Yet again this morning I received an email mentioning that the sender thinks that I am to be envied for "living the life of Riley". This person is a lovely person, with a slight disability herself, and in a highly-paid job. She knows that I am terminally ill, but sees from my Facebook profile that I post a lot of photos.
The reason that I am not also at work is that as soon as I told my employer that I had been given a terminal diagnosis, they set loose the dogs of their "Employee Well-Being" department to chase me off the premises. The doctors had given me just 3-4 months. However, without assistance from them, I have now been around for nearly 15 months.
I have never been someone who sits around watching tv or relying on spending lots of money shopping to entertain myself. I have always got out and about, and have loads of interests - from walking in the countryside (or at a push urban wildernesses), making and looking at art, museums, wildlife, my garden, reading, industrial archeology... Just because I am dying of cancer, this does not change who I am. I have indeed widened my interests, compromised how far I can go (we don't have a car, so it's always been public transport for us) and certainly had to watch how much everything costs (although having done my degree as a mature student recently and working for museums I'm good at economising).
However the short time that I have now is in place of the 20 years of retirement that most of these people will enjoy. I know that they mean well, but they are wrong. I could tell them that when you know you are going to die fairly soon, you blooming well NEED to keep busy - because if I didn't I would very quickly slide down into deepest of depressions, and a state of terror and self-pity. It seems that it acceptable to go off once on a dream hol, then we should knuckle down to complying with the doctors' prognosis and we should jolly well be miserable whilst we're about it, not go gallivanting off and making other people wander, "Why am I sitting at the desk doing things I hate doing?" or "Why can't I motivate myself to get off my butt and go and do something meaningful?"
My ethos is that I'm going to neck however many painkillers and anti-anxiety tablets it takes and keep on going out and doing things - this is life as I know it, and I don't want to have to accept anything less until I really do have to.
I am NOT living the life of Riley. I am living with the Sword of Damocles suspended by the its single hair right over my head. I know that it is there, but I do not keep looking up at it.
My prayer is give me patience to keep smiling when people say these asinine things.
xxxx Penny
