This isn't Emo, okay (my personal crusade against them seems to have been started!) but it's a timely reminder, and something worthy of rememberance so if you don't like it, you can politely go and **** yourself

This time of year is almost becoming a bit tragic for our family, with a trace of irony that cannot be ignored, at this time of year.

Being a very strong Christian family (all pretty damned devout except myself and my Brother: Practising Aetheists) the following tale is somewhat ironic, well, not ironic at all if you’re a `real` Christian, perfectly so if you don’t believe in any deific religion, or if you just have some common sense.

A year ago today my Grandmother died of a cancer so rare that it affects only one in 4 million cancer patients worldwide, and it was mis-diagnosed by her GP for 9 months, giving the tumour time to spread and kill her yada yada yada blah blah etc. no-one wants to read that and it’s not like it’s `unfair` as she was very lucky on average. However; still not a warm and fluffy yuletide tale, if I may say so!

She had a good innings and was a happy and intelligent person, she got a lot more from her life through doing good work for the church so that I am sure she enjoyed more of it than a hell of a lot of people. The majority of the work was for the church’s relief efforts worldwide and the support of the Macmillan nurses, and all the rest of it went to, mostly, cancer charities.

If I was being a troublemaking b*stard I might mention that one of the Lord’s devoted and pious servants getting a natural disease that rare, one that she spent the majority of her later life raising money to cure, and it starting in Easter, and her dying at Christmas, almost to the day in both cases, seems a little tiny weensy bit either ironic, or just really bloody spiteful.

Of course these things are sent to test out faith. Of course ; anyway…..

And now my Brother’s mother-in-law was gonna get the same kinda treatment and it was a bit risky, and now they know it can’t be treated and she’s got a few months left and yeah, woohoo, it’s another slightly sombre Christmas, funnily enough.

Mind you she’s has been ill all her life and even though she’s only 54 it’s an end to a lot of misery and frustration, and it’s not like it wasn’t seen coming which is something.

But I’m not complaining. That’s Life, as Frank put it, and it is always kicking you in the *albatross* but then you find sometimes it actually has just moved you forward.

So it's all good, just something I would like to remember today, though.