Life has a habit of sneaking up and slapping people around the face just as things seem to be balancing out a bit.
My dad has just returned from a 2 week holiday. He went to Yorkshire for a few days, then up to Scotland and then the Peak district.
Dad must have arrived home shortly before I returned from a Swim. I had a fairly stressful day, nothing going right and a very delicate bank balance. Swimming makes me mentally tired for some odd reason. I didn’t have much time in the pool because I got there so late. I only had time to do 34 lengths. 32 of them consecutively, breast stroke. 2 front crawl, a rest between those!
My Dad was unloading his car as I pulled up outside our home. “What’s happened to my Chocolate?”
Those were his first words to me. I’d ate his huge Galaxy chocolate bar. It was there. I was hungry. I ate it.
The next few times he spoke to me, it was to moan. “Straight back to normal” I thought.
“Did you not have a good time then?” I asked him. He replied in the positive.
I went out for a run later on, just as the electricity went off. It also started raining. Nice rain. It just required me coming back indoors to grab a cap. I wear a baseball cap to shield my glasses a bit from the rain while I run; otherwise I can’t see very well. The run itself wasn’t good. I had eaten a bit too close to going out and had stodgy guts. They eased a bit in the second half. As did the rain, revealing two partial rainbows. I gazed at them as I ran.
I stretched after the run. It takes about 30 minutes. Sometimes I just can’t be bothered to stretch but I know my body will thank me for it the next day.
I received a text from Maria. “What the hell was that?” my dad asked.
My phone has a ‘gong’ sound that plays when a text is received. He thought the TV had blown up!!!
Maria informed me that she would call later, which she duly did. Once again, the arrangements are for me to go and get her and bring her straight back tomorrow. I’ll believe it when it happens.
This however resulted in the news. News. New information, previously unknown, therefore makes it New.
“I might not be around for much longer” Dad told me.
“Why?”
“I’ve got prostate cancer”
I did not wake up this morning and think I would find out something like that this evening.
He was going to leave it until tomorrow to tell me because he wanted to tell me and my sister together. Because there’s a possibility Maria may be here he told me tonight. I think that may have been a good thing. I don’t think I would have held it together with my sister there. I know how she will take the news.
She’s going to see a solicitor tomorrow. Her ex husband is being a right jerk. She can get overly emotional which doesn’t do anyone much good. Emotional, well, no. Hysterical. That’s part of the reason my dad is going with her. He doesn’t want to tell her the news before seeing the solicitor.
I have an attitude towards death that others find difficult to comprehend. As does my dad.
WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE
That is life’s one certainty.
My dad was diagnosed up in Scotland. He didn’t want to hang around in the hospital. He didn’t want to abandon his holiday and come back home. Why the fuck should he? The doctors apparently struggled with my dad’s response to the news.
I have known only 2 people with cancer. Both were neighbors. Both of them, as soon as they found out they had cancer; they both seemed to me to die there and then. They were no longer the same people they were before they had cancer.
I was 10 years old when the first lady died. She was a smoker. She had chemotherapy. I am aware that chemotherapy takes a lot out of someone. I know this.
My other neighbor. John. We used to go round his house when we were children. He would give us plain digestive biscuits. Sometimes hob nobs. We used to play out in our garden. He used to watch. He’d sit on the steps outside his house, smoking his roll ups, chatting to us, watching us. He’d make up rhymes. I was about to write it but that would give away who I am and I don’t want that here after what happened in the other place. He had a fish pond. There were green lily pads in it. Often frogs would come to his pond. We would look over the fence at the pond. Sometimes we’d be invited into his garden to look closer at the pond. He gave us presents. Birthday, Christmas, Easter… Yes! Easter! I probably didn’t appreciate it back then.
I wonder what the modern mind would make of that last paragraph. What would the modern person reading that think?
My guess is you are wrong, dear reader. He was just a kindly old, friendly man. There was nothing inappropriate. Nothing whatsoever.
When he found out he had Cancer, John died. He was still breathing but the kindly, jolly man died. He went to a nursing home. We went to visit occasionally. We played scrabble. John didn’t have chemotherapy. He just gave up.
He left that fish pond to us in his will.
My attitude, we are all going to die. I’m aware of it. I know I don’t have much of a life. I know I’ve wasted it. I know I’m unhappy but…
I try to do things I enjoy. I know it gets on top of me but I carry on. I try. I run, I swim, and I spend far too long on the Internet. All things I gain a little pleasure from, if not much, well not as much as chocolate!
If I was to find out I was going to die, I sure as hell hope I’m not going to die before I stop breathing. It could be argued I already have. I don't know. I do things but I'm unhappy.
I hope my dad doesn’t either.
To my knowledge, the cancer in my dad is too far advanced.
I feel numb and empty. He showed me photos on his digital camera. Talking about them. All I could hear was the refrigerator humming. I was gone. Somewhere else. Somewhere not here. Zoned out, in all confusion.
I don’t know where I go from here.
Only the place is certain.
It’s the journey that is unknown.
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