I proposed today

Comedy/Humour
21

Sorry to post again in this happy thread but Christine is thought to be in the last days of life now. I am going to visit her this afternoon but she may not be awake and I will simply sit there holding her hand as I did last time. The saving grace is that, as she is so often asleep, we do not think she is in any pain. I will certainly not wake her and will walk in without knocking to avoid disturbance.

For those who don’t know, she was far and away the most caring of all of the many excellent health visitors my wife Fran had over her last couple of years and I love her dearly without being in love, if that makes sense. She has remained cheerful through 18 months of twice visited cancer, several operations and courses of chemo including being transferred between two hospitals, Limoges and Perigueux and a hopeful at the time stay in a recovery home. She was transferred back home after the dread words ‘we have no more treatment available’ some months back in the care of all her former colleagues.

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22

That’s a very caring thing to do after everything you’ve been through.

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23

I don’t look at it that way though, I feel towards her all except romantic love, and had told her so.

As if all that was not enough, when I was in hospital after my heart attack in May 2024, she made it back home after a time in a different recovery home, presumably cured, but on the very day she was delivered to the house her husband, who had become a very good friend of mine due to my frequent visits to get her news, went to the shops, fell in the street, received a fractured skull and died on his way to the same hospital as me. I was so visibly shocked on reading her text, that the nurses around me noticed and rushed to my aid.

I immediately texted back saying that we, Fran and I, owed her so much that if there was anything, anything I could do she only had to say. Her reply was typical ‘you owe me nothing, I loved Fran’.

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24

I know exactly what you mean David. Lots of love go to you and although I don’t know her, I’m sending all good wishes to Christine. May her last days be peaceful without suffering. God wants her, because she’s an angel - that’s what I always think when the good ones ‘go’.

Lots of good, positive thoughts and wishes to you my dear friend. Love from Rachel :heart:

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25

Thank you Rachel, very kind, I don’t myself believe in an afterlife but times like this perhaps makes me wish I did, and see her meeting up with Laurent, her rock star husband and also my dear Fran, would be a nice thought to have. :joy:

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26

In the event, I could not see her, it was her own wish and that included her best friend of many years. I got there early, at 3.45 and parked outside but had promised to go in at 4. Steven her brother came outside without having seen me there, because she had sent him, wanting to be totally alone. We spoke for over 10 minutes and I am not sure that I will ever see her again, but has promised to ring or text if she does rally. Her mornings are full, just like Fran’s were, of all the various carers coming in and that means being got out of bed for them to complete all of their tasks, and it wipes her out by midday and only wanting to be alone afterwards. Maybe tomorrow.

Steven does not work, maybe retired, not sure but he will stay now as long as he is needed but will need to extend his visa if so. He has to stay, she must not be alone and will be taken back to hospital, against her wishes, if no-one is there. The relay of brothers, daughter and grandchildren, all with their own lives in England to maintain seems to be accepted to be at an end. Just Steven now and, if she will let us, all her friends. So sad.

BTW, it was so hot that I left Jules at home, he was very good, laying in the shade of the terrasse with the house open if he wanted to go in, but he was still there, or there again, when I got home, nice welcome home. :grinning_face:

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27

I never believed in the after life until my lovely son was brutally killed by a thick mobile ‘phone using van driver. My son was 49 and was on his way to work on his motorbike. Since that very day, I have had many many things happen to me, some very strange, some virtually life saving. I could go on, but just to say that I know that Simon my lad was always around me. I am not religious in any way. That has not changed. But as far as life on earth is concerned, this one is definitely not the end.

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28

I know what you mean, but although I lost my young brother to a cancer at the age of 49, I cannot connect anything in my life with that event.

As far as religion is concerned, not sure about all the others but the Christian version of love and kindness simply does not wash with me. It is one thing for humans to lose people in the way of life, as with all other creatures, but a god that designs animals to be cruel for survival is not a loving one. We see it every day but it was really brought home this evening, I watched the last half of ‘Big Cats’.. Thousands of animals have been created (if we are to believe) to live out their lives surviving on grass and trees and fruit, if that is possible why on earth did this loving creator then make some, whose only survival is by tearing to pieces others in the most horrible way?

We saw both sides tonight, but something I haven’t seen before, a massive pride of lions attacked a herd of buffaloes and managed to single out one which after a chase and a mauling was brought down and disappeared from view under up to 10 lions trying to tear it apart. But that much I had seen before, this time it was different, the herd returned and attacked the lions throwing them this way and that and the downed one was saved and they all escaped. I have never been so chuffed, though I do sympathise with the lions, they can’t eat grass, but who the hell designed such things?

No, I can’t believe in a loving god, so it is one who is fascinated with the destruction and cruelty of his creations, or one who never existed at all, and we are merely flukes in an unfathomable accidental universe. I am convinced that death is only like going to sleep, although I dream sometimes, and sometimes I wake and then return to slumber, but during the other bits, the majority, I know nothing, and one day I will not wake up, and know nothing about it.

Which is why I am not afraid of death, what I would be afraid of is being delivered into the hands of such a sadistic creator, and I don’t believe it exists.

I don’t think Christine believes it either, she knows that she is on borrowed time, time beyond what the doctors predicted. I haven’t been able to see her again today so I think she must be sleeping, and one day soon, it will stop.

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29

I never mentioned god or christian or anything like that. Losing a child is the very WORST thing a parent can suffer. I was the first person to see my son born, and the last to see him die, only 100 yards from where he was born, in Southampton General Hospital. I hate god mate. I am just telling you that my son is around me at times of crisis. Stuff the bloody buffaloes and all that! Just saying.

30

It’s an uncomfortable truth that in most if not all ecosystems, predators are very necessary. Most ecosystems, without predators, undergo boom and bust cycles where animal populations explode and outstrip or destroy their food source. This leads to mass starvation. And then the cycle continues again. So it depends if you think that a relatively small number of quickish deaths is better than a much larger number of slow deaths due to starvation. Of course, all of this has nothing to do with and deity, it’s just how life works.

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31

You may be right of course, but then I would be encouraged to believe that it is necessary for more vegans and vegetarians to be culled by bad drivers and slaughter maniacs like Mao, Stalin and Hitler etc. Other monsters are available. (Trump and the Yahoo, I am looking at you :heart_eyes:)

So are we to believe that, far from being simply horrible people, we should all treat the above as saviours of the human race?

32

Well, there’s only one species of animal on the planet that has the capability of overcoming the predator/prey cycle. And it has no effective natural predators. That’s why it’s population has increased enormously.
Many of that species still die of starvation even when it could be avoided.

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33

When there’s a gap in the ecosystem something arises to fill it. In this case it’s other humans as predators.

34

Indeed. Humans are the number one apex predator on the planet and it’s inevitable that intraspecies as well as interspecies predation occurs with humans. And intraspecies predation is not unusual in other species as well although the reasons may vary.

35

This is the Comedy/Humour category… but it’s not making me laugh… :roll_eyes:

36

You are right of course, it is here because it started out as a joke between me and my dear friend, but then morphed into a more serious, but nevertheless connected, theme.
Perhaps we could say it is black humour, but as you say, it doesn’t feel like it. :slightly_frowning_face:

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37

Lighten up @stella. If you didn’t laugh, you may cry :thinking:

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I suspect that may well be the case.