Life's twists and turns

The twists and turns of life can sometimes throw us completely out of our safe little cocoon.

We’ve been really busy as usual without giving much thought to the rest of the family, even our own boys. This month is the month to try and catch up with our overdue payments so we have tightened the belt very tight and used the time to start cleaning up the mess called our house.

Then a week ago tonight we heard from Dale’s sister that the wife of her oldest son had been diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. I’d never heard of this disease so looked it up on-line and was horrified to learn that people with this survive about 4 months, have memory loss, become paralyzed, go into a coma and die.

Only 1 week before our niece was driving and still involved with her two teenage boys lives and we were keeping in touch on Facebook. Now a week later she staggers, has memory lapses, sleeps a lot, can’t talk much. To read the research and then to watch someone suffer with this disease are 2 different things. We are shocked at how quickly she is going downhill and feel profound sadness for our nephew and their two boys. We are trying to work out how to best help the family.

Now today my oldest granddaughter’s mother has emailed that her husband, our granddaughter’s step father, has lumps again like the ones he had when he was diagnosed with lymphoma. They are most anxious to move back to this area so he can go back to the cancer center where he was treated before.

It brings it back that I must make the best of my life because life is short.