From dates to demise

Well since i last wrote two important dates passed by on July 30th marked 16 years since i lost my Dad to cancer. I had always been very positive until that point about how cancer can be beaten, dad had it when i was a baby he under went a course of radiotherapy, i don't think he had chemo then this was 1963 i made it by the skin of my teeth, mum and dad married in Sept 1961 before i was born mum miscarried and i arrived the following year Oct 1962 right in the middle of the Cuba crisis what kind of world did they think i would join? Mum rode through the winter of 63 keeping a small baby warm, and then i don't know when each event happened but i was taken ill around 6 months with febrile fits and dehydration which they thought i may die from and dad had his cancer. It is only now really nearly 50 years on that i can appreciate the turmoil that she and he must have gone through, how lucky i was that i survived and that Dad beat the odds and lived for a further 33 years, only to have the cancer return practically to the same spot but on the pelvic bone, so painful. He remained with us for 9 months from diagnosis, i was pregnant with Adam at the time and life was good, i finally had the second child which would mean that my Joe would not have to live his life as an only like me. The day that mum called to say that dad had cancer i think i would have to say was the worst of my life to date, i think that bolt from the blue that indicates that your life is going to change forever is hard to take, for me even harder than actually losing him if that makes sense? it was all encompassing and i just couldn't take it in. I asked to be told what i was having so dad would know but they couldn't tell me and in the end he was still alive to see Adam who was born three months before he died. So every year i know that whatever age Adam is that is how long it has been since i lost dad.
The other date was the 8th August mum's birthday a week before a friend told me that she had a spare ticket to go and see the show jumping at Greenwich, just around the corner really i live very near. Her mum was going and brother and girlfriend, who i know, it was so apt! Mum would have loved the Olympics she loved sport any sport far more than dad did he was more inclined to go and tend the garden or his allotment than sit and watch football or tennis or show jumping which was her favourite, she rode horses as a child and encouraged me to do the same i would head off down the marshes each Sunday for riding lessons. One of my best memories is as a 12 year old or so galloping along the cliffs in Devon on our annual summer holiday. They knew me well enough now to let me hold back from the rest of the the riders and then gallop to catch up, i loved it racing along the cliff path as fast as i could go , very free and aware of the salt sea air and the connection with the horse taking me on this fantastic ride no theme park can give more of a thrill. So show jumping on what would have been mum's 90th birthday was apt very apt and i thought of her often as i watched them jump with bated breath.

Nick Skelton 

Typically the day i attended was the only day the GB team didn't win a medal!

The Egg Man!

I like the rest of the nation was enthralled with the Olympics and how well we were doing i took to checking the website occasionally for tickets, the last day suddenly tickets for the closing ceremony appeared, they weren't cheap but there they were! i clicked continue a few times till it seemed that yes they actually were going to allow my to buy them! oh boy should i shouldn't i? excitement took me over and i pressed the final button....once in a lifetime!!! me and Joe as the two youngest boys were going camping and if i had to choose i wouldn't i would have maybe not got them or gone with a friend. Adam still doesn't know that we went... It was phenomenal just to be in such an atmosphere. We arrived early and watched them set the stage then for an hour before the broadcast Andy Collins who met once and is noted for his ability to warm up the crowd, kept us amused and told us where they would like audience participation. We had to count down to nine and then announce it's 9 o clock which we seemed to do pretty well. When the pet shop boys came round we were supposed to all set our camera flashes off at once but that didn't happen. We were asked to sing along with Freddie which i think really didn't need stating and lastly to go Wooooo when Russell Brand announced that he was the egg man. I have to say that my favourite section was singing along to always look on the bright side of life, Dad loved it and i considered asking mum to use it at his funeral, but i didn't think she would have approved....singing it was joyous along with the national anthem in a roaring 80 thousand people crowd. We will rock you wore my arms out but not my voice, i even sang along to one direction! Was it worth it?.....i think so

Joe and I

Leaving the stadium was great fun a brilliant time with policeman posing doing the bolt or the mobot, having pictures taken with woman in blue suits with light bulbs on their heads.... flames wandering around as all the dancers etc didn't bother changing when they left. We sat on the DLR with a group of Morris dancers from Bristol who had auditioned for the games and ended up dancing with Eric Idle, they had green and red ragged tops and the bell on their legs of course jangling their way home, which happened to be in a tent in a garden in Catford where one of the troops parents lived....22 of them!! no expenses were given it seems only food boxes each day of rehearsal, their treat was to watch the rehearsal for the opening ceremony.
We queued for a cab at Lewisham with others who had been there, it was interesting how the spectators spread you could see them dotted around the bus stops in lewisham.
Finally another person i have met through our shared experience of having bowel cancer died last week. His name was Mark Browne, i never met him but we hooked up on Facebook a couple of years ago and since then we have exchanged messages a few times but in the main i just watched what was going on from a distance. He was out spoken and part of what i could see was a very loving family with three teens and a devoted wife, he was her Alpha a man's man he worked out in the gym and drove a van for a living up and down the country. He only stopped this a few months before passing, i noticed in the last couple of months that he had a problem going into hospital and then was shocked to see a pic of him, no longer the boys builder but very thin and looking quite frankly ill. He had a long time carrying on as normal like me, i truely feel his loss obviously from a distance, but it has also scared me a bit because of the rate of his decline, i have always imagined having time that deterioration would take place over a longer period of time. I think when you lose someone in your 'cancer community' it is always hard, but harder too because you wonder is that my pathway too? and it brings it home to me that it is likely to be me one day, i feel so well that i put those thoughts aside completely the reality of my demise is not present just yet, how will i feel when it is.....i may turn out to be a very different person than i am now, or maybe i will just go with the flow as i have done to date. Time to cancel those thoughts out i need to sleep......RIP Mark Browne x