There is No User Manual for Dying when You Have Much to Do.

It is in the wee hours of the morning when we feel most vulnerable and most alone. It is 4.30 am and I am sitting at the computer (which is on a hospital bed stand) and wondering about so many thing - about how angry I am deep down inside, at what I am angry at ... what I could have done or not have done in my life - and wondering about my list of to-do now and if I will get through it all. And then I wonder if what I need to do has any importance for anyone else other than for me. Is it my need to achieve that spurs me on when the right thing would be to do nothing; to lie in bed and to read and to let the world pass me by and then slowly slip into the next life?

Patrick is asleep beside me and I am loath to wake him up - he works like a Trojan and he is no youngster. It is hard to start all over again at the age of 60 but I am so proud of him. He does so much for me that when he gets irritated with me, I have to understand how difficult this all is for him too.

After all the angst of yesterday (mine), I sit here this morning and try to find some sort of balance in my life. I think what I have found and am sharing here will be good for all of us to read. My fear that I don't have enough time to do what needs to be done has made me jittery, irritable, impatient and I think, quite rude and obnoxious at times. I know this is happening to me, but there is no recipe for dying when you have so much to do. And I am unable to stop my irritability with people – those on FB, on groups and those who are close to me like my mother and my husband. Friends …. Well, friends are just that. They are there when life is filled with fun but when you look around yourself in an hour of need, you find there is no one. Some will pass on some nice words to give you strength (or so they think) but no one will think that to make me a cup of tea would be the greatest gift of all. I am so dependent and that is hard – so fucking hard because I have been able to do everything for myself for so long.

I have to get Heinrich van Rooyen out of prison because he is there for life for crimes he did not commit. No one else knows the case as well as I do. So if I die today, he just stays there until maybe another Dianne comes along to go trawling through the paperwork again.

Then I am doing what I think no one else has ever thought of doing – and that is making a military, SAP, veterans three-layered quilt using t-shirts that have been worn and loved by the men, including a number of “Free Eugene de Kock” t-shirts. This project depends on how much help and assistance I get from the vets because they have to send me the t-shirts that they have loved wearing – the quilt will be made up of these veterans t-shirts. It will then go on auction on the various FaceBook groups to raise funds so that Eugene de Kock has a retirement fund. Quilts are very valuable and rare – the most expensive cost of one at auction could have bought a decent sized house for cash with some change left over. So that is my project number 2.

Then, there are my own two books that need to be finished and published. The one is almost ready for the printing and the other is going to be one on the imprisonment of Heinrich van Rooyen and what went down when the two girls were murdered in Knysna in 2005. The horror of how justice was made to dance to the tune of those with money and drugs and power is a story that needs to be told. I am writing it in such a way that it will be interviews with those closely involved with Heinrich and the heads of argument that would be what should have been put to the Constitutional Court – so if nothing else, that book can be taken by any advocate or lawyer or even layperson and an appeal can be made to re-open and re-examine the case of the murdered girls. What I have to say about that is mind-blowing. While Heinrich is not the killer – I do know who is. I have, because of my activism, been the victim of threats of violence and death before, so what is happening now and the threats I am getting from those with the most to lose when this book is printed does not scare me in the least. I have nothing to lose and they say that the person with nothing to lose is the one who is most dangerous of all.

Then there are the projects that others are helping me with and which will continue after my death. a) Co-op for women who are extremely talented and who need a platform to market their crafts and goods b) a care worker and person needing caring to be put together that both parties are happy because right now, the agencies are making a fortune out of people who are struggling financially and the carer is getting less than 10% of what the agency chargers and c) taking the specialist physician to court for having neglected me to the point that at least six months of my life has been lost. That doctor must answer to the degrading and humiliating behaviour she tried on me – by using her index finger and turning it around while it is pointed at her ear – intimating that there is nothing wrong with me and I should see a psychiatrist. Well, I saw the psychiatrist who called in a few physicians and they all say that they have never seen such a neglected patient ever and are happy to be called to any law court to verify how I had been treated and neglected. That story is enough for another whole book. But Patrick carries the anger of all of that.

In between all this, I must be the strong one for my mother who is 86 and suffering from CCF whose husband of 30 years is also dying of cancer although he is a lot more difficult to deal with than I am. My poor, poor mother – her oldest child and her husband dying of cancer and the child being so impatient with her and her husband’s bullshit. He is not the only person who has lung cancer … there you have it, the anger coming out again. Give my mother a break you miserable and selfish old miser!!

I think this is the last big thing I am doing and that is completing the proof=reading, editing and publishing of other people’s books. But all these things bring me a certain amount of joy – not everything is drudgery. I am just so very tired and overwhelmingly exhausted and frustrated that I cannot even wash myself. Even a toothbrush and basin has to be brought to my bed and slowly...slowly a carer (her name is Zandi) will help me up and get me going on whatever needs to be done next. She is my other set of eyes, my arms and my medication dispenser. She is the one who gives me bed baths and changes my pull up nappies. I am incontinent in my sleep – and it is the nature of the illness.

So…this is my life. BUT, as I have told my doctor, that just because no one else has survived this, that does not mean that I won’t be the first.