I’m back in bed after doing a 20 min yoga session. Honestly, the amount of times I’ve started a health exercise regime is embarrassing but they say hope springs eternal. Every day is a new beginning etc etc. So there I was, lying like the proverbial beached whale, hugging my knees to my chest wondering if I was about to bring on a heart attack.

My left leg is still giving me grief yet with exercise is slowly, oh so slowly, returning to better, if not full, health. I finally have a scan booked to check it out. The same doctor finally listened to my concerns about the strange feelings I’ve been getting from my chest. She cheerfully suggested angina, a blood test and a referral to the hospital.

Contrary to the vast expanse of medical notes I’m not even someone that believes in visiting the doctor, well not unless you really have no choice but to face up to some awful predicament you cannot fix yourself. I’m kind of secretly pissed that I can’t just go for a walk and be ok. “Why me?” I ponder selfishly. I don’t deserve this. Then it hits me. Sometimes life just sucks. That’s what makes living life, really living, so important.

2024 has so far been rather unkind. It has brought death almost immediately, just eight days into the beginning. A good friend with younger children is waiting to hear if their disease is inoperable, spread too much in their body and will be terminal.

Yet there has been much joy too. The endless juxtaposition of life. Taking my stepchildren and daughter to their respective Universities. One to continue studies into year 4, perhaps enter Academia, possibly, almost certainly, travel overseas. The other two at their new beginning.

Mr D and I took the opportunity to spend some time together taking in some of the sights of the South Island. I drove down a crazy gravel road that led to God-knows where at high speed. I screeched with laughter as I almost got the car airborne Dukes-of-Hazzard style, over a cattle-grid at 80 kilometres per hour. Don’t worry, it was safe. The road led to the start of the hike to Mount Aspiring. We may7 no longer be able to take the walk together, but we were still in awe of the natural beauty before us.

I cried when the ferry left the South Island, knowing I was leaving my first-born child, my dear daughter, behind me. My hand-holding parenting of her is now over. I knew it was coming, I still wasn’t ready.

I learned many years ago I was at a high risk of breast cancer. I was worried about this, very scared indeed. All the while something else was lurking in the shadows. Parkinson’s is horrible, but I force myself to keep going. I have no other choice. I refuse to give in. I worry this weirdness in my chest is that old fear made real, and perhaps the cancer has come for me after all. Perhaps I have pulled a muscle. Perhaps it’s my heart and I need to go more gently and lose weight more urgently. Perhaps it’s nothing, just an annoying Parkinson’s side-effect. I will discover in time.

Life is full of crazy opposites. Yet, isn’t that the very reason we cherish it? If one could live for hundreds of years, imagine the awful procrastination. It would be terrible. Nothing would ever get done. It’s the very fact that life is indeed short, sometimes tragically way too short, that makes it so very special.

Cherish the time you have. Be positive, helpful, tolerant and patient. Most of all, please be kind. Hold those you love.

Life is short.

Until next time.