Help…4th Feb 2011
Last week (following a CT scan) we found out that instead of the 2-5yrs we thought I had, they now believe it to be more like 12-18mths. As a result, now more than ever we need your help.
With less time than we thought we had (so they say) Greg plans to only work 3 days a week as of April 1st so he can spend more time with me. This obviously means a drop income but Greg wants to have no regrets and to put time with me first.
As I wont be having any chemo at this stage, we want to increase my Intravenous VitC treatments which we had to drop back due to a lack of funds. We also would like to be able to take a holiday together as a family sometime within the next 12months. Without help neither of these things are possible.
How can you help?
- Please check out the Fundraisers Page to see what fundraising events we currently have on.
- There is of course also just a simple donation of any size which can deposited to:
Natalie & Greg Murphy BNZ 02-0238-0116716-97 or if you are a company you can donate into our Trust account Hand in Hand for Natalie 02-1244-0064478-000
I also have a PAYPAL acct under nataliemurphy@maxnet.co.nz
- Petrol vouchers, supermarket vouchers etc are also of a huge help!
Any help of any kind would be appreciated beyond words. It all adds up and helps to make some of our dreams come true and maybe if we are lucky, even buy me some more time!!
We want to make the best of this last ‘period’ of time but without funding our options are severely limited. Please help us not be restricted by funds to fight this thing for every last extra day.
Since the latest discovery, it has got me thinking about Goals. So here are mine:
1: to make it to my 10th wedding anniversary (14mths away) where Greg and I want to renew our wedding vows.
2: to make Jacksons 3rd birthday (18mths away)
3: to make Jacksons first day at school (3.5yrs away)
4. to make it to my 40th bday. (5yrs and 7mths away)
5. to make it to Greg’s 40th bday. (6yrs and 2mths away)
6. to make it to Jacksons wedding day (a while away)
7. to meet my grandchildren (?)
8. to give my son the best of me every day until he moves out of home and lives his own life. To share my mistakes with him and pass on lessons I have learnt. I want to fuss when he falls over, I want to hear “mummy” until it drives me crazy, I want to sit and discuss Jackson’s wants, needs, rules, disciplines, crazy haircuts and be a parent alongside Greg as he grows into a young boy, and teenager. I want to sing annoying songs with him, read him a lifetime of storybooks, place a thousand plasters on his knees and wipe his bum (even no 3′s). I want to teach him the alphabet, I want to wash the sheets in the middle of the night when he wets his bed, I want to buy his first school bag and uniform, I want to help him with his homework and teach him timestables, manners and how to pooh in the loo. I want to ask “how was your day” and only get ‘good’ for an answer. I want to lie in bed and shake my head the crazy music he likes and the way he wants to dress. I want to critique his girlfriends and teach him how to treat woman and be a good man.
9. I want to do all this together with the love of my life. I want to grow old with him.
10. I don’t want Greg to have to do all this without me.
It’s funny how the prospect of dying puts what is really important into perspective. In the face of things (the idea of dying) you don’t desire flash cars, a big house, trips all around the world, a great body, a new wardrobe, or anything materialistic. You just want to be close to the ones you love and share as much time as you can with them, making as many memories as you can for you to take with you and for them to hold on to when you are gone. You just want more time.
Yet when not in the face of it, people rush through their lives at 100 miles an hour, stress about just about everything, sweat about the small stuff, constantly complain like it’s the latest craze, do everything they can to obtain ‘things’, and feel empty or a failure when we don’t have as many toys, as big a house or as flash a car as the next guy. Many women spend all their time trying to compete with airbrushed models in magazines and the memory of their 18yr old body they think they can get back despite gravity and a much slower metabolism.
We are the consumer generation. Most of us are hard on ourselves, have high expectations, are never satisfied and think the grass is always greener in some else’s paddock.
Learn from my journey. Learn ahead of ‘time’ what is important and appreciate your life, your loved ones. Appreciate the partner that drives you crazy sometimes cos you know you don’t actually want to live without them. Appreciate your children that often whine and exhaust you because you love them more than life – you’d probably sacrifice your own for theirs. Appreciate your lopsided breasts cos they’re yours and you still have them. That goes for the men too! Appreciate your wrinkles cos it means you are alive and you are aging, that is what is supposed to happen (or it means you also need to stop smoking) and wrinkles are better than having to worry about puberty, acne or wearing the shocking 80s gear you gladly left behind you in your youth (like fluro crop tops and shoulder pads).
Appreciate your life. Look after it. Don’t neglect it or take it for granted. Any of you could die before I do (in an accident or however) and not have the opportunity to design the last of your days/years. So make your life the way you want it now. If you are unhappy, change what you need to so that you are. Don’t complain constantly, find a solution. If you have dreams make them happen. No one else will do it for you. If you know something is wrong, go to the doctor. Please!
Slow down, stop, be in the quiet, hang out with yourself and get to know yourself all over again. I can guarantee most of you are lost in your jobs. Find a better balance. Ask yourself, if you were in my position what would you, what would you change? and make it happen. Don’t wait until you are sick or whatever to realise you haven’t lived the way you wish you had.
Fortunately for me I have very few regrets. In the past you probably would have heard me say that I don’t believe in regrets, that everything in life happens for a reason, good and bad. We are supposed to learn from it and grow from it. Mistakes/regrets make us who we are. Without them we would incredibly boring. I still believe this. I guess what I mean by ‘regrets’ is that looking back there are times in my life when I wish my older self could have talked to my younger self. There is no one that won’t agree with me on this one. I’ll call these my regrets.
I regret not helping mum more and appreciating her more when I lived at home. I regret finding myself worth in what others thought of me in highschool. I regret holding onto the hurts of broken highschool friendships for way too long. I regret having boyfriends before I was 16. I regret being a people pleaser (and pushover) for many years, just wanting to be liked.
I regret not beli563teving in myself way sooner – like at 27 when I finally realised I could turn something I was good at in a successful business.
I regret the hurt Greg and I put each other through in our naivety for so many years before we finally got it right.
I regret not taking my lump more seriously when Greg first found it and later on not pushing harder to get results sooner (through the shocking public system).
I regret that I can’t give Jackson a sibling and that I probably won’t see his first day at school…let alone most of his life.
I regret that I won’t be growing old with my husband as I promised I would.
But these regrets don’t burden me, they don’t weigh over me or make down… Ok maybe the last few are a bit harder to swallow right now, but my point is that I’m a very lucky woman to know that when my time does come, that I will be leaving behind a life I am incredibly proud of, and only now truly appreciate to the level that I should. (I am blown away beyond words, by the realisation of how many people are surrounding me that love and care about me. It’s soooo incredibly humbling and I’m eternally grateful). It is human nature to take our lives for granted. Don’t wait until you’re possibly in my shoes one day. You don’t know what is around the corner. Hey I still catch myself thinking “this kind of thing doesn’t happen to ‘me’!”and waiting for someone to tell me they’ve made big mistake, “sorry”. But it did happen to me. I’m lucky I have time to say my goodbyes, unlike many of those less fortunate in Christchurch since the quake.
Appreciate your life now. And leave it with as few ‘regrets’ as possible (if you believe in them).
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