In Memory Of My Dear Sister In Law

Photo Copyright: Maggie May

My last post was filled with good news and now I have to announce that my lovely sister in law, Mrs Eddie Bluelights, who I have always referred to as Gloria in my blog, has passed away. I will leave my brother Eddie to fill in the details on his blog, when he feels up to it, but all I can say is that she was a very brave lady who fought (if that is the right word) breast cancer for a good many years. She was only 42 yrs old when she was first diagnosed and died aged 61.

I will miss her because she was my brother's wife and we loved her as a valued member of our family. I will miss her because we had some lovely regular meetings that I really looked forward to and I had hoped for many more.  I will miss her because she was kind and understanding and we talked most weekends on the phone. I will miss her because she was the very last person I knew, after my friend Pietra died last October from the very same thing, who really knew what it was like to experience the horror of the pain that cancer in a bone could cause. I could relate to her and she could relate to me. We knew what the awful disease could do and understood one another's anguish and pain. Now I am feeling very much alone. However, it must be a million times worse for Eddie and their two children and partners.

I hate cancer with a vengeance and I'm really hoping that there will be a cure, if not in my childrens' life spans then in my grandchildrens'.

I am grateful that Denise Nesbitt, another blogging friend, is going to be doing the Race For Life in June and that she is being sponsored for Cancer Research. This is the only way a cure is going to be found in the distant future, though much headway is being made in some cancer treatments.

I wish that I could do the Race For Life but I can hardly run for a bus these days!

On the day that I heard the sad news, which was not really expected to happen as quickly as it did, I was told that she was dying, early in the morning and I felt pretty much devastated because I had no time to do the one and a half hour journey to go to see her for the last time. Yet at the time of her death which was unknown to me then, I was filled with a kind of peace and felt protected from all hurt.

Life seemed to go on around me fairly normally. In fact I had the grand daughters here for breakfast.

When they had gone to school and I heard what had happened, I cried for hours until I could cry no more.

I noted that it was a sunny day and that things were already happening in the world that Gloria didn't know about. I was a survivor and she wasn't. I had to press on with what life dealt me, she didn't.

The only thing that brings any kind of comfort to me is that she had a firm Christian faith and that I know she has moved on to something much better.

I have been thinking of my mother a good deal lately and all the other people who have moved away through death and I really hope that they are all together.  I know that many non believers read this blog but I can only write things from my own perspective and I do respect other people's points of view. However, these are my experiences and feelings of the sad event and how I have coped with it to date. I know that grief never really leaves anyone but we have to learn how to cope with it and find some way with dealing with our feeling while being true to them and not suppressing them.