Over-reacting Part 2.

Other people become a lot more irritating when you're dealing with cancer: they don't understand, they give you that weird look like they're worried they might make you cry. Sometimes they have the indecency to BE HAPPY! In such situations it is best to envisage their fiery death, preferably at your own hands. Such an exercise will overcome the horrible sense of powerlessness you are feeling, and restore equilibrium for awhile.

Over-reacting

Everyone tells you that you're going to feel particularly emotional when someone close to you has been diagnosed with cancer, as you'd expect really. But no one ever talks about how ridiculous these manifestations of emotions can be. The time when my potplant seemed to die was particularly devastating (I was upset for a few days by THE REALITY OF DEATH!). Once, in the middle of a weeping fit, I also apologised to a cup of tea that I had left and had gone cold.  And this morning I had a thirty minute sobbing session after my Dad joked about how I should get a job.....The potplant is doing fine now though, which is nice.

A time to live and a time to blog.

So then, this blog's been taking up space for awhile now, nearly as long as we've known that my 23 year old brother has a terminal brain tumour. I've not known when or how to start: there's all sorts of things you find yourself writing: a few sketches here, some swear words in huge marker scrawled across some paper, diary entries blurred from tear-stains. But the normal stuff continues too: to-do lists, week plans, recipes, postcards containing silly messages sent to each other, incomprehensible post-it notes. Our life continues pretty much as normal, and yet not (was it ever normal to begin with?!) Tragic perhaps, but bizarre, surreal, and hilarious too, not least because my brother is one funny chappy! And then of course, there's the why I feel I should write: carthasis sure, but we're just one more family going through a fairly mundane tragedy.  I don't think I've got any particular insights at all. Perhaps that is one reason why it's taken me so long to start the blog.

But yesterday Sam (the Brother) was in a surprisingly good mood. Nothing unusual happened: we went to the swimming pool with our Mum, Sam told us some 'hilarious' anecdotes about wheelchairs (!), and I just realised how much I want to record all these little moments, the things that make us laugh in the middle of all the strange and scary nonsense. Who knows how it'll go. We'll see.

Here's a cartoon I did right at the beginning, when I realised how little I knew about radiotherapy. becca xx