When the critical illness payout was confirmed, my first feeling wasn’t relief.
It was guilt.
Which is, when you think about it, completely absurd. I’d paid £18.99 a month since September 2017. Eight years of premiums, nearly £1,800, hoping every single month that I’d never need to make a claim. And now I needed to make a claim, and somehow I felt guilty about it.
I think the guilt comes from the feeling that you’re somehow profiting from being ill. That there’s something uncomfortable about money arriving because your body has let you down. That people might think you’re making the best of a bad situation in a way that seems almost too convenient.
But here’s what I’ve come to understand.
This isn’t a windfall. This isn’t luck. This is a financial safety net I built for my family, working exactly as it was designed to. Lucy and the kids are protected. The bills are covered. And there’s enough left over to do something that matters.
So I made a plan.
A sofa. A lazy boy. A new shower. Some doors. A gazebo and patio in the garden where we can sit on summer evenings. A pool table for Albert. A fence and some trees. A better TV for the World Cup. Some clothes that actually fit properly. A holiday or two. The legal costs of the Will and LPAs already done. The insurance excess for the subsidence sorted.
And Italy. Twelve thousand pounds set aside for the grand tour. Turin to Milan by train, down the west coast, Tuscany, Florence, Rome, Naples, the Amalfi Coast, Umbria, Bologna. The dream that’s been keeping me going from a hospital bed at 3am while Stanley Tucci wandered through truffle markets on Disney+.
Eighteen thousand pounds kept back as a cushion. Just in case.
Someone asked me if I felt guilty spending it. And I thought about it for a moment — genuinely thought about it — and then I said:
“I’m just going to spend it and enjoy it. I hope for long term remission but if not, the next few years will be great.”
And I meant every word of it.
This money isn’t going into a savings account to sit there untouched while I wait to see how things go. It’s going into life. Real, full, joyful life. The gazebo where we’ll sit with friends on summer evenings. The garden Albert will play in. The kitchen where Flo will make pesto. The hotel in Turin where Lucy and I will raise a glass to everything we’ve been through to get there.
If long term remission comes — and it might, it genuinely might — I’ll have a beautiful home, great memories, Italy done, and no regrets.
If it doesn’t go that way — I lived. Properly and fully and joyfully, right up until whatever comes next.
Either way.
One step at a time. 
