First Anniversary

Today marks one year from my initial diagnosis with Waldenström’s macroglobulinaemia, a name that took me a week to learn without my tongue dropping off. It is interesting to look back over the modest passage of time and realise just how much I have been through since the initial shock and disbelief that I had a form of cancer, albeit a relatively manageable one. It would have been doubly, triply unbearable had I been able to see all at once what the disease would lead me to experience over this time, underlining the importance of the wise injunction to live each day at a time: “give us this day our daily bread” as the Lord’s Prayer has it.

Our daily bread (yum!)
The Greek of the Sermon on the Mount is subtle: "epiousios", normally translated "daily", more accurately means "sufficient for the coming day", suggesting that God gives us each day what He knows we will need for that day.

I was up reasonably early ready to welcome Father Milligan, the vicar and old friend with whom I work, who was going to make a pastoral (and friendly) visit. It was so good to see him and we shared coffee and news of recent weeks with each other, including talk of what was being found under the floor of one of our churches. Watch this space…

It was then time to do some food shopping with my daughter, deliver her bike for servicing and collect my computer from repair. The cost of repair was less than originally estimated and I have been reunited with my faithful laptop. After reflecting that we would like to buy up the whole of Waitrose and its foody delights, we contented ourselves with a fairly modest selection from its shelves and made our way slowly home, my pace more closely matched to my daughter’s these days, not racing ahead as I normally do.

In the afternoon my brother came over and we spent quite a bit of time planning the installation of a window to let more light into the main room of our little house in Brittany. All in all my most active day yet. Will I pay for it tomorrow?

Our little haven...

...but the ground floor could use more light.