Feeling a little bit bitter

Now forgive me for this, especially those of you who know me but, I was out tonight with my school chums. It's a lovely evening out and it is a strange evening as it dips back into our youth - when we were 10 or 11 years old and moves with some speed between then and now. My three friends have all lost their fathers and one has a mother who is not very well at all. We are all 54 (ish) years old.

We grew up together and I had a great dream about us all a few nights ago cycling and making dams and being crazy kids during our summer holidays - around the corner from here - in Sparrow's Wood. All summer we were out of the house, on our bikes, at the Lido, just out all the time - the sun always shone and we always got into and out of scrapes and just had the most wonderful adventures. There were no creepy people, no paedophiles, no drug lords and all that sort of shit. We just went around catching frogs, damming rivers (well streams really), riding bikes at break neck speed, leaping around the playground swings and slides and getting a great tan! I look back and think what a great time we had, no mobile phones, PCs, iPods, MP3 players, Sony Play-stations blah-de-blah......

I was so happy tonight - my friends and I drank my health - we remembered my friend's dad died at the time I was ill... Sad enough that I couldn't attend but all is forgiven especially as they now know how ill I actually was. 5 years...

But things got a little sadder because I recollect that on my birthday (and my friend and I shared as you may recall - our 50th in 2007) no one from my immediate family came. My Aunts and Uncles did and my cousins but not my parents and not my brother and his family. I wondered about this - I know my Mum would cut off her arm or leg to come but she was bound not to come along. I find it now with my daughter's birthdays. None of my immediate family have come to A's 21st or L's 18th but my wider family have and for that I am very grateful. My mother is truly mortified by this - I know that as I speak to her. My kid brother has always been a self centred person who has taken much but given back little.

My family, such as it is, is spread over a large geography and I don't expect anyone not local to be able to turn up - I couldn't get over to the US or NZ without lots of planning but you'd have thought, given 6 months notice your local blood could have? I mean 2 hours drive FFS!!!

I suppose that I must acknowledge that I am different to most of my family in that I would put myself out and go (even if it isn't my 'scene' to be there and make the 'best of it'). I could see the hurt in my friend's eyes tonight when one of them asked me why my parents and my brother weren't there at my 50th considering the shit year I'd had recovering from Cancer?

I write this as it arrived in conversation tonight - until I got home it hadn't really struck home what they said but you'd have to ask yourself why your parents didn't make the effort? As I said before - my Mum's not happy about it at all and I can hear it and I don't make a fuss about it. The thing is - and it does nag - what does it say about what my folks think about me that since I was diagnosed - no one has ever come down to see me at my home and my locality. I've always had to drive up to see them?

I'm living with it - well I've had to live with it. But only now 5 years on is it coming home to me that no one even came to see me when I was in Hospital or Recovering or did they put themselves out to do so. I had friends fly over to the UK to see me. Now you may see why I feel a little bitter about this. I mean I could have turned up my toes and died - I wonder if they'd have even come down to my funeral if I had?

Bitter? You bet, my friends and brethren from the Lodges I'm in have been top class as have my extended family but my kith and kin - perhaps through the horrible shock and trauma I have delivered at their door, perhaps not so. I can't be that pissed off as they are my family and I love them dearly but - sometimes you have to wonder....

As for my own little family unit - I am surprised that they have put up with me. I really am strengthened by A and L who have their mother's pragmatism and - I like to think - my sense of humour. We've had some good holidays since I was diagnosed and the girls really work hard and are rewarded in results from School and University. They have a good work ethic and are both socially responsible - giving to their community as youth leaders, I cannot want for a better family unit. I just feel that when I said I'd lost friends along the way that I'd also lost some of my family too. I don't blame them nor will it be a wall driven between us - that isn't fair either - I just find it hurtful that I defend my family's non-show all the time.

Sometimes I feel that getting Bladder Cancer made me but just f**ked up the rest of my life. I lost and made friends. I got great insights and lost other vectors on life. I became a better and a worse person all at the same time dependent upon how you knew me. I became humble and passive where before I may have been aggressive and assertive. If you knew me as one of those I probably became the other. This was my survival mode - I needed to be the way I was to survive and beat this pernicious disease that was coming to kill me. It was as if a nasty dream was being realised in real time, some scroat with a gun coming to kill me. How was I to react? Lay over and die? you don't know me then if you think I'd do that - I'd fight and I spoke like I was fighting and came out of my corner all aggressive - against my disease - not against my friends and family! Those who haven't had cancer don't get that. If you wish to live you fight you scramble, you claw, scratch and bite - live is worth hanging onto and sometimes - sod your friends and family because it's all about YOU - you need to survive you need to live - it's all about you and it's all about survival.

Well I'm going around in circles and not answering my own questions and statements - I'm so confused as I don't "get it". I don't understand why my immediate family are so distant - maybe they thought I'd die - maybe that would be OK for them. My poor old Mum who I speak to all the time is taking so much sh1t it isn't true probably would come see me at the drop of a hat but she is bound to my father and the local family. Honour :-)

It cuts me to the bone and yet I have so many good friends who spoil me and always wish me well - I just wish that my family would do something - I feel that they'd praise me to the rafters when I was dead. They just have no idea how to deal with me when I'm alive.

This is one of my rambling on blogs - I apologies to you for that. It's what it is like though - I remember watching the film Philadelphia with Tom Hanks - the one where he had Aids - it was tremendously powerful and portrayed the bigotry that a Gay Man suffered way back then. It is somewhat similar in tha cancer world - there's me - little miracle - still alive - no one understands that - as survivors - it is far more likely you'll meet people like me now - survivors and - wow - you can even talk to us too.

A joke from years ago:

A chap was driving along when he got a flat tyre. Stopping outside the mental institute he proceeds to take off the wheel nuts - putting them in the hub cap so as not to lose them. He takes off the flat tyre and brings the new one from the boot. He knocks the hub cap and the nuts roll down a drain and are lost. The driver is full of woe and holding his head wondering what to do.

An inmate suggests that the driver takes one nut off the remaining three wheels and drives to the local garage - obtains 4 more nuts and adds one to each wheel and he can be on his way. The driver is amazed and asks "how come you can think of that when my mind was a blank and work out that sort of logic when you are incarcerated here?"

The inmate looks at the driver, looks to the sky and says "look here my good man. We are mentally unstable not stupid!"

May I say I know just how he feels. I really love my kids - I'd be mortified if anything happens to them and I'd be there if anything happened. In the 5 years that I've been ill - I have had to be there for my folks - they've never got off their arses and come and seen me. It's all arse about face - for God's sake I was the one who was ill...

By The Way (BTW) it's great having Cancer because you can be really aggressively angry and everyone let's you :-) Let's go for it then shall we?

5 years I've been ill. I've been unable to drive my car, I've had 10% of my working life recovering from shit! I've had pipes shoved up my penis I've had all sorts of stuff happen that you would hate and not once have my parents or my sibling got off their bums and driven the 100 or 120 miles south to see me. NOT ONCE in 5 years. Angry? of course I'm bloody angry.

If I was your child/sibling would you have come and seen me once in all that time? Just once. They've never ever come and seen me. I suppose I should be beside myself but, as they are my "flesh and blood" and that I share the same genetic sh1t as they do I actually understand them - I don't get off my arse and do stuff sometimes - being a lazy git =- however, if my brother had of had this I'd have been up there offering to do driving and whatever his family needed. That is where we differ so much.

Bitter? Yes and No. I am and I'm not - I lived with these guys all of my formative years so I know what they are like. I look back and I'm just amazed that the only person who took any of this seriously is me!

Nuff said!