There’s always someone worse off

Lately, I’ve spent a great deal of time thinking about the situation that my children and I find ourselves in. I suppose that’s to be expected. I’ve felt sad and alone. And I worry constantly about the children; how they are dealing with losing their mummy and how it will affect them as they grow up. I haven’t spent a great deal of time feeling sorry for us, there’s really very little point, but that does creep in from time to time.

If you’ve been reading my entries you’ll know that a large reason for continuing to write Rosie’s blog is because she asked me to. I’m now finding an unexpected thing starting to happen. My words seem to be finding an audience of their own and some of those readers have been contacting me. I feel incredibly touched and honoured that people living similar lives to ours would take the time to message me. In an odd way it really does make me feel glad for what we do have.

One lady got in touch to say that she had just been given a secondary diagnosis. Her story was too similar to Rosie’s for comfort. She is a partner in a law first; she had been diagnosed with breast cancer; and now it’s spread to her liver. She has a six-year-old son and a husband who is finding this awful situation difficult to deal with. Well who wouldn’t?

And then there’s the husband whose wife was diagnosed with bowel cancer in May of this year. By the end of July she had passed away following a spread to the liver. But that’s not the worst part. Worse still for this lady, she died just a day after the birth of her first child. Words really can’t begin to express the horror of a situation like this.

So what’s my point?  That you should thank whoever you thank for whatever you have, no matter how little you feel you have. There’s always someone worse off than you. I have no doubt that’s what Rosie would have said.

Elliot