Last Thursday I visited my consultant to check on how I am getting on. He gave me the all clear for four months. I am told that that it means I’ve made good progress. 6 months ago I came out of a doctor’s surgery having being told I probably only had a short time to live. How life can turn around for you! You just never really know what is in store for you. That is why you should never ever give up hope no matter how hopeless your situation might seem. I remember lying in bed last February and on occasions thinking to myself, I wonder if I will wake in the morning. Now I fall asleep wondering what I shall do in the morning. I no longer regard myself as being unlucky to have ended up with lung cancer. Far from it, I have been extremely lucky.

I once came very close as a child, to becoming a pebble. A few months ago I almost became a bench. Let me explain. Sometimes when someone dies, folks have a bench made and set in a favourite place in memory of the person. This morning I listened on the radio to a programme that came live from a children’s hospice in Worcester. When the children die, their name is carved into a pebble and placed in a memorial garden, but why a pebble? Well they didn’t explain, however, I guess a flower doesn’t last very long, a sapling eventually grows in to a strong and healthy tree. These children did not grow into strong and healthy trees. They were and forever will be little pebbles. I have never been so moved by anything I have ever heard on the radio. Each child sounded so upbeat and positive. Each of them was making the best of their short lives. It seems that all things of extreme beauty in this World have short lives, flowers, butterflies, animals, birds, sunny days and loving moments and above all, terminally ill children. Last February I shed tears for myself, this morning I felt ashamed of how I reacted to the news I might be dying back then, and wiped away fresh tears for these children, who it seems have decided not to waste tears on themselves. All these children can at anytime go out into the hospice garden and look at the pebbles that represent all the children that have moved onto pastures new. They all know that one day they too will be a pebble. They seem to embrace death with the same level of passion with which they have embraced their short lives. Later today, I will get in touch with the hospice and check on what happens to our terminally ill children on the Island. I sincerely hope that no child is sent off the Island to die. I will from today on do whatever I can for our terminally ill children. I hope that you will do likewise.

This is Tom Glassey, on the banks of the Silverburn River, listening to the water dancing over and playing with the pebbles as it makes its way to its destination.