little girl. I believe that because I have  CP I have certain Sensory Integration Disorder problems. I have always known I’ve had problems with interpreting things pertaining to what I see, touch and hear.

Seeing my father ill will reinforce all of this.  I’ll just have to muddle through though, the best I can.

“When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you till it seems as though you could not hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.”

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

In hindsight it wasn’t the best time or the best idea because I believe that as we begin to rely on tablets to help us cope, those tablets potentially can become habit forming. The reality is that we become more reliant, and so the habit becomes even harder to break. I was lucky enough that at the time my depression wasn’t bad enough to stay on them long term.

We tend to rely on what we know works so that we’re best able to cope. For example if we’re depressed we’ll take antidepressants, or if we’re not sleeping, we’ll take sleeping tablets. That may seem fine while what we’re using doesn’t become a permanent fix, but for some of us taking tablets doesn’t work like that.

From my own experience I know that if we were to work on our emotional health, we would become less reliant on tablets. I believe that when we begin to look at the bigger picture of why our emotions lean towards negativity; we’ll begin to address all of our negative issues. I do believe that when we’ve sorted out all that we’re not happy with, our attitude and bad habits will change for the better.

Finally, there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t address my own emotional issues. It works and in my mind has to be much better than taking tablets.

“Everybody can be great because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.