and so the children wanting to be adults wanting to be children talked to me the other night….their faces full of concern…..wanting to ‘do’ something .
Looking back I guess I have been sensing that this was coming again…..that time when it all gets too much for them…..and the mantra of ‘you need to see a counsellor Mum’….we are not your counsellors …’ echoes from the chasms of their love for me…and the uncertainty of having deep conversations and seeing their mother as a fragile human being…….
(mothers don’t get sick!...mothers just keep going …)
I look at them and see them as they once were…. children, so small yet resilient, excited with life and cautious as well……trusting…dependent……and the children are now adults …they haven’t really changed……just got bigger! Yet again the child within each of them cries out that ‘this is too scary mum….please don’t talk to us about it………’ and then this will swing again to ‘why didn’t you tell us …?” a timeless pendulum…of filtered conversations thoughts and feelings that somehow makes for fragile progress…… in an enclosed world…
I hold their words close to my heart. Hubby's journey is a challenge …a journey for each of us…and also a shared journey…finding out who we are …in ourselves and to each other…….how much to share …when to retreat and when to challenge….when to simply ‘hold’…….
Parenting doesn’t stop when the children become adults …when with the fresh eyes of young adult human beings they believe they have the answers that older adults still look for.
Their conversation out of concern for me and safety for them…….has helped me realise that cancer now defines my life …my conversations …my thoughts....what I do each day…even my sense of self……and this is limiting and dangerous. It has been quietly growing like the cancer itself
I realise that taking back control of who I am has a sense of urgency…..
A brave soul said ‘each day is a new beginning’ …….I hope so……. I want to work out my own ‘treatment protocol’ to claim back what I have given away as I have tried to understand what is happening and tried to balance the needs of others…with my own……There is no understanding….there just is.
Each day the new question: what can I do today to heal myself?
And then …listening for that still small voice……waiting/seeking…listening/doing…holding/letting go….
