Friday 29 May 2015

Celebrate those Precious Milestones ...


If you haven't realised it yet, there is a wedding on the horizon in our household! A wedding is a joyful and uplifting event for most families, but when your life has been under threat and at times hung on the balance, then just the thought that you may get to see your daughter getting married soon brings on a whole new level of feelings and emotions.



It takes me back to the start of all this - to 'that' day, not quite a whole five years ago yet - and being sat down and told, 'You aren't going to live for very long.' What goes through your mind when you hear that? Your future - that's what - that future you suddenly aren't supposed to have anymore - wiped out by just a few words. What do you envisage as part of your future? 

For me it was my family that automatically sprang in my mind as the consultant spoke and I could barely listen, or more like I listened, but couldn't hear properly because of all the thoughts suddenly popping in my head. What about Rob? What about the girls? I won't be there, I won't see them do all those things we are supposed to do together. All those milestones: birthdays - wouId I even see my 50th? Would I see Rose's 18th or Sarah's 21st? Then those things like wedding anniversaries: our twentieth; our twenty fifth... then weddings? The girls' weddings that may or may not be somewhere in their futures. My thoughts swirled. These things were being taken away. Just like that. Done. Gone in just hearing one sentence. 



Then every time there was a crisis and I had to fight to survive, it would be all these things that would surface again. Every milestone you want to fight for; every milestone you desperately want to reach and that's what made me fight. In turn every milestone you reach becomes a massive achievement, because you weren't ever supposed to reach them and then you want more and more. Every one of them is precious and has to be celebrated. Living life has to be celebrated. These moments are so precious and cannot be taken for granted.



Thanks to the best and most expertise of care from a wonderful hospital and to my donor for the amazing gift of my new heart and lungs, I've managed to reach so many new milestones and now it is just a week to go to Sarah's wedding, something I still cannot believe I might see. I almost try and refrain from getting myself too excited when there is something good to look forward to, just in case I have a blip - it happened so many times while I was ill. You almost become numb to excitement and disappointment so you can cope with focusing on the next thing you have to deal with. I usually post after I've managed to do something, but this time I'm bubbling with too much excitement...

We are all so different in what might drive us on when times are hard - what motivates you to try and get better - to recover and fight through those hard and difficult times? 





This week's pics are the peonies in my garden

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