The Death of My Father

I wrote the original piece in the weeks after Daddy died.  I have always be proud of the piece, and grateful that I wrote down how it felt in those early days.  I have edited it somewhat so hopefully the rawness isn't too toe-curling, but coming up to the third anniversary of my father's death, on 18th January, dear and lovely readers of my blog, I suggest you find the hankies before you read this.

I have, to use those loathed and much disputed words, moved on, but I can remember feeling how it was.  I will add the poem I wrote about his death nearer the anniversary, but for now dear friends I give you a piece from January 2009

The Death of My Father

The train slowed and all those people, for whom their lives depend on getting off first, rustled and stirred. Tidy people who tidied away the small things that mattered in their lives so that they could be five seconds ahead of the pack. Does this give them the advantage on the rest of us, or make them first over the top? It’s one of those thoughts that rushes through your head several glasses of red down sitting on the train out of Liverpool St, mind filled with warm thoughts of close restaurants and final goodbyes. How many of us sit there in emotional transition back to the life expected of us?

My father was very fond of painting before his heart attack, and, much to my mother’s astonishment made rather a lot of money selling his paintings of penguins, my favourite being penguins standing at a railway station, not one looking at another. I think an art expert would generously call the style ‘naive’ but they betrayed an emotional intensity that some woman coming to the the local village Art Show one year was so affected by she uttered those long hoped for words ‘do you have any more of these’ and such was her enthusiasm, her cheque paid for a nice holiday I believe. I remember joking with my mother that she should lash Daddy to the easel to fund any more holidays they would want, but of course his inspiration was not as strong once a commercial imperative was established, and after his heart attack he never returned to the easel, six and half years before his death.


I stood up as I saw the platforms trickle into view. My ticket had been found in my hand bag, coat buttoned and gloves held neatly ready for the final dressing of a lady.

I joined the queue for a taxi and in time the next car pulled up. The door was opened from the inside and I slid into the back of the clean smelling car.

‘Sorry about the wait’ the driver said in a welcoming tone.

‘No problem, it’s a grim evening’ I replied in what I hoped were clear and articulate tones.

‘My ex-husband always said it was the difficult thing to say our village name when you’ve had a glass of wine, he used to run at it.

‘And that is where he lives with his girlfriend, he met her on the train, 17 years younger than me’

Here I go again, it’s like throwing up, once you start it just all has to come out in an involuntary rush, and so it does, but today there is an extra part of my private life to tell the back of this man’s head.

Of course, I’ve had a glass of wine, but.....

Why do I it? Is it strength or weakness to offer us your life for others to consider. It was something my father did in the last few years of his life, certainly after my mother died everybody he met knew he was a widower. But it didn’t diminish him in the eyes of the people he met because he didn’t tell stories, he shared. He was interested in people, their lives and likes. Yes, it indicated a loneliness that the single life gives you, a need to connect in spaces where people try to separate from others, necessary solitude before returning to their peopled lives, that we singletons are deprived of. But walking around the village where he lived until his death last Sunday telling the people who lived alongside him of his end, brought sadness to many. The lady in the Undertakers had a most unprofessional moistening of the eyes,

‘Oh no, he always waved when he went past’.

On his way to the pharmacy, no doubt, his regular location of need for the last year and a half. The young pharmacist was equally moved by my father’s demise.

'Such a nice man, always cheerful despite his condition, never made a fuss unlike some who complained at the least thing’

This was slightly at odds with the impression my father left me with, irritated that rarely his full prescription was ready for him despite any time he gave them. Clearly he contained his irritation from the people trying to do a job in a system that failed them. Such a thought gives me a tinge of pride to have been connected to such a nice man. It makes me ready to tell anyone about him, and thus the man driving the taxi gets the story.

‘My husband left me just after my father’s diagnosis with terminal cancer. My mother is already dead. My husband lives with a young woman ten years older than his older daughter. I’m having to sell our home because divorce law in this country sees adultery as a failure of our marriage and not his fault and there isn’t enough money for me to stay there, even if I wanted to. My father died last Sunday.‘

When I met a friend this week and I answered their question as to how I was with un-British clarity, they commented on my account that I was living a soap storyline, a Christmas Eastenders storyline.

I can’t argue with that, but sitting in the eye of this particular storm, there is a strange odd calmness.

This is the nightmare I knew was coming from the moment we had the diagnosis. That final dash to the hospital had been run before, once before almost exactly as this time, but before that My brother had dashed to my mother’s side when her intuition had made her call an ambulance my father hotly denied he needed, and that action had saved my father’s life some six and a half years ago. I was in Florida at the time having the last big holiday we had, but it couldn’t include Disneyworld (much to The Absent Father’ relief) because DN1 was still recovering from her broken femur so it wasn’t that much fun, I recall. I remember the phone call in that disappointing expensive hotel when my brother asked if I was sitting down. I sat down. My brother and I have had many hours at the hospital since then, both separately and together, and he tells me he sat on a bench outside the 1930s frontage of the old hospital, now a square also bounded by low buildings and the hospital restaurant that My brother and I rather blackly renamed ‘The Spice of Death’, and debated when he was going to ruin my holiday. He had two choices, now, as my father lay seriously ill following a massive heart attack I could nothing about, or later if he died, when I would be more shocked and regretful that I didn’t know my Daddy was ill. My brother took the difficult decision to phone me as my father lay in hospital, knowing it was strictly unnecessary to tell me now, but delay could cause me more problems later. He is very much the son of his father.

We had this conversation as I sat on the same bench alone reporting to him by phone on how a session of chemotherapy had been going, sometime at the middle of last year. The way that my brother and I have shared the responsibility of caring for my father in his last years is, I’m untold unusual, but it is something that requires no thought. We do this together and that strength is something we are both pulling on in these days following my father’s death.

It sounds like you’re having a tough time’ says the friendly concerned voice from the front of the car.

‘Well yes, but it was very good really, in the end’

‘My father had inoperable pancreatic cancer, he was diagnosed before my husband left, in fact my husband left knowing my father was dying, and was expected to be dead by Easter.’

‘But fortunately my father responded to chemotherapy so although the tumour didn’t get smaller, it didn’t get any bigger and it wasn’t until before Christmas that the cancer markers went up. Spots in the liver were diagnosed just after Christmas, but you could tell he was unwell, if nothing else from the weight loss’.

I took a breath. The driver made suitable noises.

‘We had a good Christmas, obviously it was going to be difficult with The Absent Father going and Daddy being so ill, but we had a good meal at a local pub’

The Maitre D’ was always lovely to Daddy, and helped us when we needed to speed up as Daddy had had enough and needed to rest. Not by a flicker did he betray the confidence I’d given him about my father’s condition ten minutes earlier, so Daddy left on that Christmas Day afternoon unaware that another of the people that he came across admired his courage and cheerfulness, his dignity was intact. That sounds like he needed to be grand, but no it’s just he didn’t want pity. He once told me that the pain of losing my mother was far worse for him than any cancer pain he endured, and I suppose that really meant that death wasn’t so fearful for him, but it wasn’t a conversation we ever had. With my loss of The Absent Father he was brilliant. He was appalled by The Absent Father’ weakness to throw in the towel on a twenty two year marriage, and beside himself with worry about the depths of despair that I found myself in. Of course I rarely saw that, for me he was just there, an endless support by email or text, or even popping up in his green Mondeo he was so proud of, for a cup of strong black coffee with a touch of cold water and a sandwich made with the bread from the farm shop which he always enjoyed. We would sit and chat, and until quite recently he would often take me out for lunch, the final time being DN1’s last meal before returning to University this year. By then his appetite was much diminished and a starter was as much as he could manage, but he took great delight in treating us all. At a time of emotional deprivation it was as feeding to be cared for with smiles as with food I hadn’t cooked.

‘It’s nice at that pub, isn’t it?’ The driver commented neutrally, aware no doubt that another story of extraordinary ordinary life was unfolding on his spotless seats.

‘Yes, very nice and it was terribly busy, you don’t realise how many people don’t cook Christmas lunch, I didn’t until my husband left.’

‘You say he lives by the station, what do your children think?’

‘Well it appears his girlfriend isn’t terribly keen that they don’t like her so he’s not allowed to see them much’

‘Is that allowed?’

‘oh yes they are twenty and eighteen, it’s up to them, or rather up to her.’

A silence sinks as he navigates the last of the mini roundabouts out of town.

‘So, did you father live nearby?’

‘Well not far away, and we were really lucky that he was close enough to get to the hospital in time.’

My father had started chemotherapy again, the oncologist was hopeful that Daddy could retain a good quality of life as he had done in the last year, beating the odds for pancreatic cancer. The first treatment had gone ok, apparently, and I was very disturbed not to be there. I hadn’t done the first bit of the chemotherapy last year, well only the first two treatments, once The Absent Father left I was in my private hell of grief and it was my brother who did the chemo runs. Phoning me from the seat by The Spice of Death, or texting quickly about Daddy’s progress. My brother was fortunately on garden leave but once he started work again I took over the second part of the chemo runs. It meant, of course, that we had shared the care of my father through the progress of his treatment, and neither party could be seen as the more caring or more devoted. We’re not, but it is gratifying to think that the universe has thrown this opportunity our way.

Yes, odd my use of the word ‘universe’, in years gone by I would have attributed such good fortune to be definite evidence of a divine loving father taking care of us despite the evils of the world. Now my understanding of divinity is somewhat different, more sophisticated? No I don’t think so. Just my perspective has changed. From my initial screaming rejections of a benign God, I have come to a place of acceptance that there is more than this life, but quite what I have no idea. My trust in anything has been so seriously shaken, it is very difficult to even think beyond the here and now. I remain angry and confused at how bad the world is. There is still a part of me that feels if I do carry on and make a successful life, then I am colluding in the evil. That God rewards such evil just further undermines my trust in men. The bad ones leave, the good ones die, either way you’re on your own kid.

However, unlike my radical atheist brother, my avoidance of the divine has been a bit like a puppy hiding his head when he doesn’t want to be found. I know it’s there, and no amounting of shouting otherwise is going to remove the truth of the spiritual life. Just my understanding of what the divine is has changed, which, let’s be honest, is entirely valid. To imprison the infinite within a finite, male description, a bearded father of the medieval church windows, is perhaps the supreme arrogance of organised religion. Perhaps, to know your God, is merely to know what you want from your God and when ‘he’ doesn’t deliver a gauntlet has been thrown down. My major problem is with the idea that ‘God is love’. This is basic tenet of the Christian faith that I subscribed to for most of my life. Love is the life blood of my existence. The Absent Father found my pure love of him humbling in those early days after I found out about the affair. Others would say it was maternal, but I think not. I could see the good and the bad in the man, accepted both and liked to think there was a great man in a difficult time who could have found his way out freedom. What I didn’t have in mind was his freedom would involve severance from all his life. The freefall of his new existence seriously challenges my idea that anything can have my best interests at heart. There cannot be love in a world where such behaviour is the successful choice. The price I have paid, and his children pay is beyond comprehension. The divine exists, that I cannot deny, but loving, no, I cannot even edge towards the word ‘maybe’.

‘So you were with him then, that’s good’. Really this man is so kind, I can spill my story that is bursting my mind, running endless re-runs of images of that final loss both day and night.

‘Well, after the chemo he was ok, but something happened on Wednesday and he wasn’t very well.’

I was at work and just got texts as I nipped from lesson to lesson, the signal on my mobile wobbling in and out in frustrating irregularity. The doctor came but I think in retrospect there was very little he could do. He told us after Daddy died, that Daddy realised he hadn’t got long left, but never did he betray that to me. Daddy was more worried about a log delivery that was coming. It was my brother that prompted me to go and put my father’s mind to rest on my visit and move the logs, so he could get the car out of the garage and the wheely bins could be emptied.

I arrived on Friday afternoon to find him up, but most uncomfortable. I had brought sandwiches.  He couldn’t get comfortable and had to go to bed. I changed the glasses he had on his tray, he wanted a special spoon to take his medicine with ‘the grapefruit spoon’, it wasn’t, it was a silver plated fluted spoon, apparently the doses of his medicines were accurate in this old teaspoon. He also needed specific glasses he couldn’t accidently knock over. This was a man who had thought it all through and was meeting his needs as best he could.

The job to stack the logs was too much in one go, but I spent the time making a pile next to the coal bunker of the excess so I could put his mind at rest. I collected the small bits so he had kindling and sorted out a few useful small logs for the next fire he might light. He never saw my work, never lit another fire. As I filled a feed bag last Sunday with a few from the pile for my own use, I felt such sadness and guilt, that I should be taking these so quickly.

It put Daddy’s mind at rest though, or at least that’s what he told me. He assured me I could do nothing more, and insisted I left to return to DN2. That’s the trouble with just us, someone is always bearing the brunt of solitude. Sometimes it is a relief, but more often than not the emptiness is another trial to survive. You get more skilled at such things, but occasionally I let my mind drift to the days before The Absent Father’s Woman when company was an unquestionable absolute in the structure of my life, and my eyes fill unbidden with the tears of loss. What did I do to deserve such a deprivation? Is it to make me depend on ‘My Lord’ as Job did. Well sorry, I must be such a disappointment, if the Lord wants me for his own, he has a funny way of enticing me in. I suppose it is my fear, that he will eventually strip everything away from me so all I will have left is him. Which is why I cannot see it as love. I’ve heard of mother’s of drug addicts buying their children their fixes to keep them out of crime, but often you hear of tough love where the child is cut off from the family until salvation can be found and often the child is lost forever, clean or not. What did I do that was so evil that my salvation can be bought only at the price of the destruction of my life? I thought Jesus had paid the price for all of us, won us all freedom and peace of mind but it appears not, just those on the A list. Us B list types seem to the unwanted ones who have to strive for our own salvation. Thinking I was A list and just had to do my best, I tried, admitted my faults as much as I could be aware of them, found real peace in the peace of the Lord and learnt that I could not force a faith on my straying husband, as much as I wanted to, but to learn patience that He would do things in His time. It all feels like a cruel joke the playground bully has played on the dim child in the corner. Couldn’t I see he was toying with me? Looking after his real friends and tormenting me with hopes he had no intention of keeping.

‘On Saturday I had to take my daughter hunting. Yes, had to, she threw such a wobbily when I tried organise somebody else to give her a lift, but that is the problem really, we’re all knocked about with my husband’s departure, it makes us needy. His girlfriend expects him to spend weekends with her so as much as my daughter would love him to take her, he can’t, or won’t. It is very difficult’

‘Ah’. What else is there to say?

‘But I managed to get down to see my father who was still in bed’.

I had bought him little chocolate brownies, bite size but he hadn’t eaten them. I could see he had eaten very little. He had been onto the phone to the chemo nurse who had told him not to worry with food and keep the fluids up, which he had.

‘I bustled round being organised, but we did have time to chat. Fortunately he was still interested in the outside world, and we could gossip about the news from a mutual friend that the ex-husband’s relationship was going badly, that he really missed the dog and the girlfriend couldn’t deal with his past.’

‘Why get involved with a married man if you can’t deal with his past’. Why indeed.

It was so hard leaving Daddy again though. We did talk of getting a cleaner and talking to the MacMillan Nurse, trying to talk through the reality of what was happening without actually really talking about it. He admitted to passing a bit of blood, but quickly adding it could be the iron tablets. I knew it wasn’t, he knew it wasn’t but the fact he told me said more about how ill he really was. But of course we’d had crises with Mummy. She had spent time in the hospice quite a while before she died, 9 or 10 months before when she needed respite care. I’d gone through so many agonies of not knowing how long she’d got, I had become more accepting. Ill people are frightening to look at especially if you’ve known them when they are well. It’s worrying to wonder how much worse they are going to be before they die. Death is something we’re protected from. On television and film people rarely look anything like the dying.

I remember seeing Love Story recently, a film that moved me as an emotional early teenager, and shouting furiously at the screen as Ali McGraw died of some rare cancer that didn’t seem to involve her losing weight, her hair or even her ability to put her make up on as she lay and was irritatingly smug as Ryan O’Neal looked desperate. I found I kept siding with his father, much as my mother had many years ago, or maybe that was because Ray Milland was the only one who give a convincing performance in that dreadful syrupy yarn that made us all want to be dark and attractive and able to mesmerise a decent looking chap with a snappy line and good bowing technique (she played the cello with glasses on, and somehow it made her more desirable, heaven knows how).

But to know about the process of death has become something only the medical profession know, this part of life has been removed from us as we chase that dream of always looking ‘perfect’. Quite what that perfection is, is perhaps for another day, but I think we are all aware that dying people are ‘other’, different. Pictures of new borns are celebrated, but I have to admit to not thinking new borns look anything at all, a baby about three months old, now that is gorgeous. When I had small children myself new born babies had an ability to pull at me which was quite frightening. This isn’t unusual I’m sure, but as I journey through middle age I find they don’t quite do it for me as they did. Next stop is grandchildren I suppose and that is apparently the supreme joy. You feel all that love, but you give them back. But dead people have been removed from our vocabulary. Occasionally there is a ‘shock’ ad of a dead person, I seem to recall a jumper shop used someone who was about to or had died of Aids, and then there was a truly horrific picture of a young female drug addict, not long after she had died after an overdose. I would argue that this sort of exposure shouldn’t be removed from our culture, but it does tend to be unrepresentative of the real nature of death. Most of us will die of old age, either cancer, or heart disease or just, as Daddy used to say, lack of breath. Very few of us in reality will die violently, or particularly young. But we don’t know what really happens and we tend to protect ourselves and others from the reality of old age and death.

And yet we shy away from being at least be familiar with this process, the only thing after birth that you can guarantee, and of course the inevitable taxes, I suppose. Am I being obtuse not to accept this fact that who would want to know about dying, why not wait until you got there? Because it means we all have to face that final stage learning it for ourselves, facing the fear ourselves in the quiet of our heart and so much of human life is improved by sharing, it seems oddly fastidious to avoid such a natural process. Is death the last big adventure, or just a void of nothingness, as my atheist brother believes, that our lives are just footprints we have left in the sands of time. I remember going to my grandmother’s funeral and it was a humanist affair. At that time my Christian faith was sturdy, so I didn’t need to chunter about it. It quietly supported the structure of my life, gave me peace. I didn’t understand everything, but I had faith and I trusted that despite the troubles of the world there was a point to everything, and that I was loved and valued. Have I distorted the Christian message to support my own inadequacies? Very probably, perhaps that is the function of organised religion to comfort us in our humanity.

‘I wasn’t sure how ill my father was, I mean you don’t know do you, until afterwards, well not if they are chatting and being interested in the world. With my mother she had a bad phase about 9 or 10 months before she died, so this could have just been part of the downward spiral. But Daddy wanted me to check I had keys, gave me instructions not to dead lock the doors so an ambulance could get in, and speak to his friends, who were keyholders.’

One of the recurrent themes in letters and emails I have had since my father’s death is how proud he was of us all, how much he talked of us. He seemed to get the balance right, he was always interested in all of us, always there, but somehow his own man. Finding things now after his death you can see he loved us, but there was more to him than that. So I suppose what he has really shown me in the months, more than a year now since The Absent Father’ departure is how to be separate from the roles I inhabit, that at the bottom of it all there is a person independent of anything else who can give to the world from security of their own heart.

‘We had to be up early to take DN1's boyfriend to the airport, he is at Berkeley in California for a year.

It was difficult being at Heathrow again. So many memories, mostly of collecting and dropping DN1 for her travels whilst my straying husband disengaged himself from family life. The emotions of an airport are difficult anyway, but the worry about my father and the ever present grief of losing The Absent Father made so much more real by standing in those places of departure, was hard to manage. After a determinedly cheerful breakfast, something like the convicted man’s last meal, I left them to their goodbyes, and went and had a quiet, private cry for all the lost love in my life and fear of pain to come.

Looking back on it now, it was such a long day, so much happened, it’s hard to think it was only one Sunday, it feels like a whole phase of my life began and ended on 18th January 2009.

Driving round the M25 I suggested to DN1 we divert and see Daddy. She texted him, and he replied with the inevitable ‘Super!’, such a Daddy word. A descriptor that was his highest praise: a super person, a super meal, being super.

Daddy was up when we appeared, but soon returned to bed and it was obvious he had not eaten very much at all, but he was drinking. He looked uncomfortable, but dosed up on extra morphine he was coping. All over his bed he had the things he needed, his mobile phone, paper and pen, phones number, buttons for the telly. As ever he met his needs.

He perked up with us arriving, and was soon chatting about things to DN1, things she would do, all that. At no point did he make promises to see people again, never to lead us to think anything was more important than now. He was worried about the chemotherapy he was due to have the following day, and I was too, but I knew the staff at the Helen Rollason unit would have seen everything before and as much as it unnerved me, I had seen this before, three years before with Mummy. It’s not as if we weren’t being realistic, we just weren’t being pessimistic. However we kissed him goodbye as DN1 had to drive to Durham that day and needed a rest before the long haul up the A1. DN1 got in the car and said with a certainty that rather unnerved

‘I don’t think I shall see Grandfa again’

‘I don’t think so either’ I said quietly and we drove off in reflective silence.

It was difficult getting things done back at Shamrock. DN1 had to pack, we had ‘things to do’ in the house we had promised ‘to do’ all holidays, and here we were, jamming them in at the last possible moment. It was a freezing cold day so trying to change the light bulb in the yard light was not easy. The yard light was one of those 350W outside bulbs that was in place when we moved into Shamrock nearly 9 ½ years ago. It works by switch and was one of the worries of The Absent Father’ life, whether you turned the light off having put the dog to bed because it would burn so much electricity if left all night. One of the endless pressures of life when The Absent Father was here. It mattered to him because it was expensive and we couldn’t afford any extra expenses, and it was an indication of a loss of control, a scruffiness that so bothered him. Things had to be right, but they could never be right and that contradiction finally drove him mad, into the arms of his Woman and the far from simple life that he imposed on all of us. Coming to terms with the loss involves big swathes of emotion which are well documented, but also these little things, small stabs of pain, things that The Absent Father knew how to do, and I am having to learn because he doesn’t want to be my companion anymore. I used to always describe this as my punishment for not being good enough for The Absent Father, but I think I’m changing. As he looks more strained and older, it becomes clear that his escape plan has not been his liberation. His mind has been poisoned by a life without us so he cannot return but I’m not sure I would want it anyway. I still don’t like sleeping alone all the time, but would I want to return to all those compromises I had to make to keep him happy? All those parts of me I had to contain to be the acceptable wife. As the days roll by I feel more and more certain that the containment was a bad thing, maybe an obvious thing to say, but for me a terribly important statement. What is left now is an odd mixture of growth and pain, a small glimmer of light is flickering at the end of the long, long dark tunnel that has been the destruction of my marriage and as I plod inexorably forward though life I am beginning to look up and stretch towards the light. To return to the marriage would be to turn my back on the light, and I could no more do that than I could stop breathing.

DN1 wasn’t looking forward to the drive back up to Durham, already it had been a big day – up early to the airport, goodbye to Grandfa. In my last email to my father, sent at 15.02 on Sunday 18th January, I prophetically said this

I’m about to take the dog out, doing some obsessive cleaning in the kitchen, very soothing. A day of departures. Not fun.

Oddly my father replied at 15.27 but the email wasn’t delivered until 21.13, and it wasn’t until after I got back from the hospital after his death that I found the email. About something and nothing, no great goodbye, no philosophical truth, just the minutiae of life, not wanting to let a friend down

Please, can you contact her now? I've still not done my tummy jab and nearly missed some of the extra Nic doses which I keep forgetting when I shouldn't, otherwise I'll be up all night. I've written several emails and it's taken me so very long to do it. Please apologise to her on my behalf. She may ask questions to which you won't know the answer, I'm sure. Stall her the best you can - tomorrow Nurse xxx ?name (?Liz) should sort it out. I couldn't cope with ringing her now and she's a super friend. Thanks - let me know


Love D

I have to admit it gave me something of a scare late at night in my kitchen, and even now it seems strange that the ether held my father’s final words, or nearly final words. It isn’t that unusual, emails often get delayed, but not normally my father’s. I suppose you can interpret these things the way you want, was it fate or just the ether having a clog up on a busy boring Sunday afternoon.

DN1 and I had a brave and emotional goodbye, she had such a long drive ahead of her and we were both aware she’d left it rather late in the day to plod up the A1, but after that I took Archie out for a mind clearing dog walk, and a cry. It’s always difficult crying these days because there is so much grief that wells and gushes up from depths, sometimes it’s quite alarming. It’s like a serpent erupts from somewhere deep within you bursting through all those carefully constructed walls. I get it with anger as well, for the moment my anger directed towards The Absent Father and his Woman. From somewhere almost other I can feel the waves of fury fill my soul and this passion to hurt physically as some reparation for the agony they have inflicted on me by their selfish and immature choices is almost too much to bear sometimes. The trouble is of course, nothing that could be inflicted on them could even touch what they have done to me. They’d have to be strung out for years to even come close, and then someone might suggest that is was me that was lost in the fury. Such revenge would consume me and maybe the victory would be truly theirs, but how to deal with the overwhelming powerlessness. It is an enormous challenge.

With my Mummy Beyond Compare hat on, I dealt with this by taking the dog for a walk. Pounding the fields has been very soothing, but it is something in recent weeks I have forgotten. Odd that, techniques for dealing with such difficult situations should somehow be ground in, but you have to keep reminding yourself to make the best choices, not gorge on white bread, not down the wine in speedy gulps, not sit and home in front of the computer, but do the best for yourself. There is a part of me that forgets how to help myself. It is part of the exhausting process of getting through, getting to that light that glistens in the far distant. So often you just want to sit with the pain now. It’s manageable after all, not pleasant, but manageable and hanging on for a better day takes courage after all this time. But when I can get out with the dog, it takes about 5 minutes and I can feel the air on my skin and slowly as my muscles warm up and I smell the earth a strange settling comes upon me.

That day was slightly different though, because I needed to speak to my father’s friend, so taking my phone with me, I did as my father wished. She was practical and concerned, and we sorted out what might need to happen if they had to get into the house in a hurry. Little did I know......

I was just pottering round the kitchen cooking supper and I hadn’t had an alcoholic drink. I had planned that DN2 and I had a roast chicken for supper, something she really enjoys, to comfort after the loss of DN1. Proper roast potatoes glistening in the tray in the aga, the chicken crisping on the lower shelf. My mobile phone rang at 20.07. I know this because I have my father’s mobile now and I can check the records.

‘Emergency, emergency’ My father’s desperate voice called from the other end of the line.

‘I’m bleeding, I need you to call this number’

I scraped round for a piece of paper, of course there was nothing to hand as I blundered round the kitchen like a rabbit in the headlights. In desperation I found a paper bag and a biro and tried to reassure the panicing voice at the other end. I wrote the numbers down with precision. My voice, from what I can remember was loud and calm, reassuring that he could rely on me and I would do everything. He was too fraught to have a conversation with me, there was no time.

I tried the number he gave with such clarity, the bloody thing was switched off. My body filled with irritation that the nurse on call was clearly not available, I couldn’t even leave a message. I’d have to call the ambulance. Was it that important, would I look like a time waster? No matter, I was stone cold sober, but still it would take me 45 minutes to get to Daddy and check, and I really couldn’t take that risk. Better call my brother.

I didn’t need my brother really, but he is a voice of reason in my storm of troubles. He has fled to my side and told me to pull myself together, all with the same calm dependable way. It’s like he’s at a higher level looking down on things, or at least that’s what he likes to think. When I was in desolation he was there always on hand to advise and calm. These days it’s more of a partnership, I even have the nerve to questions the decisions ‘God’ makes. Daddy and I half jokingly called my brother ‘God’. We talked about my brother being the patriarch, the one really in charge. Certainly he can be very forceful about pushing his choices through and living with The Absent Father rather put my brain on low energy setting so I found my brother had always thought of things in a more complex or thorough manner than I had. Without The Absent Father I have had to engage more of the synapses that reside between my ears and I find my brother doesn’t need to lead quite so much from the front, I’m there with him. People talk of me being contained by my marriage, and I am beginning to feel the benefit of the liberation, rather than the abandonment that characterised so much of the previous eighteen months. It’s rather like the transformation scene in Beauty and the Beast, I can feel the energy of release coursing through my veins, I know I have opinions that are valid, can make appropriate decisions in a situation, don’t have to rely on checking with others. But with a situation of this magnitude, we needed to be together. This was something that couldn’t be done alone.

My brother was just back from his weekend at Center Parcs. Just back, we were so fortunate, so many things could have made this more difficult. Of course he said call the ambulance, so I did, explaining to the voice at the end of the phone quite the situation. Then I called my father’s friend and told her what she needed to do. I had so much a sense that my father knew something like this might happen. But then he’d been there with Mummy when she’d collapsed and had to be taken to hospital that final time. He knew the form and like the parent he always was, he passed this knowledge to me, so I could take the reins. I hadn’t deadlocked the door, I had the keyholder ready. This was my father’s preparation for his emergency.

Then there was DN2 to consider, so I phoned The Absent Father’ mobile. Of course he didn’t answer, so I left a pleading message to be there for DN2 and stepping over the line, I talked of the pressure The Absent Father’s Woman might exert, one of the many, many things The Absent Father was never totally honest about. The Absent Father’s Woman wouldn’t like this, she ‘expects’ The Absent Father to spend the weekends with her, and as DN2 doesn’t like her, then The Absent Father can’t see DN2. Why I have no idea, why The Absent Father’s Woman needs to have complete control over The Absent Father’ life. Does she? Or is that a convenience for The Absent Father, so he doesn’t have to do things he doesn’t want. And he doesn’t want DN2, but for once he was going to have to not put himself first, so I used The Absent Father’s Woman as much as he does. He needed to explain to The Absent Father’s Woman that I wasn’t trying to muck anything up, just this was an emergency. I didn’t trust The Absent Father to do the right thing, so I also phoned a friend to take care of DN2 if I was late. I knew I couldn’t be there for her. Whatever was happening DN2 was going to have to cope. I got the food out of the oven leaving it for her as my brother appeared. I hugged her and said ‘goodbye’ The good brave girl was left to cope, by herself on a Sunday night, in a house ewith no neighbours, her father somwhere not available.

My brother and I chatted in the car, much as we had done so many times before, neither of us acknowledging that this could be ‘it’. It didn’t need to be said, we’d cross that bridge when we got to it, as ever. My father’s friends telephoned me from Daddy’s phone and was factual but kind, clearly not panicing us as to the seriousness of the situation. Only when I asked if I’d over-reacted in calling the ambulance did the reply ‘no’ with a strange heaviness, betray that this could be the big one. My brother looked at me with wide eyes and we said nothing. So many, many times had both of us had driven with a heavy heart to Hospital. We went back to light chatter with that flippant tone that covers so much anxiety. There was no way out of this, we always knew that.

It’s a terrible moment of adult revelation when you realise you will have to bury your parents. At what age this unavoidable truth really hits home is, I suppose, one of the indicators of maturity. Too early and you are burdened with an old head on young shoulders; robbed of your youth and ability to learn from those childish bad decisions that form the adult psyche. Too late and the devastation that wreaks havoc in your life is sad to see by all those of us who have journeyed through that valley of loss and yet we are helpless to alleviate the suffering. We can only be alongside reassuring that the seemingly infinite desolation will mediate, and whilst the rosy safety of youth is lost forever, what it is replaced with is that mortality of adulthood, the security of the grown up mind. The pointlessness of running from this is perhaps the explanation for the mid life crisis. Of course it is, that ‘is this it?’ feeling has long being vaunted as the justification for the apparently mindless and selfish damage caused by one individual’s attempt to run backwards up the escalator of life. Maybe with the death of your parents you assume the ‘me next’ mentality of the Sydney Carton, a decency and acceptance of the inevitability of your fate. Yes, of course, Sydney Carton was dying in place of another, but maybe we all are; dying in place of our children, giving them the chance to grow up and reap the reward for making it through that valley of such perils. By running backwards what do we offer our children? As much as we may be frightened by the view ahead, by pushing behind our children and rushing them on, do we not fail them in with pitiful futility. Of course I have an agenda running here, forever picking up the pieces flayed off my children by their father in his all too transparent attempts to have his own way in everything. Would feeding on demand have satisfied this need of his? If someone somewhere had given him everything he wanted, would he have been happy? How much is all you need? A colleague of mine many, many years ago said something I repeat at intervals whenever I feel I’m losing my grip on materialism: ’enough money is a state of mind’. It’s probably one of the most useful things I’ve ever been told. That and realising that this isn’t forever and one day it will be me fading away, a shadow of my former self, the body lived out its usefulness, the journey forward a great mystery for me alone.

My brother parked the car and betrayed an anxiety he hid so competently most of the time to all but those who loved him. He hadn’t got change for the car park and was prepared to bluff it out. I had packed plenty of change, thinking we really didn’t need any more hassles. He looked at me and maybe, just maybe, realised I wasn’t going to be a cumbersome burden, I had thought things through and was prepared to be alongside him. It’s not a conversation we would ever have, but in that tiny gesture he could see he wasn’t going to have to carry me. He wasn’t, at times such as these I can feel the emotional steel running up my spine, I could walk towards what was facing us.

What was facing us was Sunday night at A&E. The television hung high above the assembled congregation droned inexorably. In a gaudy little cubicle a mother attempted to calm her bandaged child. Little groups of people with an injured member sat in resigned groups on plastic chairs locked together and bolted to the floor lest anyone be tempted to disgrace themselves and hurt others by throwing them around. Some were half watching the telly, half watching the staff bustling in and out waiting their turn, listening for a name they recognised to be called. My brother and I went up to the desk with a brisk cheerfulness enquired of our father, announcing our presence as the relatives.

Daddy had just arrived by ambulance and had two doctors with him. My skin prickled. Two doctors was not a good sign but by not an inkling did the friendly cheerful admin staff behind the desk show that we might have a really serious situation unfolding in front of us. It was just part of their day, it’s not that they didn’t care, the opposite really, they were alongside us, supporting kindly.

We bantered about who was next of kin, giving the information required with efficiency but still making the staff laugh with our sibling double act. Sitting side by side my brother filled me in on what he considered the process might be from here on in.

‘If a nurse comes out to see us, we’re ok, but if a doctor comes out, we’re in trouble’

‘Oh, how do you know that?’ I enquired of my ever knowledgeable brother

‘I’ve watched a lot of Casualty’ came the smiling reply.

Whilst we were waiting I telephoned The Absent Father, and much to my surprise, got hold of him. He had spoken to DN2 and she said she was fine. I also spoke to the reserve friends who had also touched base with DN2. The Absent Father was concerned, almost human. Maybe it was the adrenalin pumping through my veins, but I swear it was nearly like having the real The Absent Father back. Except of course you could feel the presence of another in the background when talking to him, lurking silently.

A middle aged, rotund very black doctor came out and called my brother’s name.

We looked at each other, my brother’ eyes widened a fraction.

‘Do come this way’

They found us some locked together plastic seats in a corridor at the back of the A&E department. A young muslim woman doctor with a slightly wall eye joined the first doctor. They explained to us that Daddy was very ill, he had been resuscitated once and he was exhausted and they weren’t going to do it again. I asked if he would survive the night. She said kindly that she thought it unlikely. Even this close to the event my mind slightly blurs. I remember saying that we didn’t want them to resuscitate again but I don’t think that would have made any difference, the doctors didn’t want my father to suffer any more. They said they’d tidy him up and then we could be with him. They left us and we both reached for our mobile phones.

My brother was on the phone to his wife and I to The Absent Father. The Absent Father expressed regret, asked what he could do. We were in the middle of this strange normal conversation when the doctors came out to us in a hurry. Daddy’s condition was deteriorating, we needed to be there. I cut The Absent Father off without a backward thought.

We were led into a small side ward, full of machines, each bed curtained off with blue curtains. The nurse pulled the curtain back and there on his side was a small stranger wrapped in pink bubble wrap bedding, an oxygen mask on his face. Or was it a little old woman, it was hard to tell, certainly it wasn’t my father, what were we meant to do?

Of course it was my father, unfocussed and unrecognisable at first glance. Just a monitor recording his heart rate. No morphine drip, no movement. It was an enormous shock, but one I didn’t like to comment on, I felt foolish, what a silly mistake had I forgotten my father already? Only later when we were drinking grim coffee in the relatives room did my brother betray he had the same experience, that it didn’t look like Daddy.

He didn’t look in pain, he was just quiet, breathing slowly. We talked to him, stroked his hand, told him the things you imagine you should say to a dying man, your dying father. The tears rolled down my cheeks, I looked sideways at My brother, they rolled down his too.

The nurse came quietly in an out of the curtained area. I remember very vaguely sorry for the people either side. I remember how uncomfortable it was when Daddy was first diagnosed and in hospital when a man in the bed opposite was dying with his relatives round him. You just don’t know what to do, it isn’t anyone you’ve known, but still you get caught by the waves of grief and pain. We were quiet, we didn’t howl or sob, just quietly stood and looked and wondered.

Daddy got quieter and quieter. The nurse took the monitor off. It was unnecessary now to count the beats. There weren’t many left. His eyes had closed, his breathing slowed. Was he gone? We stood rather self-consciously not knowing what to do. It seemed a bit ghoulish to stand over the dead body of your father, but equally callous to walk out on the last few breaths. We asked ‘is he gone’ to each other, and then Daddy would breathe again. It felt like something from the Spamalot song ‘Not Dead Yet’, My brother and I amused and self conscious at the same time. But bit by bit he faded and faded. I’m not sure I entirely know which was his last breath, but I was there when it happened. The nurse moved quietly round and checked, yes he was gone. Was it a relief? Yes and no, a privilege certainly to tell your Daddy you loved him. My brother said ‘He was there when I came into the world and I was there when he went out, that’s how it should be’, and he is right. Daddy missed my birth, but I don’t begrudge my brother, I was there at the end and I can tell you how it happened. A good man lived a good life and died a quiet death with his children at his side. What more is there to say?