The end of an era

One of the biggest issues that has come to the fore over the last 18 months since my father died has been the situation myself and my siblings have found ourselves in with regard to our mother.

It very quickly became apparent that aside from her obvious and expected grief my mother was suffering some significant memory issues and that they needed to be addressed sooner rather than later. Prior to his death I suspect my dad had been acting in part as her memory and whilst we were aware that she was getting a little forgetful, we really had no idea just how affected she was until she no longer had my dad for support.

During the period between then and now we have dealt with the medical aspects. Sometimes (actually most times) it has been something of an uphill struggle, both in dealing with 'the system' and in knowing how best to effect the necessary changes required. I don't think it's appropriate or fair to go into too much detail but suffice to say she can be pretty stubborn and frustrating when her back's against the wall... as I'm sure we can all be at times of difficulty. Knowing that however hasn't made it any less harrowing or stressful to deal with!

The single biggest issue has been her housing situation. For the last eighteen months she has been rattling around in what has been our family home for the last forty five years, like a very small ball bearing in a rather large biscuit tin and even had I been able to stay with her indefinitely, it is way too big a property for anything less than a family and not one were an octogenarian can reasonably be considered safe. Two flights of stairs, a massive garden, yada, yada.

And so, it is thus that last weekend, after much ado (we couldn't sell the house within the required period) we moved her into a beautiful,private, brand new, purpose built retirement apartment, closer to town, all high end mod cons and safe for her. She is perfectly able to cope day to day with living in the practical sense but emotionally we have yet to see what happens. It was her decision to move in as much as she felt that it was the 'wise' thing to do but leaving her home has been a whole lot less easy emotionally, as one might expect.

Time will tell but early indications are that it may be a long and somewhat pot-hole filled road to get to a point where we are happy that she is happy, or at least as happy as can be expected under the circumstances.

For me it feels like the end of an era, the home that was our family home since I was five years old, whilst we still own it temporarily, has gone in every sense that matters. It's just bricks and mortar now, empty of people, of family life, of the laughter and traumas of day to day life and of the warmth and feeling of safety my parents created there. Closing the door for the last time at the weekend felt like closing a door finally on that part of our lives.

So much has changed since my dad became ill but we will always have the memories.

Tis the season to be......?

I was charged today with the task of sourcing the household Christmas tree and to be entirely honest I wasn't looking forward to it. The last few years I have gone with my dad to the local 'Christmas tree farm' (yes, we have one called just that) and it has been a something of a tradition for he and I......this year was obviously going to be different and not in a good way.

I did endeavour to get said tree from elsewhere but to no avail and so I took the bull by it's proverbial horns and this afternoon went on my own to do the deed.

My father, a man of immense integrity - annoyingly so at times - must have been spying on me because having selected a suitable tree and paid for it I realised that instead of charging my card with the full £22 price, they had charged just £2!

I will fess up here, there was some intent in my mind to walk away feeling pleased with myself, I even began to leave the pay point but somehow I just couldn't....and half way out of the place I turned on my hell, went back and pointed out their error. Dammit!

Their gratitude and praise for my honesty only served to make me feel more guilty for my momentary lapse!

On a more positive note, my initial anticipated sadness was lessened by the discovery of these two beautiful and very large creatures who apparently now reside at the tree farm over the festive period....


(Apologies for quality, phone cam.)

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.

Dad...

....wherever you are may the jazz be as funky as hell and the red wine be of a suitably excellent vintage.

One year on, thinking of you and missing you......

Almost one year on

This will be a short post, I have to 'get it out there' but I am trying not to wallow.

I have for the last few months been dreading this week because it holds the first anniversary of two very sad losses, which occurred exactly one week apart.

Firstly the very untimely death from cancer, while only in his forties, of a very good friend, someone who had been a massive support to me, despite his own difficulties and who was an all round fabby guy, held in very high esteem and with much affection by all those who had the privilege of having him touch their lives.

Be happy my friend, wherever you are, thinking of you and your family.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Next, exactly one week later was the day that my father died, also of cancer and unfortunately I have one of those minds that manages to recall just about every minute detail of his last week with us, all kinds of memories, surprisingly perhaps not all sad despite that last week being in a hospice with the inevitable outcome hanging over our heads....but I could do without what seems to be a constant reel of film of those days running through my head.

Like I said, I haven't been looking forward to this week and it's not turning out to be any nicer than I had anticipated.....

There is so much more I could say/would like to say but for today at least the thought of typing it all down is too much.

Dead!

My apologies for the starkness of title of this post but it's significant.

Among all the hoo-ha of the last eighteen months my mind has been so full of just dealing with the situations I found myself in and trying to cope with them that in a strange way I didn't really have time to think. I'm not sure if that's entirely a bad thing, I suspect in fact it's the reverse and that had I been able to mull over the minutiae to a greater degree it would only have hindered my ability to get on with the matters in hand.

Not much of it was good, most of you who read here regularly already know the timeline, my being unceremoniously ditched by the guy I thought at the time was the love of my life wrong!, the diagnosis of my fathers terminal cancer just when we thought he had beaten it, the death then of a close friend from cancer and lastly the death exactly a week later of my father.

The whole period was madness, I remember it really as a blur of trying to organise, administer and control umpteen medications, constant hospital visits and procedures, trying to keep everyone 'afloat' and positive, trying to make what time my Dad had left as tolerable as possible for him and of a constant underlying feeling of panic that I wouldn't cope and the obvious sadness that ultimately, whatever we did, the outcome was not going to be good.

I just never had time to think and no sooner had the inevitable happened and my Dad had turned up his toes than I was catapulted into another difficult situation, taking care of my mother and dealing with the fallout.... but today was different.

Today, and I have no idea why it was today, I was driving my white van merrily along the road when seemingly like a bolt from the blue, with tremendous and almost physical force it hit me; my dad is dead, like really dead, like never coming back, absolutely dead and gone. I can remember his face as clear as day, I can hear his voice in my head easily but I won't ever see him again, never, not ever, he really is completely and utterly dead.

Forever. Fin. The End.

I use the stark language that I do because that's how it feels, in my face, real, stark, tangible at last. I don't quite know what I feel about it right now, at the moment it hit me I felt a sadness like I don't ever remember before but it was strangely brief and I'm glad I felt it, it felt real and accepting and has somehow allowed me to suddenly remember in detail things I think I had tried not to think about and buried away.

There is so much stuff, lots of it right now appears to be centered around his last few months of life, but not necessarily sad stuff, just stuff, stuff about the time I spent nursing him and some of the amusing (if sometimes gross) things that happened despite the circumstances, about how that time bought us closer and how we could laugh however desperate the situation became.

I suspect in the near future I may regale you with some of those tales, it's cathartic for me and some are worth sharing for various reasons... but mostly I feel that maybe the real me, who I battened down for so long with such alacrity to enable me to cope with the here and now, is finally emerging again with the acceptance, however difficult, that it's really all over.

My dad is dead. It's real. I have to cope now without him because he's gone and I'm not......

....and he would be as miffed as bloody hell with me if I didn't!

....and repeat

When my father was ill and my life was centered around caring for him, in retrospect I had something of a blinkered and perhaps naive view of the future it would seem now.

I suspect that in an effort to cope when the going got tough I cultivated a mentality that didn't see beyond his inevitable death, I was completely focused on the day to day practicalities of the care regime and on trying to keep him as comfortable as possible whilst supporting my mother and I just didn't look beyond that.

Looking back I think I imagined that whilst we all dreaded my fathers demise, as any family would, somehow, once it was over my life could return to some semblance of normality, yes, we would grieve and we would feel the loss acutely but among that I assumed I would be freer to live my own life, to try to find a job and begin to rebuild myself some kind of acceptable way of life.

As it transpires that assumption was pretty naive or ill informed on my part for my mother, who very sadly seems not to have coped with the loss of my father as we had imagined, now takes at least as much caring for as my father did, albeit in a very different manner.

It would be unfair of me to go into details here, aside from myself my family are very private people and I have to respect that but since my fathers death, things for me have become even more challenging, as they have for my siblings, but it is me who is here 24/7 coping with the aftermath and me who's life once again is on hold.

That may all sound pretty harsh and selfish to an onlooker and perhaps it is but believe me, unless you have been where I am at right now, you have no idea.... or at least I didn't. We all hear about those that are carers by default for family members, we see the support groups advertised, we think we know but we really don't.

My life is completely taken over again, it is stressful and heartbreaking and frustrating.... but maybe it was better that I was blinkered when my dad was dying in seeing this coming, because I suspect if I hadn't been I couldn't have coped at all.

We are as a family attempting to improve the situation but as with so many of these things it's a long slow process with an as yet unknown outcome.

I feel like all I do is moan lately, grumble about 'my lot', I know I have been judged for it and I know people go through much greater difficulties in their lives but I am not a saint, very far from it, I am just another individual with my own weaknesses, my own foibles and my own dreams and if that makes me appear selfish or unable to cope very well at times then so be it but I defy anyone to live the last year of my life and not have a few moments struggling!

I am stuck for now in a mire I can't find a way out of, I have well meaning people assuming they know what's best and I have others making hurtful judgements of me which is less than helpful. I do have my low moments, I do lose my motivation at times and I'm sure I make mistakes but I am not superwoman and I don't need added pressures and upsets, I'm doing my best in the only way I know how, enough already!

Really, the option of packing a small rucksack, getting a cheap flight somewhere and just never coming back is sometimes becoming a very tempting prospect.

Happy birthday dad

Thinking of you and missing you.

xxxxx

The sharp (s) end!

If I was ever glad to see the back of a particular day it was yesterday! What a bloody disaster, anything that could go wrong or attempt to wind me up further, did, and nothing I tried to do worked in any kind of straightforward fashion!

I seemed to blunder through the day directionless like a mentally and physically ill coordinated fool and everything took twice as long to achieve as it should have. I'm sure my state of mind didn't help, had I been in a more calm condition to begin with, no doubt things wouldn't have seemed so problematical or at least I would have been better able deal with them in a appropriate way, as it was I just stumbled and grumbled on stupidly!

Not one thing was simple, right down to trying to return the full sharps bin that had loitered here since my dad's days of extreme poorliness. Apparently chemists can't now take them, don't ask, you wouldn't believe the rigmarole. I walked the length and breadth of the town carting the damn thing with me, getting odd looks here and there until I finally found a chemist prepared grudgingly to take it, only because they are part of the local needle exchange programme for addicts. That said, I had to fight my way through three guys, who having just collected their days methadone hit couldn't wait and had to consume it there and then and then was told the assistant couldn't actually touch the thing (this I will remind you is the official sealed standard issue sharps bin) and so I would have to go to the rear of the premises to their secure disposal bin and place it in there myself! Many locks and much tutting later it was finally deposited and secure.

I'm sure there is very good reason for all this, It would just have been nice if when I asked a week or two ago at the local branch of Boots if they could take it, they hadn't misinformed me in the first place and told me to 'just pop it down' and instead given me the correct information.

I wasn't in the mood yesterday and I fear it showed in my somewhat 'to the point' manner. Ergh.

Home alone!

The last months have been pretty tough going one way and another and somehow in my tunnel visioned way I had never really looked beyond getting the funeral over with...and when I had looked slightly beyond that I think I imagined that life would become simpler and I would get my life back.

Wrong!

I suspect I was a little over optimistic on that front or perhaps I just didn't look beyond to this point, in an effort to cope with the 'here and now' at the time. Suddenly however, life isn't what I had anticipated and instead I am faced with what seems to be the almost impossible task of finding a job and of taking care of my mother, who whilst she is coping in many ways, is requiring more taking care of than I had anticipated, my naively looked forward to freedom is once again somewhat curtailed some for the immediate future.

However, this week, in an effort to give 'the mother' a change of scenery and myself a break, my sister has kidnapped and spirited her away to the midlands for a week and I have the whole house and 24/7 all to myself and I'm loving it, absolutely no responsibilities for six whole days, do what I want, when I want, how I want and with no-one but me to consider!!! I had forgotten what this feels like and it's fab!

I love my mother dearly of course but I have done my share and a few days off is being much relished. In actual fact, aside from trawl the employment websites and go for walks via coffee shops I haven't actually done a great deal but it's the knowing I have the freedom to do what I want without worrying that feels so good! The being able to eat when I want, sleep and wake, go in and out when I want, all the little things that usually I have to think about and plan to some degree, that I am enjoying so much!

Now, back to the job thing.....

So long 2009....

....I will not be sorry to see you go!

2009, probably, no certainly, the very worst year of my life to date, unsurpassed in obnoxious horrible-ness and that despite one or two in my past not having been particularly good to say the least.

I find it pretty hard to imagine now, when I think back to this time last year, quite how much has changed and none of it in a positive manner. I began the year relatively happy and feeling I had achieved much of what I aimed for in life. Yes, I was unemployed but that was the biggest problem I had, oh happy days! Such a simple existence now seems something I can only dream of, something that happens to other people, like winning the lottery or finding a priceless work of art in the loft.

Those of you who read here regularly (for which I thank you) know what happened next, for those that don't, briefly I lost the man I loved when he ditched me unceremoniously in the space of a few hours, as a consequence I lost my home, along with my sanity it seemed at times..... and having just begun to recover from that my father, who we thought had beaten cancer, was given a terminal diagnosis and required nursing to his recent death, which was preceded by a good friend also being claimed by cancer, just a week earlier.

It's been a logistical and emotional roller coaster filled with heartache, hospitals, chemotherapy and hopes dashed time and time again and it's a ride I never want wish to experience again! So like I said at the start of this post, I won't be sorry to see the back of 2009 and whilst I have no wish to tempt fate I can't imagine how 2010 can be anything but an improvement! Here's hoping!

There were along the way one or two positives, we had a few laughs, I learned that I'm stronger than I thought and that we cope with what is thrown at us somehow, I made some very good friendships that I hope will endure a lifetime, my best friend got married and I discovered that despite everything, I wouldn't now have back he who ditched me so unkindly if he was offered gift wrapped and with a bright shiny ribbon wrapped around his 'interesting bits'. I just don't need that crap.

So then, happy new year guys, lets hope it is a better one......and thank you to those, who along the way, kept me from capsizing spectacularly and were there 24/7 and way beyond the call of duty when I needed them, you know who you are.

About bloody time!

So, I was pontificating recently over the multitudes of surgeries and treatments my dad had to undergo and endure in his fight against cancer, he was amazing, he went through some really major stuff including 8 hour surgeries,chemo and many other less than lovely things, and he barely uttered a word of complaint or showed more than the minimum of fear.

It kind of put into perspective my dental phobia, (which is well documented here if are are bored enough to want to read it) ok, so we are different people and we all react differently to fear but nonetheless, to be so terrified of having one tooth extracted, that has caused me pain for almost two years, began to seem a little pathetic.

It was thus that yesterday I took the bull by it's proverbial horns and made an appointment for said procedure to be carried out today....and I did it, the offending item is gone!! Yayyy!!

I will admit to having to have my sister in tow and to visibly shaking but I did it and I did it without my usual dental assistance, Valium!

If my dad can go through what he had too I can damn well have a tooth out, he kept telling me to get it done every time he saw me 'winding' food around my mouth or taking pain meds trying to avoid the pain, so I did it....and about bloody time!

*Oh....and it's snowing!!! Yipee :o)

Saying goodbye

So yesterday we said our final goodbye's to my dad and if a funeral can be described as amazing, this one was! It's was absolutely what we had hoped for, it was perfect, it was 'him'!

It was as the saying goes 'a good turn out', people we couldn't imagine showed up, people some of whom we hadn't seen for years, or in the case of colleagues from his days in television, we had never met.

My dad was a staunch atheist, we found an amazing non-denominational celebrant to carry out the service and she was spot on, he would have wholly approve. My fifteen year old niece sang a solo, quite how she managed it I will never know but any of us who had managed to hold it together up to that point lost a grip listening to her angelic voice singing unaccompanied through her own threatening tears. My brother, despite his nerves read the eulogy magnificently, a concoction of amusing tales from each of us, his children, one memory each that a few days ago he gave us two minutes to think of and relay to him.

There were tears, there was laughter, there was love and there was much loud and funky jazz, music my obsessively jazz loving, bohemian dad had chosen himself before he died. A family who in grief came together closer than even usually we are, grown men cried openly and myself, my mum and my siblings gave up any vestige of our stiff upper lips as we listened and remembered a very, very special and individual man who was summed up in this short Indian 'prayer' that was included in the service;

When I am dead
Cry for me a little
Think of me sometimes
But not too much.
Think of me now and again
As I was in life
At some moments it's pleasant to recall
But not for long.
Leave me in peace
And I shall leave you in peace
And while you live
Let your thoughts be with the living.
Yup, if a funeral can be described as amazing, this one certainly was..... and I'll bet not too many coffins carry a floral tribute including some rather large cacti!

Tomorrow is the day

So tomorrow is the day, my fathers funeral, everything that can be organised has been, the hordes are massing, I can hear my niece upstairs practicing her solo ready for her performance and there is a very odd air of anticipation going on here.

Yesterday myself, my mum and my sister visited the chapel of rest to say our private good bye's, it was a very surreal experience. Somehow he just looked so 'normal' I expected him to suddenly say something....and yet at the same time he looked like he just wasn't there anymore, the man that my dad was, had long since gone. I couldn't then, and still don't really know what I felt, a deep sadness that this really was the last time I would see him and yet a happiness and maybe comfort that I was there with him at that moment. I wasn't sure before I went if I should go at all, if as people say, I would regret it, but among all the confused emotions going on inside my head at the moment the only thing I do know is that I am very glad I went to see him that one last time.

Tomorrow, I have no idea, part of me wants to have the opportunity to publicly say good bye and to acknowledge my love for the man who took care of me one way and another all of my life, part of me just wants to try and ''pull down the shutters and get through it as quickly and as painlessly as possible.

In the end I suspect I won't have to make a choice, what will be will be. Hopefully it will all run like oiled silk and before long it will be over and we can move on to whatever the new phase in our lives without him is...and who knows what that will be....

Organised!

Well finally, after what has been a manic two weeks both emotionally and logistically, I think we have everything arranged. Hurrah!

I really began to think we wouldn't get it all done, despite having such a long wait until the funeral, but unless my usually obsessive organisational skills have failed me badly (and believe me that's distinctly possible at the moment) we are all done and dusted and ready for my fathers funeral next Tuesday.

Really I think we just want it over with now, the wait has been too long and just as we begin to feel a tiny vestige of normality for a few minute, now and then, we will be flung headlong back into the harsh reality of our loss.

It will be very good of course to pay him our respects, to say our final good-bye's, to publicly celebrate his life and the very special man he was and to begin to get some real closure but at the moment I think mostly we are just dreading it.

Hey ho, tis all set now, we just have a few more days wait....

Two and a half weeks.....

....is beginning to feel like a hell of a long time to wait for a funeral! Actually it is a hell of a long time to wait for a funeral and it's courtesy of 'technical issues' at the local crematorium.

Wouldn't you know it!

If something can present a difficulty recently it will do it seems and this is just another in what is beginning to feel like a long line!

On the up-side - yes apparently there always is one - it means that we have had plenty of time to get through the seemingly unending list of things there are to organise beforehand. Dying is a complicated issue in these days of red tape and prior to this experience I wouldn't have believed quite how many things there are to attend too.

Both emotionally and practically this is turning into a very steep learning curve, it's all part of life's rich pattern so they tell me (who the hell are 'they'?)but it's a part I think I could have well got through life without experiencing.... and certainly we could have done without quite so much red tape or quite such a long wait!

So the wait continues until next Tuesday when we can at last all say our final goodbye's, remember my dad, celebrate his life and the man he was and try to move on to the next stage, whatever that stage involves.

From the bottom of my heart, thankyou!

Ok, so right now I'm not too sure exactly where the bottom of my heart actually is, in fact I'm not entirely sure where my heart is at all these days but whatever and wherever it is, I want to say the biggest thankyou from the very bottom of it to all of you who have send messages of support and condolence via here, Facebook, twitter, email and snail mail over the last few very tough days.

Your thoughts and wishes have made an immense difference to me, just knowing so many people care has helped enormously and made this whole nasty time a little easier.
Special thanks must go to Lisa, who despite a very hectic spell in her own life, as always was there for me, Daffy for her stoic ability to listen to me and come up with a positive response, 'JW' and 'JG' for always being there and 'G', who knows why.

Lastly but by absolutely no means least, a very, very big and heartfelt thanks to 'RB' who has been an absolute star, who has provided 24/7 support and help way beyond the call of duty, who has listened to me unendingly, managed to make me laugh however bad it all got and 'been there' in so many ways regardless of any inconvenience to himself.

Thank you all guys, I mean really, really thank you, you don't know quite how much I appreciate you all.

"There it is"

The words in the title of this post were those left by a friend on my Facebook page in response to the news that my father had died.

Just three little words but somehow they completely summed up how I felt and still feel about what has happened over the last few months.

"There it is"....simple, there was nothing more anyone could do.

The situation was almost intolerable for all concerned, not least of all for my dad and when it was over, as he died with my mum and I holding his hands and my siblings talking gently to him there was nothing really left to say. The culmination of almost two years of fighting was over. It was done. We had done all we could, he had done all he could, the cancer boffins had scratched their heads and done all they could and as I sat there not quite knowing what to do next, had I had the words I think "There it is" would probably have described best how I felt at that moment.

There was no fear, no desperation, no hysterics, it was peaceful, it was a gentle letting go and there were no words, just a strange sense of acceptance and of numbness, a feeling of "there it is", after all the pain and fear and fighting it was over......

It's over....

....my dad (TP) died peacefully in the early hours of yesterday morning with my mum, my brother, my sister and myself all by his side. He retained his stoicism and sense of humour until the end.

"Wherever you are dad, let the jazz be cool and the red wine be a damn good one."

Right now....

....it feels as if life couldn't get much tougher.

Most of my time is spent at the hospice now just watching and waiting for the inevitable to happen.... and with my heart in my mouth every time TP's breathing pattern changes or one of a multitude of other indicators change.

I haven't had time to grieve properly yet for my friend who died on Saturday and I have had some personal issues going on in the background along the way, though thankfully, those at least seem to be resolving.

My head is so full of thoughts and my heart with a feelings but I can't think straight most of the time and just seem to function in a surreal state of auto-pilot fuelled by so much coffee I'm awash with the stuff.

I keep telling myself there is always someone worse off but that seems pretty sad in itself, I wouldn't wish my situation on anyone, let alone something worse!

This is a real tough call.

My apologies for keep posting doom and gloom but being able to post it here is probably, along with the support of my friends, the only thing that's keeping me sane (ish) right now.