It's been a while.....

At times some aspects of your life have to take a back seat for a while, this has been the case for my news blog. The week after my last post my father in-law took ill and was subsequently diagnosed with malignant mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer which is caused by exposure to asbestos. Having worked most of his life as a joiner in John Browns shipyard this was almost inevitable. It is a nasty illness for which there is no cure, all that the doctor's could offer was treatment to try and prolong his life a little longer, but In our heart of hearts we knew Dad's remaining time was likely to be short. So our summer was filled with spending as much time as we could with Dad, taking him to and from hospital appointments, and chemotherapy treatments. However in between times we were determined to help Dad live his life to the full with his family, so anytime he felt up to it we would take him out in the car and have a fun day. We drove him to St Andrews on the 9th of July, which was also his birthday, we lunched in the town and Dad was fascinated by the work going on to prepare the 'Auld Grey Town' for the Open Championship which was happening a week later. We ended that day by driving to Anstruther and having fish supper at the famous Fish & Chip shop and then sat on the harbour wall and had an ice-cream - happy times.

That was just one of the many days out this summer we enjoyed with Dad. I told him what Lance Armstrong said when he was diagnosed with cancer, he said, "from now on I take nothing for granted. I now have only good days, or great days." and so Dad was determined to live the same way and we tried our best to make sure everyday was lived to it's fullest, nothing left unsaid and nothing left undone.

Dad died on Friday 3rd September, his passing was a great loss to all the family and indeed to all who knew him. The turn out at the funeral was breathtaking and a measure of how many lives he touched. One person who was missing that day was our son Christopher, he had only just retuned to University in West Virginia, USA, a couple of weeks before and we felt that it was better that he stayed there rather than face the long lonely journey home. Christopher was extremely close to his Papa and we know it was difficult for him to hear the sad news while being so far from home. This week we are taking a short break and flying over to the Sates to visit Christopher and we are taking my mother in-law along with us. Hopefully this will bring us all some much needed happiness and comfort.