I wasn’t brought up in a ‘glass half full’ kind of family. It was more, ‘call that a glass?’ or even, ‘glass? What glass?’. So being told to keep positive is all very well, but it goes completely against the grain.
I light, I’ve spent the past two weeks rushing about trying to get Christmas and two pre-Christmas birthdays done before I go into hospital next week. While one half of my brain is sure I’ll be fine, the operation will go well, and that will be that, the other half is equally certain I’ll die on the operating table. I am therefore planning a funeral at the same time as asking people over at Christmas. It’s not quite as surprising when you hear that close relatives have asked me about my will and what will happen to the house. I’m just as bad, I admit – I’ve already divided up my jewellery between my daughters.
But I know it’s not the ideal mindset. In that light, I’ve spent the past two weeks rushing about trying to get Christmas and two pre-Christmas birthdays done before I go into hospital next week. Keeping busy is probably as good as keeping positive, I’ve decided. I now have a great mound of stuff collected up in my secret hiding place – somewhere so well known to the whole family, even the cats, that I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there wasn’t a single surprise left, if you see what I mean. At some point, I’m going to have to get everything out and sort it into piles, one per person, and two per person for the pre-Christmas birthdays. I’m dreading this more, almost, than the whole operation thing (apart from the dying-on-the-table bit). What usually happens, when I have three or so months to assemble everything, is that I completely forget what I’ve already got and find that some people have too much (or even two of some things) while others’ piles are a bit threadbare. I’m hoping that having condensed the whole business down into a quick sprint, I won’t have had quite so much time to duplicate/prevaricate/obliterate. Fingers crossed – for that, and the rest.
