Thanks, StartupRepair! I guess that's right - Christmas was so lovely, and now it feels like the time to settle and reflect. No bad thing, but difficult. I'm just grateful that Christmas gave us some space to have joy and peace for a few days, before turning again to think about what 2020 might bring. I'm trying to strike that balance - living life fully and joyfully and without undue focus on the cancer, but making sure I know enough and am prepared enough (practically and emotionally) to ensure DD is in the best place to cope. She is subdued today, but keen to go to town for food and to see Little Women. We're going to meet one of our oldest friends there too, a wise woman who practises Reiki (not really my thing, but still) and who, in her younger days, ran a women's refuge and was one of the Greenham Common women :) An amazing character! She is a bit like a substitute grandma for DD and mother for me, given my own awful mother's inability to be a decent human being :) So, she's coming for food and film and a sleepover :)
Justilou, it's a very good question, and one I ask myself a lot. My mother and I have never had an easy relationship, because of her heavy drinking, but also because she is an extremely unpleasant character in lots of ways - very unkind about people, very judgemental, very narcissistic, very snobby. Over the years, I've seen increasingly little of her as a result. She can be very damaging. She lives around three or four hours' drive away. For my own part, I'd come to the conclusion that I didn't really want to see her any longer, but that I didn't particularly want to cause upset to an elderly woman (she is now 76), so a visit once a year and emails in between felt right. She is quite comfortably off and has a younger, healthy husband and two or three friends near where she lives, so I don't feel that she is isolated or struggling in any way.
However, I do worry about DD. I will DM you about her. I know she would find things very difficult, emotionally and financially, if I kick the bucket. My mother would provide a home, if need be. I don't think it would be ideal, because my mother really is quite appalling and manipulative and self-absorbed - but, at least it would be a secure place to live. DD would make her own decision, of course, but I suspect she would need the back-up quite strongly. DD doesn't like my mother much either, but she isn't really in a position to live by herself.
When my mother offered this (with undue pleasure, to be honest! She likes my daughter, though not me! She is actually rather pleased that she might get DD to live with her), I felt glad that DD has someone as a backstop. This in itself makes me more able to cope with this cancer. However, I will have to manage my own time around my mother carefully, as she really is frightful and sees the cancer as 'just another problem' I've caused her. (You'll gather there is history here - I ran away a lot as a teenager as it was quite unbearable at home.) She's massively indiscreet, and so not someone one would expose emotions to.
Anyway! I will DM you with more! All advice about this tricky situation much appreciated - how to look after my daughter, how to suddenly turn my mother into a pleasant person (not going to happen, I know), how to keep going forward with joy and peace. On my own account, I certainly don't want this adventure to be over for a good long time - but I am not especially afraid of treatment or illness (I also have chronic fatigue syndrome, and know what it's like to be ill a lot) or death. Yet - that might change! I have curiosity about what will come, and certainly don't feel, 'why me?', since - of course - why not me? I've never asked 'why me?' about good fortune, and am not about to start in relation to this! There are no underlying reasons, I feel - just that stuff happens. I was a Buddhist for a long time, and so I guess I need to draw a bit on Buddhist teachings about impermanence and equanimity. I'm now, very loosely, a Quaker, but haven't been to a meeting for ten years. I may, in time to come, revisit the Buddhist centre and Quaker meeting; but maybe not! At present, I feel that the forest and the sea and the moors are my meeting house.
Thanks again for all your support and advice on here - you have no idea how much it helps to be able to come on here each day and clarify my thoughts, get advice and good wishes, and process things. It's keeping me going in difficult times. How kind people can be - strangers who have just decided, out of kindness, to help get me through this - and now, I feel, not strangers at all.