I'm taking the unusual step of re-publishing my entry from my Still Life blog, because it's something that has really made me stop and think:
Today I met someone I've known of for a long time, but had never been introduced to, and I had a rather odd experience. Before I was ill, we moved in somewhat similar circles, and so we know a lot of the same people. It was lovely to hear about all the old names - but I was shocked by how many had died. And several times my new friend made a comment like, 'Of course, she's nearly 80 now...', which shocked me almost as much as the news of the deaths.
My mother told me once that, when the Second World War ended, she somehow expected her friends who had been killed to come back - to get up off the floor at the end of the game - and it was a new grief to her to realise that they really had gone. I think this is what, unknowingly, I've been doing with my illness - thinking that, when I get well again, everything will go back to the way it was. But it won't. Already it has stolen nearly twelve years of my life. People have got old and died, people I really liked and never spent enough time with. They won't be coming back, even if one morning I wake up to a miraculous cure.
This is an extremely unsettling thought, and one with which I need to sit for a while.
1 comment:
It is unsettling to realize this, Heather. I understand how you feel, I think.
I'm always saying that if I was cured, I'd be doing all the stuff I used to do, just as if this illness never happened, but that was 10 years ago and I'm a different person now.
ps: I'm sorry to hear your mom was ill and I hope she is continuing to recover well.
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