Three Weeks and Counting!

We woke this morning to another day of proton treatment.  The rain was pouring as  it has been all week but every cloud has a silver lining and our silver lining today was the realization that 3 weeks today – God willing – we will be homeward bound, rather than proton bound.

I told Finn and Jasmine this, but they didn’t seem to respond with the same enthusiasm that I had.  I suppose 3 weeks is an eternity when you are 5 and 8 years old.  3 weeks is a blink of an eye when you are mum aged.  

Another family left Christopher’s Haven today.  I hugged my new friend goodbye, and hung on to her with so much unspoken but with everything said in that hug.  I may have only known her a few weeks, but I will follow her son, Sabir’s progress to recovery and pray him well and on his way.  We won’t lose touch with one another.

I started to think about life when we return home.  Initially I was looking forward to returning to normal, but then I became somewhat troubled.  What is normal life now?  There can never be any going back to how things were, because we now live with this shadow.  I have felt this before with my own skin cancer and repeated check-ups but Jasmine’s shadow seems so much more intense and looming large. 

So to get out of the shadow, one must always look to the light, step in to that light and bask in it.  I don’t know what our new “normal” will be and maybe we don’t need to know.  We can work it out as we go along – just doing one day at a time.

And for today we’ll settle for play dates in the loft with the Christopher’s Haven Kids Club, followed by an outing for ice cream.  Just plain grateful for the day I’m in, the place I’m in and the people I’m spending that day with.