VE Day 8 May 2020

Within a lifetime

To dance each day

To live my way

To laugh and smile

To cry a while

To speak my piece

To give in to anger

To shout, and love,

To live a dream …

I thank you, each and every one,

You lay down your life

When you took up that gun.

To go away, to live in strife,

To wake each day and never know

If this is the one when the angels show.

Your lives, for some, weren’t so long.

Your faith was tested. In God? In man?

Yet there you stood, amongst the throng,

Did what you could as madness began.

A moment stretched, across the void.

Too many lost, too many destroyed.

So I dance each day

So I live my way

So I laugh and smile

So I cry a while

So I speak my piece

So I give in to anger

So I shout, and love,

So I live a dream.

Yet every year, for a moment, I stop.

To stand deep in thought, eyes I drop.

Tears run freely as I recall

Those who once stood so very tall.

I remember a field, of flowers red

To honour those whose lives were shed.

No matter where, no matter when,

No matter who, no matter how –

I will remember, time and again,

To your bravery, I forever bow.

I’d like to say I’d do the same –

In time of need, would I take aim?

Goodbye Sunshine ☀️

Today, a friend died. Well, a friend-to-be, I hoped.

Most days, I would send him a message to say ‘Morning Sunshine! ☀️’. It’s sad really but it made me happy. Every now, he would send a message too. Now, the little plans that I had are vanished. In my head, I was excited to go back to London, to meet him, to have a conversation. Or, just walking about.

I know, you probably thought I was a bit mad. Probably you thought I was stalking him. However, I don’t like football and I don’t know anything about Junior. But aphasia… I know exactly how difficult it is after aphasia.

A formerly Premier League footballer, Junior Agogo was in a BBC documentary about stroke survivors called ‘Speechless.’ On the documentary, Junior was very fit, running in the park with his dog, Blanket, or to the gym. Watching the documentary, seeing Junior and the problems that he had after aphasia, was quite emotional.

I understand how difficult it is to have a conversation, full stop.

Just like Junior Agogo, I had a stroke. Mine was a little bit different simply because my brain exploded after an aneurysm, a bleed on the brain and then a stroke. Just like him though, I have aphasia.

Words don’t work in my brain. Simply, there’s nothing there. I understand how difficult it is to have a conversation because of aphasia. Just like me, my brain has got deficits.

Make friends, having a chitchat, even sitting in silence. Cancelled.

‘Every person in the film seems to be looking at a hole in the sky, waiting for something.’

Like me, he seemed to want out, somewhere, anywhere. Anything but here.

Goodbye Sunshine ☀️

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/oct/28/nick-fraser-world-stroke-day-speechless-bbc4-documentary

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/49434573

You’re welcome

You’re welcome.

 

Just what I needed on a grey,wet and horrible day!

Karma (noun)

My understanding is that this is a Hindu and/or Buddhist belief about the TOTALITY of ones actions in this (and prior) lives influencing the state of being in the next life.  Since so few folk are, to my knowledge, either Hindu/Buddhist, it makes me angry when they make a casual reference to karma when they believe that someone has committed a terrible action, as if karma were an actual being prepared to rain down destruction upon the evil perpetrator of some heinous crime.

I want to say to them ‘If that is the case, then, please, explain to me what I did.’ I am quite certain that I didn’t go on some kitten killing spree in my sleep!

Does it make them feel better about the perceived punishment that the universe might mete out in some imagined, rose-tinted future? I struggle to understand how otherwise intelligent folk can seriously believe that bad things will happen to bad people.  Sure, if you hang around with a lot of folk toting guns, you might get shot but real life doesn’t work that way.  If it did, then good folk like myself and others wouldn’t have cancer, we’d be winning the lottery!

I have begun to believe it is the internet equivalent of ‘I’m sorry to hear your bad news’.  Too many folk don’t, or won’t, simply state that they don’t know what to say – so they say stupid stuff instead.  Someone stole your disabled child’s bicycle?  Well, it’s okay because karma will get them. Someone broke into your sick granny’s house and stole all the Christmas presents she had wrapped up for the kiddies? Well, it’s okay because karma will get them.  Someone trashed the beautiful memorial garden for your dead child? Well, it’s okay because karma will get them.

No.  Just, no!

Karma isn’t an entity out righting wrongs on the streets of your local borough wearing bright red pants on the outside and a funky mask to hide the eyes.  Karma has sod all to do with most of us and is, in my opinion, quite an insulting term to throw around.  It suggests that I did something to deserve cancer.  It suggests that that cute kid I saw in the hospital did something to deserve being in a wheelchair at such a young age.  It suggests that bad things only happen to bad people, therefore, if something bad happens to you, then you damn well deserve it!

Nicotine Withdrawal – Nil

Having been a long term smoker, I had already decided that it was past time to quit prior to finding the lumps in August. I had this whole ‘quit routine’ worked out in my head. It went right out the window with the diagnosis. I needed my long term vice, badly.

Don’t even start with the whole ‘smoking causes cancer’ bit though – I had BREAST cancer and know many smokers with NO cancer so really don’t want to get into that argument.

It has taken a while to re-gather the mental resources to quit, due somewhat to laziness and somewhat to fear of withdrawal and somewhat to worry about what to do with my hands instead but I am now a non-smoker!  Having a positive mindset helps, I hope.

Instead, I am  vaping. It isn’t as weird as I thought it might be. E-cigs have been on my to-do list for a while and I have seen folk here that use them. Certainly, it is bizarre to hold this fat pen-like object and have flavoured smoke come pouring out of it.  It reminds me of the shisha pipe in Egypt and I can pick and choose my flavours here too!

I have started with a pomegranate & nicotine one – to kick the nicotine habit first – and have other flavours if it is a ‘what to do with my hands’ issue further down the line. It is surprisingly easy. I haven’t really felt an overwhelming urge to light up.  I think this is greatly helped by the fact that cigarettes were beginning to taste quite foul – not that they were ever deliciously tasty in the first place!

So, go me! Luckily I now have most of my flexibility back and can pat myself on the back. I haven’t shared with family yet as dad is a zealous ex-smoker and I get irritated by the attitude which just makes me want to smoke. Mature much?

Five days and counting…