OK since you dredged it up I'll add mine
Life changed, for me, five years ago. My hubby was diagnosed as being terminally ill. Bad enough you would think. Then three months into a nine month terminal phase I was diagnosed with a tumour in my liver. Now they tend not to be too good and at one point we both thought we were staring the grim reaper in the face. Turned out that mine (though the size of a tennis ball) was benign. I had to have an urgent op to remove it though, because if it ruptured I'd be dead in minutes. So off I went to London to have it removed.
I died on the operating table and had to be resuscitated to complete the op. Went back home to recover/look after hubby who died a few months later. Then my father died three months after him.
What a C*** year that was!
Made me look at life in a totally different way. I do wish I could say that it changed me for the better but I can't honestly say that it did. I find it difficult to settle at times, tend to retreat into myself on occasion which is not good. It also makes it very hard to have a normal relationship again because there is always a little part of me that is scared at being hurt like that again. But I'm trying.
I'm very lucky to have my new family, I'm certainly well looked after. I just wish I didn't need to be looked after sometimes.
Then I pull myself up by my bootstraps and go "Oh sod it, life is what you make it" I'm generally quite a happy person and photography has helped a lot in that it allows me to be creative. I didn't express my creative side before that happened so the fact that I now do it, is one good thing that came out of it.