LIVING IS MUSIC! (by Elisabet)

There is a "before" and an "after" in cancer, as in many other serious diseases. However, I feel like I am more the "before" person. Cancer doesn't define who I am. In fact, I don't talk much about it in my everyday life and don't even think about it most of the time. Cancer sometimes is just a small, unfortunate anecdote in my life. My mind is busy with so many other things and my body is ready to go for a walk, to take a deep breath... and both mind and body are ready to enjoy friends and family gatherings, and to do whatever activity is possible to do. I don't push myself too hard, I am not so demanding about myself. I don't indulge in self-pity and I try not to feel sad about the things I cannot do and, instead, feel happiness and gratefulness for all the things I can do. I've even discovered I can do new things that would have never crossed my mind. I also enjoy the still moments, the time to rest, the time when I am all by myself and may choose to read a book, to write, or to take a nap.

I would like to thank all of you who read this blog and hope that at least part of what I write is meaningful to you or may even help some of you, somehow. I would also like to express my most sincere thanks to Yin San, who encouraged me to write when one day I expressed my wish to write a comment on one of her articles. As soon as I started writing a rough copy at my desk, I realised it was not just a comment, but an article on its own. And she encouraged me to publish it. This is my 4th article and today I can say that writing in this blog has turned out to be a very rewarding experience, and Yin San has become one of my best companions in this journey.

I live in Catalonia, the North-Eastern region of Spain, bathed by the Mediterranean sea and with mountains as high as 2.500 to 3.000 metres above sea level. We are bilingual, as we speak Spanish and Catalan. However, Catalan is our mother tongue and the language we use every day, everywhere. Catalan is more widely spoken than Norwegian or Danish (just to give you two examples). It's a Romance language (from Latin origin) like Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, or Rumanian. Catalan literature dates as far back as the Middle Ages. There was a Catalan doctor and poet, Màrius Torres, who lived between 1910 and 1942. He died when he was only 32 of tuberculosis, a common disease at that time. He wrote most of his beautiful poems while fighting against his illness. He loved life as much as I do and he was very fond of music, too. I want to share the last part of one of his poems celebrating life:

"Life might be like an out of tune musical instrument sometimes
and yet living is music!"

P.S. In case you want to know more about Catalan you can check this interesting website :
http://wikitravel.org/en/Catalan_phrasebook