It's been a manic couple of months since my last entry. I feel like if I'm not working I'm either keeping the house in working order or meeting people for the wedding! It's not long away now, it seemed to be really busy when we were planning it all then everything went a little bit quiet and now it's gone crazy again. I think I underestimated how much planning and thought things take and there are so many little things to try and remember to do and organise! It's mainly done now, just the little bits left and then we can just look forward to the big day. I've decided to attach a picture of my mum to the bottom of my flowers so that it hangs down, that way she can walk down the aisle with me. I like to think that it's something personal to me and I'll know that she's enjoying our special day with us.
It keeps hitting me more and more now that she's not here, I was caught up in planning before whereas now it's drawing nearer I'm realising that she's gone. It's silly things I want her support with that remind me, like how I should decorate tables and when I had my hair trial. I'm lucky that I have a lot of people around me that take care of me and make sure that I'm doing alright and that I have a really good relationship with my dad. No doubt I'll have a cry on the morning but then i'll try and concentrate on enojying the day and remembering that she is with me, just in spirit rather than person.
Worryingly, I had someone that I work with ask me the dangers of smoking the other day and whether smoking cigarettes actually causes cancer or whether it's put on the packet just to scare people off. This ended up in quite a long talk about the potential dangers caused by smoking (both passive and direct) and the toxins, poisons and chemicals that can be found inside cigarettes and how these can lead to things such as lung cancer. This conversation really shocked me in terms of perhaps how naive young people can be about what they are putting into their bodies and that they can sometimes think that they're invincible. We discussed things like lung cancer can happen to people at any age and the difficulties with things sometimes like diagnosis and the problems that this can cause, especially becuase it is such a difficult area to operate on and not an organ that you can potentially live without like a kidney. I wonder if young people have the knowledge of the dangers of all of their behaviours - in my job I discuss the dangers of the effects of alcohol and drug misuse however this often spills over into our health in general and some of the beliefs that are held can be quite alarming. I often say to people that we think things are never going to happen to us but they can do and we need to make the most of caring for ourselves and making sure our behaviours are healthy and that we look after our bodies and mind.
A lot of people that I see have bereavement issues and I find it useful that I am able to talk about my mum to them, not only to keep her alive in my mind but also to share my experiences that I know maybe how they are feeling. I really believe in talking things through and I find that a lot of the time the way that you feel when you're down is often the way that someone else is feeling too and you can help each other through those hard times. I wonder how I would have coped if I didn't talk so freely about what happened to my mum and how extremely hard it was to go through that journey with her, especially thinking about things from her perspective. No matter how low and down I felt, she was always going to feel 100 times worse - that's the thing that gets to me... wondering how she coped mentally with all the things going through her head whether that be being scared becuase she knew how ill she was or maybe worrying about me knowing that she wouldn't be here. I think that's the one thing that gets me down still to this day. My mum never moaned or complained once and to me that proves that she is the bravest person I know.