Chitr Ramaswamy: Life's rich tapestry I WON'T be sorry to see the backside of 2012 disappear over the horizon like some saggy old elephant who has circled his trunk to Gangnam Style one too many times. Of course, like any year, 2012 hasn't been exclusively good or bad. We've had the sheer thrill of the Olympics at a time when we really, really needed it. But we've also had a politician defending her right to eat bugs on TV. Far away from the headlines yet undoubtedly the biggest story of all for me, it's been something of an annus horribilis. In March, Ma Ramaswamy was diagnosed with breast cancer. There you have it: my very own front page news. So. Deep breath. The year has been swallowed whole by this diagnosis, which, like all news, came swiftly and without warning. A single phone call, the kind you play out in lonely, morbid moments, the kind after which everything is different. Cancer, I now know, is the greediest of consumers. The year has been gobbled up by hospital appointments, operations, gruelling treatments, difficult decisions. Also terror, exhaustion, the blackest of humour and the sort of dull, glazed-over calm that comes with facing something that has the momentum of a runaway train. Something that, no matter what, is happening. There is no getting off. Ma R may have lost her hair (Tiny-but-Deadly and I chopped the matted remainder of it off one surprisingly cheerful afternoon), but she never lost her dignity. Or her humour. "I've got a bone to pick with Daphne," she berated me recently, referring to our dog. Ever since you got her, she's replaced me in your column. In a year like this, I've been upstaged by a dog. The fact is, the more Ma R featured in my life, she less she featured on this page. Living it was hard enough without trying to form pretty sentences out of it. So why now? Partly because you can't help but look back at the end of a year, even when what you see frightens you so much it's as if it happened to someone else. Partly because things happen at such a speed following a cancer diagnosis that a weekly column can't keep up with the dizzying, sometimes sickening pace of the train. And partly because it was time to show Ma R that she will never be upstaged by a dog. Some things I have learnt this year. The NHS can be the most incredible and the most disappointing place, all in the space of minutes. Some people, good friends even, are so frightened by cancer, all they can do is disappear. If someone is dealing with cancer, don't constantly ask if there is anything you can do. Just do it. Oh, and it turns out that Pa Ramaswamy can cook after all. Ma Ramaswamy has finished her treatment now. She is tired and fed up, but also itching to plant bulbs in her garden. Spring will come; plants will grow. She has almost finished a tapestry. Her hair is growing back in a soft, silver sheen. Pa R points at her now and then and says, with a nod of appreciation, "a very nice shaped head, that." Like parents discussing errant children, T-but-D and I continue to talk about them in worried, hushed tones. Everyone feels both unlucky and lucky. And no matter what, 2013 is coming. All sorts of things will happen. Life goes on, relentlessly and happily. A comforting thought, that, if you let it be.