A gift

I give you three stones, three small pebbles that I find on the beach, still wet with the sea.

The first, a black, slate dark stone, forged in the volcanoes of the past, charcoaled by the ancient forces deep within the earth. Black, raven black it speaks of our pasts, our pasts which are now dark, put away, a closed door to a darkened room. The lights are no longer shining on those we have loved, and who loved us back, those who shared our houses, our hearts and our beds. They are as old charcoals on a barbecue, old, fireworn and no longer capable of inspiring heat and passion in our souls.

The second is a fusion of colours, half elephant grey and half daffodil yellow. Each side is solid but the miracle occurs in the centre where the strands of yellow and grey fuse into one another's tendrils. This, my love, is our present where two different colours, two different beings explore one another's bodies, one another's minds and souls. Slowly in the stone's case, these two different rocks have fused together as one day we too will follow. The stone is smooth, softened by the battering of waves, the grinding of the sand and the buffets of the wind so too our fusion makes us even more robust against the obstacles we may face in the future.

And finally, my darling, I give you our future. This quartz is glittering white, a tabula rasa, a white sheet on which the script of our lives together remains to be written. Translucent, the light heightens its beauty and through it I see a whole new world to be spent with you. The light, just like our love, makes the ordinary, extraordinary.

Three stones lie in your hand. Is there room for my heart too?

Minerva

Amnesia

I have forgotten so much of the past year. I barely remember the angst and anxiety with which I used to greet every new bit of news. I no longer search for metaphorical comparisons with my illness. Like waves stirred and then stilled by the wind, the sea of my life is now flat. I look back and I can't believe that only a year ago I found the lump, that only two months ago, I was finishing radiation.

It is truly over. I have moved on into clearer seas and my ship is sailing with no regard for the past. How bizarre that something so elemental, so frightening, so unbelievably traumatic is now over and lost.... I believe that the brain must somehow protect oneself, by forgetting because to remember would be so horrific.

I no longer bring cancer into my conversations, I no longer antagonise salesmen on the phone by telling them 'I won't be around', for their mortgage deals, I no longer try to get priority treatment but instead wait, in the normal, ordinary queue. And for once, I am indeed extraordinary in my ordinariness. It is truly over and I am no longer one of the bald, the washed out, the tired just another mother, another daughter, another sister...

I remember, and I am thrilled to forget.

Minerva

The Room

It seems so long ago now. The thick door of 'Room Cancer' seems to have shut behind me with a final whoosh and I am out now into the sunlight. My hair seems to grow thicker every day: three months ago it was barely a centimetre long and now it curls around my glasses and my ears. I caught myself today tucking it behind them and I giggled in the sheer ecstasy of it all. I am living; to be honest, I have never felt more alive, more sure about my every step and whilst my insecurities are still around, they have receded as dreams do upon waking.

Every day I grow more confident and more content. The past year now seems a different country. I remember that dark wardrobe which sat brooding in Room Cancer, whose shadow threw itself over my hopes and ambitions, I remember opening the door and staring death in the face and now? Now I laugh with joy. Only when you have stared death in the face, when you have realised that this life isn't renewable, that we don't get a second chance at living, at loving, at laughing, can you truly grab it by the collar and shake every second out of it...

I am so very happy....

Minerva