The hound is in the cupboard now,
I try to keep him there,
But sometimes he escapes somehow,
’Though these days that’s quite rare.
You’d like it if he hadn’t stayed,
But I can’t let him go,
In secret moments back he’s strayed
And that helps me, although,
You think that means I’m in the past,
Like I’m not moving on,
Yet actually it is a sign how far we’ve come along…
I didn’t wait “for ever” in rooms so clean and bland,
Or carry draining fluid jugs, or needles in my hand,
I didn’t burn my front off, or shrivel up my veins,
Surely I didn’t do, unless a benefit remains?
So sometimes I remember and there’s laughter in that too,
The day you said my head looked like a chicken’s head to you…
The time we held my hair on as we rode the cable car,
The jokes my dear are priceless, some funny days by far.
So though I don’t want ever to walk the hound, for sure,
It is good to think we had him, but he can’t hurt us no more,
Let’s keep him in a place where in our hearts we smile,
And remember how we’re lucky that he’s there once in a while…
I think this this quote (from the BBC) about looking back says it all, “Eventually the time came to invite my cancer to leave. She has left the place in a bit of a mess, and I’m conscious that she has kept the key. Still I’m hopeful that in due course all I will be left with is the rich memory of time spent with a stranger I never expected to meet.”
