This week I found out that my Grandma has cancer. Bowel cancer which has spread to her liver. There is nothing they can do about the cancer in the liver, there is too much of it. Work starts on trying to make the bowel cancer bearable in the next couple of weeks but the prognosis is not good. I don't want to be brave.

I know the next few months are going to be awful. I don't know how to deal with it though. I don't feel strong enough. I don't want to be brave.

I want someone to make it all better. To fix it.

I want her fixed.

She is my Grandma and I adore her.

 I don't want to be brave.

I adore how she deals with life with such dignity and self-respect, yet she is so humble. She went to university in the 1940s and studied the only thing women were allowed to back then. When her husband left her, she became the first woman in our area to get a mortgage by herself, it was frowned upon back then. She became a teacher in a local school and when her ex-husband got cancer, she moved back in to nurse him, even though he had treated her badly. Since 1990, she has selflessly been running a bed and breakfast to keep the family home standing and save it from being sold.

I don't want to be brave.

She soldiers on. Even when she started losing weight about five years ago, she carried on running the B&B. She rarely moans about how she is feeling and still manages a huge garden and wins cups in the local horticulture shows. I am so very proud of her. She is utterly amazing.

Money management and accounts have always been done with the utmost care. Shares and ISAs are juggled and she always keeps an eye on the stock market.

I write about her a lot on my blog. A quick search shows she comes up in nearly 100 posts. The ones dedicated to her are here and here.

I don't want to be brave.

As young children we listened to Boney M in her car. I possibly have her to thank for my eclectic music taste. She was never going to be a typical grandma.

I long for her energy, her zest and enthusiasm, even when faced with such awful news she is carrying on, looking after others and gardening.

I don't want to be brave.

I know that I have to be brave. For my children, for my husband and mainly for my Grandma. She doesn't need to see how hurt and upset I am. She just needs me to be there for her.

And I will be.

But I don't want to be brave.

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