25 August 2012

The lottery of life

So, I am feeling a little moribund currently, and it's not just because of the stress of uni (though that is not helping). It's because the lady across the road, a widow of about 42 with two little girls, is dying of breast cancer.  I saw her arrive home from hospital yesterday as I looked through my bedroom window. I watched her friend take her bag inside the house and then I saw her white-haired father-in-law and his wife carry a wheeled office chair to the footpath so she could sit on it before trying to walk to the stairs leading to her front verandah.  That's when I went across the road, to see if I could help.  And I did help - a tiny, tiny bit.  She is so thin that her legs are like poles.  She was too weak to hold some flowers that were delivered as we sat at the base of the steps, gathering strength.  She is on oxygen constantly too because she tells me she has pleurisy.  
The Brisbane River on a beautiful morning
The fact is that life SUCKS.  I mean, her young husband has already died (a heart attack while running) and now she is going to die and leave her two young daughters orphaned, with only aged and tired grandparents to care for them.  The other grandmother is on her way over from the UK, but is awaiting some kind of visa which I hope they are expediting...  I can't stop thinking about the stairs and what we can do to make it easier for her to get up and down them as she will have to when she goes once per week to hospital for her chemotherapy.  Her in-laws are exhausted.  So the fact is that I have nothing to complain about and everything to be grateful for - and you should too.  That's all for now.  Back to my uni reading.  

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