Now is Not to Wonder Why Now is Time to Do or Die 2015 Diary Entries

By Linda Robertson Bourgeois, Ph.D.

The 2015 Diary of a woman going from living an ordinary life full of ups and downs to a life changing event, turning the world known to an unknown commodity. Being diagnosed with Neuroendocrine Cancer of the Pancreas was to me just another diagnosis. Most of my family had died with cancer so I was not surprised and continued on with my life as usual. We all know from the moment of birth we begin to die.We just do not know when or where or the time. I must admit that the world looked and felt different. I could either keep living an ordinary life and accept that death is coming, or give up and stop doing the things I did before and die sooner. In the upcoming  2016 Diaries the reader will see I chose to live an ordinary life in the face of death. However, I did notice small insignificant things more. Each day was a gift and I accepted the gift with gratitude. Living longer, grieving for the old me but grateful to be different and to appreciate that God had given me many gifts, the two most important, two beautiful children.

Join me on my journey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: MRR Publishers
• Release date: Oct 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393131878

Linda Robertson Bourgeois, Ph.D.

Dr. Bourgeois writes from home or wherever she might be. Her mind does not follow a linear pattern but rather she is a sporadic thinker…always seeing the calligraphy of colors, sounds and minutiae surrounding her. She is a self-publshed author, mainly books about family for family. She took her doctoral degree at age 69. Dr. Bourgeois occassionaly writes in her diary. The diary chronicles the bits and pieces of life left behind when one dies as well as the bits and pieces of life as lived. She wakes up in a new world every day! Not believing her work was good enough for a book, a diary was the next best thing to express her thoughts. "My children are my greatest achievement!", she states. Dr. Bourgeois continues to live with neuroendocrine cancer of the pancreas.

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Now is Not to Wonder Why

Now is Time to Do or Die

2015 Diary Entries

––––––––

Linda Robertson Bourgeois, Ph.D.

Dedication

To all my family, past and present

I am who I am because of you.

Introduction

This is the front story. There is a back story. Both will be told, eventually. I kept notes. Without those notes I would not know truth from fiction. After surgery, my memory was wiped. I had to learn to write again, walk again, talk again, live again, words and memories came slowly, and I often was told that what I was saying was not true. So, unless I had a note from before, I always questioned, Is this true?

My children wanted me to have the surgery. They had my best interest in mind but later I found I might have been better off without going through five and a half hours and then recovery at my sister’s house. These entries were made before the surgery in 2016.

January 1: Blank Pages

opening

the document

a blank page

staring back

at me

an

opportunity to

write a new

book

may we all be healthy

wise

and

happy

I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly; you're doing something.

― Neil Gaiman

January 2, 2015

Some of the blog post I read of others this a.m. inspired me to write a few thoughts.

I always exercise my memory banks by trying to remember those things I have forgotten from pure laziness, not thinking they, those memories, were important. They were and are.

Therefore, I try to remember the fine details of living at home as a child and as a young teenager. Sometimes it is painful. I could have been a better child or teenager. There were things left unsaid by all of us, not just me.

Today I did not dress warmly enough for my 64-degree house; not having turned up the thermostat. However, I remembered getting up in a rural wood house with no central air and heat, and after daddy had died, no wood fire in the middle bedroom to go and huddle close to. Therefore, the memory was sitting with mother in her robe, which I now have, by the gas heater in the big kitchen which had a counter, a side table and a round table along with the pie safe and a china cabinet built by Uncle Earnest. This one memory is sitting there, Mother with her hands around a cup of warm coffee, smiling, and me...I cannot see me. It is a good memory. Mother was such a kind person. I always wanted to build her a big house on the hill with every convenience. I never got to do that, and I wonder if I had, would my sister have let other people live in it and not me ever?

Just thoughts on the second day of the New Year.

I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.

― Edward Everett Hale

January 4: Accept What I Cannot Change

Six things to leave behind in 2014: Regrets. Negative thinking. Drama and chaos. Anger. Resentment. People who bring you down.

—Charity M. Richey-Bentley

Wonder if I can start a new habit or tradition...going to church on Sunday. Growing up on Route 2, every Sunday Mother would make sure we were in Sunday School and church, as was she. Later I played the piano whenever the doors of the church were open for business. Is this a part of me that is missing now, and would this bring a reconnection to my past? I do not know.

I have surprisingly kept up with the practice of the piano and the leg exercises to keep my knees in good condition.

I reminded myself of things I needed to do this year...not resolutions:

1. Smile more

2. Accept what I cannot change

3. Keep quiet; listen more (even though I see few people)

Learn/Relearn how to play the piano; Learn/Relearn Ballroom dancing; walk more when the knees allow; watch what I eat meaning not to eat mindlessly in front of the T.V. and write every day whether it is on this blog or somewhere else, i.e.,