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Friday 6 July 2012

Emotional Responses

This isn't an easy time of year for me, lots of painful anniversaries relating to David & Pip. But I do cope much better now with "a little help from my friends" & Maryon. I have learnt that it is necessary to acknowledge how I feel & sometimes that will be very sad. But life does go on & change is unavoidable.

Having had quite a volatile temperament when I was younger, I have learnt that some emotions can be very destructive & do more harm to the emotional person than anyone else. Now I'm older I try to keep on a much more even keel. I try not to have expectations of what others might do or say & I try to respond to adverse things more calmly & think them through. At the end of the day there are always people much worse off than I am. A sense of perspective is a wonderful thing. I am but a grain of sand, a breath of wind briefly passing through the cosmos.

At 67 you do think about your own mortality. How long? When? How? Fear could be the predominant emotion. Being in great pain & alone is the ultimate worst case scenario. I don't particularly want to live to a hundred. I certainly don't want to have an existance with no quality of life. (Did you know that there are scales of measurement for QUALY as they call it?) I don't want to be unable to look after myself & if I can't I don't want my daughter to have to look after my personal care.

I have done as much as I can to prepare for ageing and death. It isn't death itself that I fear, it's how I die & I can't do anything about that. So I'll just try to enjoy my life - however long it is.

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