Covering the landscape in a sea of grassy green and atmospheric blue, they spring up every year. Next to the babbling brook, beneath the trees, fluttering and dancing in the breeze – a host of beautiful bluebells. And every year I wonder whether this time will be my last to see them. I first had this thought during the earliest Covid lockdown. I was miles away from the woodland near where I grew up and the laws of the land forbade people from travelling too far, especially not to see family and flowers. By the time restrictions were eased the bluebells had long gone.
And now, having been diagnosed with incurable bowel cancer in the summer of 2023, I am doing my best to take joy in revisiting happy times from my past while ensuring they are part of now – if that makes sense at all. Shortly after starting my chemotherapy, I wondered whether the treatment would have any effect or whether my body would be riddled with an ever-increasing number of tumours.
For some reason, I felt the best way to deal with the sense of impending doom was to walk around the village where I grew up and go to the corner shop I had rarely visited. I wanted to see if it was still there.
Last year, my friends and I conjured up some childhood memories when we went to Pizza Hut for what may well be the last time – only because I live in London, so there are thousands of other pizza places to try.
For me, it isn’t so much about remembering the past as it is about living in the present.
This is why, instead of wandering lonely as a cloud like the esteemed poet William Wordsworth when he saw a field of daffodils, this week I went for a walk near my childhood home with my sister and her dog to see some magnificent blooms.
We went to some places we had been to many times before. The common link being that they are all places of resilience and hope. While the people living in my home village have changed a lot since I was born in the late 1970s, the wooded landscape surrounding them has stayed largely the same.
As the bluebells spring up each year and humans prepare for the heady days of summer, it’s important for people to take a moment – and enjoy that moment. It’s a truly important lesson to learn.
But that’s much easier said than done when you’re fighting cancer. And I can only imagine how impossible it must be when someone has been given a terminal diagnosis.
Life with the disease is an emotional rollercoaster, and that’s why the Daily Express Cancer Care campaign is calling for all patients to have mental health support both during and after treatment.
We want everyone suffering from cancer to be able to enjoy whatever time they have left, no matter how long or short.