Hi everyone,
Only child here, 42, mum has stage 4 endometrial cancer. She finished 6 rounds of chemo and immunotherapy and her scan showed no signs of disease. So much had been riding on this scan and while we’re all delighted, I’ve crashed emotionally as a result. I feel so guilty but I feel so down, like I’m grieving our lives before this. Knowing cancer will always be in our lives and we’ll be living scan to scan forever.
I’ve struggled to explain this feeling, so I tried to express it in a poem, wondering if it resonates with anyone? Hoping I’m not completely abnormal for feeling like this, the guilt is overwhelming. Here goes…
I'm sure it's tepid and beige where it once ran red.
It's dimmer here somehow.
The world laughs in normalcy.
We didn't know it was the before times. But f**k, we know it’s the after times now.
Not sharp anymore but an ache remains as a niggling echo.
The glimmers pierce the day and it's warm for a minute then it burns. Fleeting.
Then it lingers beneath. In case you dared to forget.
Yes, reality is truth but it was softer before, in the before times.
We didn't ask for truth, no one does, really. Not this truth.
The after truth.
Now there's a jagged scar in our timeline, splitting it all into before and after.
Poison seeps through it.
A feint whisper of a bell that we thought we heard once,
but it didn't bellow with victory like we thought it would.
It tinkled in the darkness. Fading away like a false promise.
