4 June
Toby - so excited today because your new phone has arrived.
Very sophisticated and very expensive. Lots of hard work on your paper round and not so hard work on the few babysits you have started to do. You are a great boy and although becoming more independent and off with your friends you always seem happy to be at home with us and still like to go on holiday with us.
Have driven you over to Josh’s to pick-up your stuff. I like to do things for you. I know I sometimes indulge you when E tells me to let you “do it for yourself” but I am ever conscious that I won’t be able to do things for you for much longer and in fact you will have to do more for me.
Already you help with carrying heavy stuff for me, often unasked. You seem very sensitive to my limitations and do help me. Of the three of you, you will have the most memories, being the oldest. A double edged sword. Remembering more also means knowing more fully how ill I have been during your formative years. I hope this doesn’t make you feel - I don’t know ‘disadvantaged’, ‘cheated’?? What I don’t want is for you to blame future ills on me being ill and I hope I have managed to be ‘quietly’ ill most of the time so that it doesn’t feel as though it was always at the forefront of our lives. I’m afraid it feels very much at the forefront this week. I’m trying to get a grip. Certainly reading last year it seems I was feeling similar.
How can I not think every day that time is limited, especially when I wheeze just climbing the stairs.
Certainly if there is life after death I am going to be a runner and I will run every day because I can.
