I suddenly realised that I was talking to Mrs. F. today about my dad and talking about death and weakness and incontinence and all the horrible stuff (the indignity if you like) that surrounds it and realised A was standing right next door to me. So I quickly apologised but she said she was fine about it. We are pretty open about these things and I don't feel that I should overly protect anyone but of course, I do say it as I see it sometimes and I hope you (the reader) or my friends and family think it is a bad thing. I feel in some ways that perhaps I've earn't the badge but of course not everyone looks at death "that way".
I'm pretty lucky in that one of the interesting things about Freemasonry is that it invites you to reflect on death as well as all other aspects of life and to think about how you are viewed and how you treat people and many other things that - sort of - make you think slightly differently about life and death. I think when I suggested that working at the charity was a way of paying back my experiences might be taken as a twee statement but I meant exactly that and don't forget that in working at the charity - things went both ways - it was mutually beneficial as it "healed" me and allowed me a bolt hole away from the high pressured environment that had probably, in some way, aided and abetted my cancer.
I do have some faith but it isn't absolute and it was shaken to the core many times over the year and I don't always "get it" I can understand it and many of my friends are good Christian folk and who really are interesting to talk to and listen to but somehow I never did get back to it, perhaps after my friend died when we were very young leaving a young family and all that entailed.
So, death is the inevitability of existence and no one can cheat it - no one at all, no matter who you are, how rich you are and so on. The great leveller as someone once said. In my world, the last thing I want to happen is for my dad to die but he has no quality of life now, he has no dignity, he cannot do anything, he isn't completely miserable I suppose but it's not him, it's not the man I've known and admired all my life. Life is precious people say and I guess that is so. He is of course precious and dear to us all and of course to my mum and my brother possibly a little more so than me. I'd wager that my dad has a similar psychological profile to me although I'd say he is far more introverted than I am he does have very similar traits (or I do of course) and that's not surprising.
I'm saying that because I'm being quite pragmatic about things and I've taught my children to be so. We all know what is going to happen and we know that we wont like it but it is going to happen anyway. We can celebrate the good times and that's what we do because they were good times. In the last 10 or more years, we haven't seen much of my family and so they are actually quite remote in a way - we've seen more of them recently or at least tried to but I remember my grandparents dying and after a while I wasn't allowed to go and see one of them and I was busy building my own life, getting married, working my butt off and so on. That's what happens. My dad knows that and whilst we spoke on the phone irregularly over the past 10 years our contact has gradually faded away as he himself grew towards this illness.
Some 18 months to 2 years ago I remember going to see my dad and coming home being very upset. I was upset because in the 3 or 4 days I was there he barely spoke to me, he just sat there and watched TV all day long and as long as I didn't disturb his routine I was tolerated. Don't get me wrong, he was already ill by this time and no one knew any different we just thought he was getting old, set in his ways and grumpy :-) When I say tolerated I mean that in the way that as long as I fitted around the routine it was OK. In some ways it made a lot of sense when he was diagnosed and whilst mum and my brother beat themselves up about it, dad would never have gone to the doctors because he felt grumpy and as he wouldn't have a blood test they would never have found out what was wrong with him back then anyway and - would they have even found it then? I doubt it.
So where am I going with this. Oh yes, it's like me at the moment. I take no control over my kids, I am interested to help them whenever they ask, I will happily check their work, their contracts and provide advice but it is their life and theirs alone. My dad was like that with me. I could always ask if I wanted but he didn't interfere. My brother is very different needing a close relationship altogether. I flew the nest a long time ago, I'm close to my mum but not in a lovey dovey sort of way. I speak to my mum everyday now - I only used to call once a week before. I probably only saw my folks once a year before that - maybe twice and when they lived here we saw them every month especially when the grandchildren were young - which I thought was important.
So - I'm working out that I'm being all matter of fact about this, that I'm being completely real with the kids about granddad and that I'm fully expecting to have to be "the strong one" for the forthcoming events. I'm sure that I will be able to do that, I probably wont like it but it is just something I'll have to do. I find it all rather strange because it is played out at a distance and I'm not there dealing with it day to day - it is very stressful I can tell from my conversations with mum. Hopefully tomorrow someone will come to some decisions and provide some options for a way forward. It will be 4 or 5 weeks since all this started and still there is no resolution in sight. It's hard enough to see him in hospital and know that he is unlikely to walk again now but not knowing what the future holds is still quite difficult. I think we all know what that future is but when and how need to be broached soon too. Things can't keep on going like this indefinitely.
In some ways, I'd like to get a call in the morning saying that it is all over and finally that would mean that dad would be at peace and rested. In his mind he is still going to come home when he feels better. He thinks sometimes that he will go to sleep and not wake up and I see fear in his eyes for the first time ever. I see how this cancer has brought a great man down to a point where he is once again almost as helpless as a child but at the same time his mind isn't a childs, he realises that things aren't right and it really isn't fair, it's cruel and to go back to my original notes above how can you reconcile your beliefs with something so cruel? I guess life's like that - although a compassionate entity would surely take a different view?
I suppose things will be what they will be soon enough and I guess people will look at me a bit strange (they do now anyway) because to me the issue isn't how we die, it's how we lived and what we did with out lives that's important. I look at my two kids and see well balanced, fun loving kids who get on well together (I wish my brother and I did even now) and who work hard and that's my pleasure. Then there's a number of other recipients that will never know me but will have been helped and that's my legacy too. I'm not convinced I've done everything I want to yet but I am sure that I've provided the best I can for my kids as my parents did for me.
Well - this blog is rambling on a bit now but it helps to get this stuff out of my head - goodness knows where it all comes from?
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