It took a while to feel ready to talk about
Dad and our experience with his melanoma again. I needed to put the final few
weeks of Dad’s life out of my mind, not because I could ever forget Dad, but
because those weeks were such a sad time for me, and my family. I needed to
come to terms with things.
But now, two years on, I decided to pick
myself up and be more active in doing something to help others going through
the same thing.
Having moved to Australia I chose to
support the Cancer Council, which is an Australian charity. I held a girls’
night in and invited everyone to bring a plate to share and buy raffle tickets
for prizes I had gathered from generous local businesses.
 |
| My Australian girlfriends who helped raise money to fight cancer. |
This post is not a pat on my own back, but
a thankyou to all the girls who attended, all the friends far away who donated
online, and to all the local people who generously gave me things to raffle.
Together, we raised almost AUD $550 and I couldn’t have done it without
everyone’s support.
I think about Dad every day and continue to
really miss him. I also know I am not alone in feeling this way. A frightening
number of people have told me about someone they have lost to cancer. A close girlfriend of mine has lost her own father only yesterday.
Lets keep
up the fight and hopefully, one day, there will be more we can do to fight this
exceptionally nasty disease.
