and I told you be patient and I told you to be fine

A new world now, a world where my father no longer exists. He left on the twenty fifth of May 2011 at 11:13am in the kind care of Our Lady's Hospice. He never came home. For two days he returned to us, the kind, funny, sarcastic,caring man he had been throughout my life. For two days he tried to look after me, he laughed, he offered hospitality, he asked if the hospital bed would make it as far as home as we wheeled him into the garden. Then he was pulled beneath, shut off by a body that had given all it could but had been besieged by the dark matter eating through bone and flesh. Three days and three nights by his beside as his heart slowed down, his breathing lighter and his skin paler. His hand in mine as his eyes open wide and his breath stilled. The last words he heard were 'I love you. Don't be afraid. It will be okay'. I don't know if I believed those words, but I truly wanted him to.  After my mother died I stopped writing stories. The part of me that imagined things happening was cracked and dulled, was drowned beneath the realisation that life would be more real and take more from me than anything I could imagine. Grief stole my voice then and again as I walked from a too quiet bedroom knowing my father was dead. These last months, almost two years, since my father's chest settled to silence, words have been scattered and bruised. But we are healing. We are growing stronger and we are surviving, my words and I. So I shall write my last sentences here and move on to new words, ones where loss has no place.

1. The breadcrumbs my father left in his estate have led me to embassies, sun drenched far flung city streets, forests, a balcony where he once stood, childhood black and white images of him and my mother, a palace,  three passports with three different heights, far too many keys than one man should ever need, newel posts and power tools, old school reports, granite inscriptions and the knowledge that I am stronger and more capable than I ever thought.

2. My brother is turning into a wonderful independent young man and making good decisions for himself now he has the opportunity.

3. My love and I have settled in a home together and hang our prints on our walls.

4. I miss my parents every single day.

once I thought I knew everything I needed to know about you

Each day pain is etched more on his face. Moving now hurts. He lies across the bed at odd angles, fallen, crumpled and says it's more comfortable than moving. Silence takes over more of the day. He sleeps. And sleeps. Tomorrow he will go into the hospice. To control the pain, they say. A week or so, they say. I'm terrified he will never come home. Mum went into hospital for a week and died there 4 weeks later. He is giving up. Yet still has time for kind words and to hold my hand and tell me that what is most important to him is that I am happy. Rubbing lotion on his tired back, each vertebrate stands out beneath his freckle flecked skin. His arms have become so frail and thin, all bone and no flesh. I took my brother to spend an hour by his bedside tonight, an hour we could spend as a family. They said goodnight and dad held his hand for a long time. His eyes look so scared. Their blue now edged with a look of bewilderment. He told me that I had awoken him from a lovely dream this afternoon. He dreamed that he was cured.

1. On saturday a wonderful friend premiers her film and many friends will gather to celebrate and I will be one such friend.

2. I basked in the sun for hours today reading in the glory of flowers my father has created in the garden.

3. Next week my friend and wonderful godchildren will be home for a week to meet for walks and cake. 

4. I have to find away to tell my brother that dad is dying and he will have to say goodbye soon.

if I get to take over I get to say goodbye

Such anger has invaded our home. Tumors prove resistant to chemo so now pills only give hope of slowing the spread through organ and bone. Words designed to hurt over percieved slights cut so, so deep. Jagged tears wept by his side illict no pity. So I did what I do best and ran. For four days I lived my life as it had been before the awareness of his dying. I slept in my own bed and held my love and spoke with my friends and walked along rivers and streets that I chose over a decade ago and the pull of what my life had been was so powerful. The only way I get it back is when my father dies and that is a high cost indeed. So I return. And remove myself from day to day goings on to avoid the possibility of flaying words and his pain and in doing so spend my father's remaining days in the same house but not with him. I must be stronger and better than I ever thought I could be. He will not die alone. 

1. Sunday was spent lazily reading papers and walking along rivers hand in hand with my love. 

2. This weekend I attend an old friends wedding and catch up with people I have not seen for months. 

3. After a head to toe massage I had afternoon tea in a lovely tea room with a friend I had not seen enough of lately. 

4. Dad's tumors are chemo resistant so now there's no hope of stabilising him, only making him comfortable as his cancers slowly kills him.

I don't believe in absolutes anymore

Bones jut now. Always so big and strong, I now feel every bone in my fathers body when I hug him. He's not eating and I get so angry, as if he's choosing to waste away from us. Finally the fact he's dying is settling upon him which fills days with such sorrow. He's too young to realise he's dying when all I wish for if for him to be happy and healthy and alive. And this is moving further and further away. Sixty three is too young to be dying. This tangle he's leaving is starting to be unpicked but there is so much left to do. If months or weeks are all that is left, I don't wish to spend them doing menial tasks. I don't want the last conversation I have with him to be about when the car tax needs to be paid instead of telling him how I wouldn't be the person I am without him.

1. I made early pancakes with my love on saturday as I won't see him on pancake tuesday and spent a lovely day with him doing normal saturday things I miss so much.

2. It was sunny enough to sit in the park and eat ice-cream.

3. My brother had a wonderful birthday and loved the cake I had made from him and the balloon with his name on it.

4. I miss dad just being my dad and not being someone I have to help get dressed and eat and sit up and get medicine for and drive to the hospital.

Bright lights turn me clean

So far tears are the only thing that seemse to get through to him. He agreed to ask for more help when I couldn't catch my breath and my chest seared and my eyes stung. He told me not to worry. He told me he'd be there on my wedding day. He told me I was great. He asked me if I thought he'd ever want to leave. He told me to keep talking to him. He told me that no-one said life was fair. He told me he wants to exhume my little brother's body and have him re-buried with my mum. He told me he wants to choose his coffin. He told me my brother's life expectancy is only 35. Tomorrow is my brother's 27th birthday. He held my hand while we watched the oscars.

1. Today the sky is blue and it feels like this cold, hard winter is over.

2. Tomorrow is my brother's birthday and we shall have cake and presents.

3. Tomorrow I go home for a few days for the first time in months and see my love and my friends and sleep in my own bed.

4. It is March today, which is 3 months since dad's diagnosis and already halfway through his expected survival time.

To cold climes comes springtime

He is home and it is good and it is difficult. Last week brought him rage and confusion and the tangible fear that he will slip away and I will no longer have a father. A valentines day spent in tears, pleading for a legal inheritance to be solidified to support my brother. "I'm not ready yet". Bowls held to hold milky vomit. A glimpse at what will come and a trembling in my heart that wouldn't cease. Some times it is too much and the days that will come threaten to dissolve the ones which are here. I want to ask him for his stories, but keep waiting. The idea that there will one day be no more tomorrows is ungraspable. There are too many days kept in waiting and less at my home, less of my life. I grumble like a child scorned when he fails to be my father as he should be. This is not as he should be. 

1. My love met my oldest friend in the world and mother to my beautiful godchildren and they liked one another. 

2. I spent an evening wandering across the city looking at art with friends and got a pile of belated birthday presents.

3. My Dad called up the stairs to wake me up on Tues and I never thought I'd hear that again. 

4. The cancer has spread to his bones making moving more painful every day.

Count your blessings to find what you look for

A return to a place with no heat, blown fuses, no fridge or oven and still no father. Echos still are found around corners, but not so loud. So I fix, and tidy, and sort. I must be better than I thought I could be, stronger than I though I could be. I no longer have only myself to look after. Such anger surfaced looking at others who effortlessly have things I so deeply wish for and do not have. A mother. A father who isn't dying. Siblings, brothers and sisters who are equals not just one who will soon need guardianship and dependency. A husband. A child. Family. Simple as that, anger at the unfairness that others have family as mine lessens as I watch helpless. At seventeen I learned that no matter how good you are, how hard you work, how much you plead and hope and bargain you are powerless before loss. So I believed in chaos, in randomness. I sought comfort in the fact there is no meaning to any action or destiny to follow. It is easier to believe there is no plan for me than comprehend that this is what is meant to be. This shattered and broken family is all I was meant to have. 

1. It was my birthday yesterday and I got to fall asleep in the arms of my love.

2. I received a 2m long hand painted chinese scroll from a new friend that was really beautiful and covered in peonys to represent hope and good luck.

3. My father is responding well to treatment and doctors say we should see improvement in the next few days. 

4. Every time I have explain to someone for the first time that he's ill and dying, it feels as if my heart is tearing a little more.