Hey Tanya,

Good to hear from you whatever the message is...I wish I lived down the road as I would come over and give you a big hug...you would probably slap me and kick my butt but I would want to hug you as it would be what friends would do when the other was down!

I can't believe that your friends and family didn't make 'last' Christmas your best ever and DO something, anything for you...sorry as I am sure I am just hammering home the thoughts you have!

Why don't you have some fun and call your brother and ask what time you are expected to turn up?

There is never a good time to die - there are people that may not have met you face 2 face but would feel sad beyond belief that they weren't able to be with you and hug you...some people are like that in this world and I am one of them my friend.

Glad you are on-line again - I did it and fixed your laptop by my positive thought - good aye!?

When you get a burst of creativity don't forget 'your Tony'

I am off to see a couple of dogs with my daughter Charlotte (15) - she has a project and wants to take some photos of malamutes, then potentially recreate one of the pictures by drawing...looking forward to that.

Speak soon.

Much Love

'Your T' xxx

Dear Tanya,

It's good to hear from you.

You may be fed up with the terminal mindset you've held for so long.  I suppose you can only celebrate a doctor's prognosis for a certain amount of time, then you get to thinking.

I'm afraid I'm on the side of celebrating your life,  while you live it.  Like I wrote before, though, I wouldn't see you live in order that you suffer.

As for your Christmas, I hope it works out better than you expect with your family. I'm wondering, though, if you've tied up anything that seems like loose ends with them, only to find it wasn't time.  Oh, dear, I never thought of loose ends, final speeches, apologies, forgiveness or even giving the finger to people you didn't think you'd have to deal with for much longer.  I think you've got too much intelligence to do that, but then you're not psychic, so who knows.  Just remember people only remember the last thing you say.

Kathy

Tanya

I have sit silently in the back ground reading your post for many months.   I first came to this site back in late June when a very good friend was given 6 months to live to try to find hope.   My friend died two weeks ago so actually only lived 4 months.   His death was painful but surprisingly not as painful as seeing him struggle trying to find hope when no matter how hard he tried there seem to be no hope.   Can I ask you a little about yourself.      What did you do before you became ill?   You certainly seem to be a gifted writer as I would not be one bit surprised if your posting here end up in print somewhere for many years to come.     Do you live a house, apartment, or are you in a hospital?   What are your regrets?  What things are your most proud of in your life?   What have you done right?  What would you do diffent?   Have you given up all hope to live?  Do you still hope for a miracle?   I believe Mircles do happen!   I find it so hard to believe that folks have left you as you write.   Are you certain they just arent afraid they are going to bother you or that you don't feel like having company?   I am 49 years old divorced female and must say I spend way too much time feeling depressed and when I read your postings,  it reallly makes me ashame  as I do have my health and should be thankful for that.   I hope you don't mind me asking these questions I just am so curious and hoping it can help me to understand a little more about your story.    I just can't understand people seemingly not to care anymore than you seem to think.   I have known more people than I would ever have wished that passed away from cancer and always saw folks flock to their side just to try to help in any way possible, so your story is so hard for me to understand.    I hope you voice to your friends and family what you want from them as I fear they may be keeping their distance not because they don't care but because they are afraid of bothering you,  you don't feel like company, they will invade your privacy or think you just don't want them around.    Would love to hear more about you and your life.  Wishing you peace and praying for a miracle for you.    

Message was edited by: alto1962

Message was edited by: alto1962

Dear Tanya,

Hope you're feeling well enough to will your computer to turn itself on.  Seems like it'll probably do it for you.

I also hope you're not too bored with the 17 months you've spent with a terminal diagnosis.

For me, your being terminal has become something I can't ignore.  Maybe to you, you seem to be doing the same thing with the same illness, but I've seen it change.

When you began writing, I don't remember you making any mention of infections (doesn't mean you didn't.  It just didn't touch my concsiousness).

Those 17 months have seen the prayers for miracles become more in number on my part.  Once I wanted for you to just recover your health fully.  Of course, I still think like that sometimes, but hoping that you won't suffer too much is also on the prayer agenda nowadays.

As for the acceptance of death, you know I don't do acceptance.  However, I do have knowledge of what is involved in the end of life processes on a basic level.  I suppose I grudgingly admit that knowledge is acceptance.

'End of life' and 'growth' don't go together as phrases for so many people, but I've seen it with you.  To anyone who's considering forgoing treatment for cancer, I  feel your posts could change their minds.  You could be thinking differently.

What say you?

Kathy

   I have never had that zest for life that it takes to reallly want to be 'here'.  My mortality has always been a huge part of my life from a very young age, Perhaps it was because I attended my very 1st funeral when I was only 5. That funeral would fortell what my life would become; I have, by far, been to entirely too many funerals in these 38 years, being the artist & poet that I have always been, opened up that analytical part of me which, a bittersweet opening, a doorway into 'Mortality'.

   I would say that maybe there would be change of hearts upon reading my thread yet, I believe it would change few.  I did fight the 1st time cancer came calling; for the wrong reasons.  That within itself might very well make people think a little differently about seeking treatment, but maybe cancer came calling on me as my "get out of this life" card? Maybe.....  Many of those I have lost from this disease also tried to fight it even though the Dr.'s gave such a small percentage that it would work.  They instinctively went into "Fight This" without blinking an eye.  My life never went as I had planned, I graduated High School & wanted to go to a local art college, I grew up poor and was never able to attend, a prelude to the rest of my life.....

   I asked a very good friend of mine when I was in my early 20's, "How do you know when its time to have a child?  Get married?"  She, with two of her own children in tow says, "You will know when you meet the right man, you will want to take that special relationship to the next level & prove your love for eachother."  I waited......I dated.....I waited.....I had my heart shattered; became relentlessly bitter....I stopped dating, I looked at men as though they were all RATS and I was their cheese, little did they know this cheese was poisoned.... I never fell in love again, I did believe it was possible & I had 5 years where I didn't 'look'...I focused on my work; Quality Control Inspector.  I have never heard a marriage proposal, I often thought if I was that woman that waited on her man hand & foot, would he propose?  That would have went against everything I was.

   Children; I never got the itch to have a baby, I have seen friends that have come and gone in my life want nothing more than to have a child; weeping because they weren't, spending thousands of dollars to get a little extra help from the Dr. because having a baby was THAT important.....I scratched my head, I never understood; much like the "ice cream headache" or brain freeze, I have never experienced that either. Many people who come up against cancer have those reasons to fight it, I don't want to leave my children, spouse, etc. I had (have) nothing so important in my life that would cause those fight instincts within myself, which is probably a good thing because of there being no treatment.

   I have been thinking, on this eve of the Thanksgiving holiday; thankfully I am not in a Hospice facility, I get to lay in my waterbed, smoke if I so chose, play loud music without disturbing anyone, scream at the top of my lungs if I wish to.  I believe that 'Hope' is still believing there is something huge out there for me.  I would rather be consumed with hope of 'something' rather than feeling the constant reminder that I have cancer.  Yet, sometimes, somedays, I will have small reason to enjoy that feeling of hope.  Not to live a long life that I could write a best-seller on, although I have had 3 poems published in my life and that certainly gave reason to shine a little grin, its the lonliness, the cancer pain, unanswered letters I have written to my immediate family & friends, feeling unloved, feeling as though I did something wrong, hurt them in some way, I could go on & on, it is that, which is the reality of this everyday life that does make those miniscule moments of Hope worth hanging onto, if even for a moment...

   Maybe I should regret telling anyone in my circle that I'm terminally ill; hindsight is 20/20....Just as I do not believe in coinsidence, I also do not believe in regrets, maybe all of this is in fact too much for anyone, I am a very deep hearted person & when I love, I love unconditionally; I get close.  Too close?  I believe everything is happening as it should, within its own time.  I am not that same person I was before I got sick, I (thought) I was a better person for having beat it even for a brief 3 months, I learned much; the lonely walk I tread, may be because "they don't like me anymore".  What is important to them (ie kids tracking mud in house; reaction: "clean this mess up right now!!"...heart beating fast, blood pressure rising...) someone walks in my house with muddy feet & I'm thinking about how far apart their steps are, what size shoe they wear; those little things are not enough for me to raise my blood pressure.  So as to keep this in the correct context; I have never brushed off anyone else's problems because, at that time in their life, it IS important & I am always all ears.

   My Mother told me the other day that my half brothers Mom has been telling people, "He will text her and she never answers, he will ask if he can come over and she says no, I think she just doesn't want to see him"....WOW I said, of course I immediately grabbed my cell phone to defend myself and began reading the texts between him and I.  "What days do you have off? How is my niece and nephew?  I would love to see them!  Text when you can so we can get together! XOXOXOXO".....He never replied to my text.  I tried again a few days later falling on the weekend, much to the first text I had sent....Nothing.  I let it go.  A couple of months later he asked me what my first tumor felt like in my breast, I told him and asked why?  Has someone you know found one?  No response.....I don't feel that I am in the wrong when I say they are all making this about them; how THEY are effected; how THEY will be when they see me laying in that casket; Who will comfort THEM when I pass?  I believe it was Kathy that once mentioned; "You shouldn't have to beg for love."..........

In closing on this Thanksgiving Eve.....WHEN will they come, unconditionally, no expectations of food, not because I am in my final hours, not because we have gifts to exchange, when will they come just to 'be' with me?

...If I should die before I wake I want to thank all who have read, posted, & listened to my story, it has meant so much to me to have found you all, I had to express how I feel to my real Circle after the valuable information Kathy said; "People will always remember the last thing you said"  I did not want my appreciation to you all to go un-noticed.......

Oh Tanya, what words...

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
if I die before I wake,
I pray for God my soul to take.

I cannot think what goes through some peoples minds and how they can LIVE with themselves - what does it take to make these people better human beings - anyways, that is enough talking about them.

Happy thanksgiving - are you having roast turkey?

Please email me your address so I can send your Christmas Card over and I am still waiting on that calligraphy :-)

It is getting real cold here and we are expecting snow - I had better get my winter clothes out as I resist the winter foolishly by wearing shorts everywhere - stupid I know but I really must get the long trousers on!

I totally get your first line and although I am fighting and looking for cures etc and will fight it to the end I will fight mainly because I want to live for others and not necessarily for me...maybe I need to get that sorted...I have always thought my thinking maybe borderline suicidal, but thinking of your line I now realise it is not a wish of mine to die more of a wish of not knowing my place and not wanting to live just for me! so stuck in limbo...thank-you Tanya as you have just helped me start to make sense of something that I have been wondering about for most of my life...I don't fully understand but will certainly be 'tapping' on this train of thought!

Much Love

Tanya's Tony xx

Dear tanya

I so hope you had a good thanksgiving.I am with you in the throught that things do happen in there own time as they are ment to.It is perhaps easyer for those who have a heart attack or go in there sleep but we have been given a gift of time that we set high value on and gives us a chance at some resolution.I have a bookshop and i am always a bit sad for the books nobody wants as they are the authors baby.Have you looked at how many people have come on here to listen to you.If it was a book a publisher would be well pleased.It is easyer to be quite and pretend but you choose to talk about the path we all walk,maybe this is what you are ment to use your energies for,much better than waiting on some fool of a husband.I cannot see you enjoying that .Dont be to sad about your brother,some people are strong and some are not.As i understand it the ones who are able to step up are not the ones left  with regret.How is your mother doing .this must be hard for her.

I do not think cancer should be fought ,like it or not it is part of us ,fight aginst yourself andyou will lose ,we have to learn to live with it for as long as we can.

While they were beautiful last words we need a lot more of them so dont give up you are wanted and needed here.

Dear Tanya,

Hope this Thanksgiving finds you alright.

I have a great appreciation of you, as well.  You have lifted me when I've been low, and surprised me that it never caused you to tell me of your anger.  Yes, you could have told me to consider you and your situation, but you never weighed your's up against mine.  You seem to realise that you can't judge one person's hurts against anothers (I can only know the hurt I was feeling at the time).

I remember you once wrote that Tony Song and myself were your reasons for wanting to write (I'm paraphrasing).  What you didn't realise that for all of us, our friendship has been reciprocal; that we feed from eachother.

Thanks for writing of your recognition of us though, it does mean so much.

Tonight, I will respond to only one other thing you wrote in your last post "Who will comfort THEM when I pass?"  Well, they will comfort eachother with the realisation they should have sated their love for you while you could respond to it.  They will realise that flowers are only truly beautiful before they are cut down...

Best wishes

Kathy

Your recent post made it much easier to understand where you are coming from .  Hope you are able to enjoy a good thanksgiving.