Is love all you need?

I read an excellent post by Macmillan (if Carlsberg did cancer charities...) about helping people with cancer to cope with Christmas and it triggered a series of thoughts - which is bad news for you guys because it means another blog!

Most of us look forward to Christmas - it's usually a time for seeing old friends, enjoying the warmth and love of family and not feeling guilty about eating Chocolate Oranges (I miss the white chocolate ones!).

But for some - Christmas brings sadness, depression and even anxiety. Imagine that instead of enjoying Christmas with loved family and friends, the arrival of Christmas only heightened the sense of loss for a loved one who had died. Imagine if that was your husband/ wife/ partner that you had shared your life with for decades. Worse still perhaps if it was a child or son/ daughter - Imagine that depth of sadness and the how painful the reminder of the depth of the loss that you had suffered.

Instead of looking forward to a lovely Christmas with your family, what if you had no-one and Christmas Day was simply another day of loneliness. It might be bad enough having to reflect on that, but how much worse would it be if every time you turned on the TV there were adverts showing a traditional family Christmas with laughing happy people surrounded by beautiful decorations, smiling faces and children's laughter - and there you are, sat on your own surrounded by nothing but your memories and your loneliness.

As regular readers will know, my beloved and magnificent wife and I are still trying to come to terms with the suicide of 17-year old and much loved Jack. As someone with a terminal (but very slow progressing) illness, I always had a really dim view of suicide - in my ignorance (and to my shame), I viewed it as weak and selfish. But of course, the reality is that unless you are in that individual's shoes, we will never understand the depths of despair that someone must become overwhelmed by that death at their own hand becomes the only acceptable option. Imagine that sense of despair when you simply cannot face the pain of waking up and having conscious thought - because every single conscious thought brings you back to the reasons for your sadness.

Love is a funny word. For such a small word it can mean so much. It is easy to love someone because you enjoy their company - that's the reason you spend time with them. But what about when love means you need to go out of your way to help someone. By and large, as human beings we are compassionate and caring. We give to charity and we help old people across the road (and I fully accept that I'm not a million miles away from being one of them!). But sometimes showing love requires a little more from all of us.

Christmas can be a difficult time for many people for many different reasons. Perhaps it is because they are lonely, or are dealing with a personal crisis, or having their first Christmas without a loved one - a hundred different reasons.

Every single person reading this can make a difference to someone. I’m so lucky to have the most magnificent wife, siblings and friends as my support mechanism. Others are not so fortunate.

Perhaps we can all think of just one person we know who is having a hard time and go out of our way to help them this Christmas - even if it’s just in a small way- even if it’s just to make them smile for a while.

If between us we help just one person to feel better, then we have made a difference.

If you can share this to a wider audience and multiple people help other people, how magnificent would that be?

We can all make a difference - we simply just need to choose to do so. I know who I'm getting in touch with.

Stay strong. Fight hard. Smile lots.