It's been almost a year and a half since my last blog entry, there's been a lot of keeping on keeping on, and some dark times.

I was diagnosed with MS in 2002 but after a severe initial attack I had a five or so fairly stable years where there was no real evidence of progression. Ironically, thanks to the changes I made in diet and exercise, I was probably fitter than I'd been in twenty years. Having seen my older brother's rapid deterioration from MS, it was easy to keep those changes up, and I really thought I was winning. Then, two or so years ago I started having more and more difficulty walking. Where I'd been happy to walk twelve or fifteen miles of an afternoon, my left leg became almost useless after two, and my balance was very suspect - high heels are definitely out of the wardrobe these days, which at six one is probably for the best.

Although I told my sister and other brother I had MS when I was diagnosed, I kept it from my parents and my brother, who was by then bedridden, could just about move his left hand, and had difficulty speaking - the cruellest blow of all for someone who had been a professional singer. I'm afraid I wasn't a very good brother then, I wanted to spend time with my brother, but even with my mild symptoms, his condition always seemed like a presentiment of my future.

Phil finally succumbed to MS last March, a lung infection taking everything he had left to fight it with. After almost thirty years of suffering the end was mercifully brief and pain free. I'd held off from going home, although I knew how serious these infections could be, because the reports my family relayed were quite positive and I didn't want to alarm him by turning up at his bedside if everything was going well. Unfortunately he passed an hour or so before I could get to the hospital, but our mother was with him at the end, as was my other brother, and he went very peacefully.

We buried his body in the same churchyard as my father, not a hundred yards from where we lived, and where members of my family have been laid to rest since the 1700s - 1707 is the earliest I've been able to find a stone for, tho that's in the churchyard wall now, not marking a grave, As Phil and I were the only two who'd expressed a wish not to be cremated, my other brother Ioan pointed out that in the wake (tea only, we're Methodists) I'd be going into the same hole at some point - real nonconformist parsimony, that made us all laugh on an awful day.

I don't think I've come to terms with him going, but a few things have helped. Memories of course, it's impossible to think of him in his pomp without smiling, and our cousin Owen organised a family reunion on Whitsunday at my grandparents' farm. Phil was the first of seventeen cousins born between 1944 and 1967(I'm the baby) to pass away, which is an amazing statistic for South Wales where industrial accidents were commonplace, not to mention our family's propensity for seeing the world in uniform. Not all of us could make it there - one cousin's managing a chemical plant in Australia - but most could, and brought their children, grandchildren, and one great-grandchild along. Queens of the day were naturally my mother, and my aunt by marriage, both now in their eighties. It was the sort of occasion my brother loved, and he was there in spirit I'm sure.

It's time I think to get back to writing. I'm in the throes of my summer relapse, so have been signed off work for a while (physically wobbly, and euphoria from the steroids makes me a bit of a loose cannon in a small office), so I've started back on Stevie's story. She's evolved a life of her own, that's carried her to her wedding day, and I really must write it down, or she'd be terribly disappointed :)

Ceri