Moving forward?

This post may be a little difficult to read but for me it's cathartic and perhaps positive.... but if you're feeling fragile may I suggest you might want to give it a miss for now.

Sunday just past seems to have been something of a watershed for me and one I am more than a little glad to have experienced. Perhaps it's the end of one phase for me and the beginning of a new one?

For approximately the last month, leading up to the first anniversary of my dad's death my mind has been running a continual 'loop' of memories. No matter how busy I have kept myself or how much I have tried to distract my mind, it's been there, on and on and on. Sometimes just thoughts, sometimes images flashing into my mind, sometimes I have found myself having mental conversations with my dad, at others going over the gruesome-ness that is death by cancer.

The whole of that month last year was regimented by just doing our best to make sure he had the care he needed and that his imminent death was as comfortable and as reasonable as was humanly possible, it was a tough call but despite not wishing too I seem to have been able to recall almost every second in minute detail.

It's been like a constant mental diary playing over in my head...."this time last year we were [insert specific incident]"....all manner of memories. The sounds and the sights and the smells of the hospice, calling the hospice at the crack of dawn in semi emergency for admission, seeing the ambulance guys taking my dad out of the house and suspecting it would be the last time, the voices of the staff, the daily routine of almost living there, the jokes we managed, my dad doing his very best to remain stoic and upbeat, the fun and special times we shared regardless of the circumstances, the amazing friend driving miles one night just to get me out of there for an hour in his Aston for a cup of coffee and a break from it all, a shared joke with him that I can't I'm afraid share here but which kept me going, his constant text conversations with me at all hours, the going home each night having to trust the staff that 'tonight was not going to be the night', the trying with the doctors to define quite specifically how close we were getting so as to prepare my mother and give information to other family members, the trying to make sense for my dad of the drug induced terrifying hallucinations he was suffering, the constant battle to keep him pain free and comfortable, to try and find something, anything, he could eat when he wanted to and the watching him fade away in front of us, just day by day, moment by moment, little by little, changing almost imperceptibly.

The making friends with other 'inmates' knowing they too were living their last weeks, families, in the dead of night trying to give support to one another as they just waited and waited, one patient in particular who had ignored his symptoms until it was too late and had no-one who fell apart on me at 4am one day, at the desperation of what he called his stupidity, knowing his situation could have been avoided. So, so many incidents playing one by one in my head almost hypnotically at times and no matter what I did it they just kept on coming.

Sunday, the first anniversary my mind played over and over watching him die in front of me, of us, just slipping off this mortal coil gently. I hadn't ever watch another person die before, it wasn't what I had expected, it was gentle and peaceful, almost anti-climatic if death can be described in such a way.

I went to the crematorium on my own and just stood in the frost at his memorial stone on my own, I couldn't face going with others, I felt I might lose the plot if I did and I can't afford to do that, I chatted to him about stuff I would have chatted about had he been here (pretty odd for someone who is supposed to be atheist maybe), day to day stuff, I grumbled at him for 'buggering off', I told him I love him and then I walked away not sure quite what to feel. I cried with 'N' until I was puffy eyed and red nosed, I got angry, I got desperately sad and confused and I felt a complete mess for a while but then things felt a little better and.....

.....the loop of constant 'diarised' memories just stopped, right there! Fin.