Nearly the end! Today and tomorrow and we’re done.
Three weeks on from the final operation I’m getting back to normal ready for work next week. Routine will return with the daily mile run in the morning and I’ll be able to go swimming; should make the forty lengths again without too much problem. As Spring comes I’ll prepare again, God willing, for the Women’s 10k in May, and like two years ago (when cancer was something that happened to other people) I’ll be asking for sponsorship for a breast cancer charity, this time with the awareness that I had a lucky escape, thanks to all the people who’ve supported such charities before, and all those who dedicate their lives to the cause, rather than the hour I’ll dedicate to the run!
Bodies heal according to plan thanks to the outstanding medical care I’ve received. The invisible healing of the heart and head is greatly accelerated by the love, kindness and understanding of family, friends and strangers and I will remain ever amazed and grateful that these have been so freely and generously given. Thank you!
This has not been a linear narrative starting at the beginning and going logically and chronologically to the end. For me life and time are not linear but like a spiral staircase where we start at the bottom and go upwards. We keep passing above what has gone before, find links and hooks to the past and lay down patterns for the future. We stand at this pivotal point in time when the old and new year will almost pass each other by.
2011 has not been an unwelcome guest for me; she has brought many good gifts, good news as well as bad, but she has been here long enough. Her appointment is over, a new visitor is coming up the road, passing the hedges and just out of sight, waiting discreetly until I have given 2011 her coat, handed her the luggage she must take with her, thanked her for coming and kissed her goodbye. As I watch her shuffle down my path, make a left turn onto the road, I do not close the door, for soon 2012 will take a step forward, come up my path with an open smile on her face and mysterious packages in her arms.
Here she is now. I smile and shout hi, making no attempt to hide my pleasure at her arrival. The door is open wide.
“Come in, my long-awaited friend,” I say, embracing her. “How warm and alive you are! How good it is that you are here at last.”
There are many of you now standing in your porches, on your doorsteps, doing the same. Perhaps in your eagerness to see 2011 go you have had her buttoned up in her coat awhile and are waiting for a taxi to take her away, impatiently looking at your watch, wondering why it is taking so long. Perhaps 2011 has been a very unwelcome presence, squatting in your life and, having long-since served the eviction order, your moment is coming to see her booted out the door. She is going now, no doubt about it. The champagne is chilled, the glasses are ready, not so much to cheer 2011 passing, as to welcome in the unknown guest now standing in your hall.
Although she looks a little dazed by her new surroundings, place the glass in her hand and pour. Toast her presence in your life, this most welcome 2012.
I raise my glass to all of you who, like me, are glad 2011 is on her way to that foreign country of the past.
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