While we were away over Easter I read a column in the Sunday papers called Gratitude Therapy written by a guy whose wife is on her third round of chemo to blast some particular bastard cancer. He wrote about the shadowlands in the early morning when he first wakes up and 'Mr Cancer' is lurking in the corners of his room, day, life and the wraparound fear of living with the cancer time bomb. Anyway one of their current coping strategies is to think every night of three fantastic things that have happened that day and share them with each other - gratitude therapy. I wanted to take a bunch of flowers to his house and tell him in person what an impact his piece has had on me. But obviously not enough to actually bother to find out who he is and where he lives. Anyway, we're doing it and it's a good technique. I have not turned overnight into someone thanking their stars that they have been shown the precious fragility of life and should anyone else moralise at me that I have a lot to be thankful for they are likely to lose an eye but it definitely beats staring blankly into the bottom of an empty wine glass. Gratitude therapy, riding the wave, accepting the futility of my fear and the tiny tiny tininess of all of this on a world scale - I'm trying it all.
But where I was really going with this was that over Easter we had so many tens of things to share with each other of an evening that our cup of gratitude was overflowing. Rose climbed and swung and trampolined and walked and walked and walked and zip-wired through the trees in a National Trust playground. When her braids fell off mid-bounce to reveal her Twiggy-like two inches of hair she shouted to the assembled crowds of children and their aghast parents 'I've got no hair because I had cancer! Keep jumping!' Go girl. I nearly burst with pride and admiration. We went to the zoo - always strangely life affirming, why is that - and we got closer to a giraffe than I thought was possible and their eyelashes really are quite spectacularly long. We played board games, watched films, Simon and I ate dinner together every night while Felix babysat Rose and from time to time we didn't even talk about her.
But because nothing is black and white or rational or logical in any of this I am feeling awful right now just when she is doing so well. Delayed shock and endless gnawing fear have taken a bit of a grip and my anxiety has gone into freefall - I can see nothing beyond the threat that hangs over Rose and every day that takes me further away from chemotherapy feels more and more dangerous. The open exposed waters of remission. I want a lifeboat and some guarantees. I need perspective and hope and optimism and to spend a lot of time with the man who wrote the gratitude therapy article. To get to where he is right now and to write that piece he has perhaps been where I am today.
Anyway today's three fantastic things which I will have to share with you as Simon is abroad are these -
For the first time in a year I collected both my children at the end of a school day. Granted Rose had been out for a couple of hours at lunchtime but she went back for the afternoon to make masks in art and had a lovely, lovely time.
She has just eaten roast chicken, potatoes, parsnips, broccoli and carrots for tea and about a kilo of strawberries.
The Apprentice is on tonight.
