=sighs= Hello.
The autopsy has been completed (no results yet). And the funeral has been arranged for next week.
Journey has been planned as well as it can be (4 legs by train, last by bus). Useful numbers, such as local taxi firms and cheap-and-cheerful hotels have been found and made note of (thankfully there are loads). Time has been booked off work (no problems there). Funeral appropriate clothing has been arranged for all (well, for both of us, that is).
So everything is ready.
Except us.
We want to go, and at the same time we don't. We feel we ought to go; for dad, for the widow, for each other, but at the same time we feel certain that neither of us would cope even with the horrendous journey let alone the funeral (or our even more horrendous relatives).
So, it seems impossible for us to stay here and yet just as impossible for us to go there. It is all so awful; our minds have been a-whirl and our insides twisting themselves into bits ever since it happened to the point that we are both utterly mentally exhausted. And nobody can help us. They can give their opinion. Give advice. Give sympathy and/or encouragement. But they can't make that final decision for us. That only we, whether together or separately, can do. For better or worse, the responsibility is ours alone.
...God, that sucks. I hate being grown-up...
=sighs=
That is all. For now. I'm sure more will follow.
Alice xxx
Sunday, 23 February 2014
Sunday, 16 February 2014
Are You There Dad? It's Me, Alice (part 2):
Hey ho.
So, the widow has demanded an autopsy. And in other news, I don't want to attend the funeral.
First things first: WHAT?!
You cannot be serious?! The man had progressive failure of most if not all of his vital organs - heart, kidneys, liver, lungs...you name it, it was failing - was incredibly massively overweight and caught one of the infections that whirl their way around the wards of hospitals, and you wonder what killed him.
I'll tell you what killed him. HE did. At 58 years of age, his body simply couldn't cope any more and when he contracted a bug, it simply succumbed. There is no mystery. Nobody murdered him. Nobody was even negligent in his care, from what I can tell. It just happened.
I know why she is doing this. She wants somebody to blame. Somebody to get angry at, to channel a little of the tremendous overwhelming grief that is raging within her. Because she loved him, dearly. Poor woman. One good thing to come out of this is that with their marriage being relatively fresh - less than five years, I think - dad hadn't had chance to hurt her yet; to do what he did to every woman he tied himself to when he got bored and fancied a change. I know that is a cruel thing to think and that it is evil to speak ill of the dead, but I don't care. Given dad's track record, sooner or later, it would have happened. It's just that in this case, death intervened before he could.
So she loved him. Still loves him. And she wants someone to blame. And because she loved/loves him, I am venting my angst here to you, Blog, rather than directing it at her, because that wouldn't be fair.
But the bottom line, you poor, poor woman; when all is said and done, is that dad killed dad. Nobody else. Nobody else needed to. He did it to himself.
Anyway, moving on...
The funeral, when it happens, is not something I want to go to.
Why? Well, a few reasons. One of them not insurmountable, and the other ones not so much.
Reason one; the journery.
It will be long, complicated, exhaustive, scary. Not undo-able, as I said. Perfectly do-able. Just not particularly pleasant. I am frightened by long journeys, particular those into places unknown to me. And particularly where rather than leaving somebody else in charge, the only person responsible for not messing it up is me. And I don't trust me. I just don't.
Reason two: the family.
Dad's family. That's a biggie. Because I do not want to see them. They are horrible, mean spirited, spiteful people that go out of their way to do and say horrible, mean spirited and spiteful things and I do not want to see them. Not now, not ever. And especially not at the funeral of my father, several miles away from home in a place that is unfamiliar and while I am distressed and vulnerable. I am having difficulty coping with day to day life right now as it is. Five minutes in the company of any one of those people will in all likelihood send me over the edge.
Reason three: the setting.
I mentioned that it would be unfamiliar. It will also be terribly uncomfortable. And more importantly, wrong. It would feel WRONG.
To explain further. To me, dad; the dad I knew when I was a child, belongs here. Not there. And it is that dad that I want to say goodbye to; not the other dad. The other dad was the one who disappointed and hurt me over and over again, the man who became a rather unpleasant stranger.
To travel to Scotland would be to travel to the home of that other dad, to say goodbye to him. And I simply do not want to do that. I want to say my farewells to the man I loved more than anything else in the whole entire world. And that man in inside of me. Here.
Reason four: Michael James.
Now, my brother, for now at least, seems to want to go. And I know that he wants to go with me. For us to face it together. But the problem with that is that I won't just be facing the journey, and the family, and the farewell being in the wrong place; I will also be facing the prospect of MJ spiraling out of control before my eyes.
Right now, MJ is just about OK. Balanced. Managing. But it is precarious. Like me, he finds crowded places difficult; so travelling all that way, even if nothing goes wrong and we don't get lost or miss a connection, will be terribly hard for him. Then there is the family to contend with. Can I trust them to treat us with respect? To understand what we must be going through? To be kind to the children of the man being buried by remaining polite, or if they can't do that, to help us by leaving us alone? I don't think so. When terribly upset, MJ loses restraint. I should know; I lived with it for years. And on that day of all days, on a day when the balance of mind of the most level headed person would be sorely tested; one wrong word, or perhaps even one wrong look, and I shudder to think what his reaction might be...
I am frightened. That's the truth of it. I am frightened of having to try and cope with Michael James and how Micheal James can be on my own. Which may not be fair. He may well, as he has done in the past, rise to the occasion and become stronger and calmer than I would have thought possible. He may well become the big brother that I know he can be and end up supporting me, rather than the other way around. But I am frightened nonetheless, because what if he doesn't? Or what if he copes for part of it and then falls to pieces for the rest? He could cope wonderfully through the journey, then the funeral itself and the family, and then once all that was dealt with melt down on the journey home.
And if he did, I couldn't cope, I know I couldn't. I am finding hard enough to cope with myself. Right now, after years of having the knowledge that although I wasn't contributing much to the household financially I was able to provide the emotional crutch that mother desperately needs to cope, mother is supporting me and providing the same emotional crutch, because if she didn't, I would go to pieces. And with that in mind, how would I manage to provide the support MJ needs? How could I help him to cope, when somebody else - someone who would not be accompanying us - is having to do the same for me...?
I don't know. I just don't know. All I do know is that MJ wants to go and I don't.
And that if he did go; to even have a chance of preventing him regressing into psychosis, he would need me to go with him...
Alice xxx
So, the widow has demanded an autopsy. And in other news, I don't want to attend the funeral.
First things first: WHAT?!
You cannot be serious?! The man had progressive failure of most if not all of his vital organs - heart, kidneys, liver, lungs...you name it, it was failing - was incredibly massively overweight and caught one of the infections that whirl their way around the wards of hospitals, and you wonder what killed him.
I'll tell you what killed him. HE did. At 58 years of age, his body simply couldn't cope any more and when he contracted a bug, it simply succumbed. There is no mystery. Nobody murdered him. Nobody was even negligent in his care, from what I can tell. It just happened.
I know why she is doing this. She wants somebody to blame. Somebody to get angry at, to channel a little of the tremendous overwhelming grief that is raging within her. Because she loved him, dearly. Poor woman. One good thing to come out of this is that with their marriage being relatively fresh - less than five years, I think - dad hadn't had chance to hurt her yet; to do what he did to every woman he tied himself to when he got bored and fancied a change. I know that is a cruel thing to think and that it is evil to speak ill of the dead, but I don't care. Given dad's track record, sooner or later, it would have happened. It's just that in this case, death intervened before he could.
So she loved him. Still loves him. And she wants someone to blame. And because she loved/loves him, I am venting my angst here to you, Blog, rather than directing it at her, because that wouldn't be fair.
But the bottom line, you poor, poor woman; when all is said and done, is that dad killed dad. Nobody else. Nobody else needed to. He did it to himself.
Anyway, moving on...
The funeral, when it happens, is not something I want to go to.
Why? Well, a few reasons. One of them not insurmountable, and the other ones not so much.
Reason one; the journery.
It will be long, complicated, exhaustive, scary. Not undo-able, as I said. Perfectly do-able. Just not particularly pleasant. I am frightened by long journeys, particular those into places unknown to me. And particularly where rather than leaving somebody else in charge, the only person responsible for not messing it up is me. And I don't trust me. I just don't.
Reason two: the family.
Dad's family. That's a biggie. Because I do not want to see them. They are horrible, mean spirited, spiteful people that go out of their way to do and say horrible, mean spirited and spiteful things and I do not want to see them. Not now, not ever. And especially not at the funeral of my father, several miles away from home in a place that is unfamiliar and while I am distressed and vulnerable. I am having difficulty coping with day to day life right now as it is. Five minutes in the company of any one of those people will in all likelihood send me over the edge.
Reason three: the setting.
I mentioned that it would be unfamiliar. It will also be terribly uncomfortable. And more importantly, wrong. It would feel WRONG.
To explain further. To me, dad; the dad I knew when I was a child, belongs here. Not there. And it is that dad that I want to say goodbye to; not the other dad. The other dad was the one who disappointed and hurt me over and over again, the man who became a rather unpleasant stranger.
To travel to Scotland would be to travel to the home of that other dad, to say goodbye to him. And I simply do not want to do that. I want to say my farewells to the man I loved more than anything else in the whole entire world. And that man in inside of me. Here.
Reason four: Michael James.
Now, my brother, for now at least, seems to want to go. And I know that he wants to go with me. For us to face it together. But the problem with that is that I won't just be facing the journey, and the family, and the farewell being in the wrong place; I will also be facing the prospect of MJ spiraling out of control before my eyes.
Right now, MJ is just about OK. Balanced. Managing. But it is precarious. Like me, he finds crowded places difficult; so travelling all that way, even if nothing goes wrong and we don't get lost or miss a connection, will be terribly hard for him. Then there is the family to contend with. Can I trust them to treat us with respect? To understand what we must be going through? To be kind to the children of the man being buried by remaining polite, or if they can't do that, to help us by leaving us alone? I don't think so. When terribly upset, MJ loses restraint. I should know; I lived with it for years. And on that day of all days, on a day when the balance of mind of the most level headed person would be sorely tested; one wrong word, or perhaps even one wrong look, and I shudder to think what his reaction might be...
I am frightened. That's the truth of it. I am frightened of having to try and cope with Michael James and how Micheal James can be on my own. Which may not be fair. He may well, as he has done in the past, rise to the occasion and become stronger and calmer than I would have thought possible. He may well become the big brother that I know he can be and end up supporting me, rather than the other way around. But I am frightened nonetheless, because what if he doesn't? Or what if he copes for part of it and then falls to pieces for the rest? He could cope wonderfully through the journey, then the funeral itself and the family, and then once all that was dealt with melt down on the journey home.
And if he did, I couldn't cope, I know I couldn't. I am finding hard enough to cope with myself. Right now, after years of having the knowledge that although I wasn't contributing much to the household financially I was able to provide the emotional crutch that mother desperately needs to cope, mother is supporting me and providing the same emotional crutch, because if she didn't, I would go to pieces. And with that in mind, how would I manage to provide the support MJ needs? How could I help him to cope, when somebody else - someone who would not be accompanying us - is having to do the same for me...?
I don't know. I just don't know. All I do know is that MJ wants to go and I don't.
And that if he did go; to even have a chance of preventing him regressing into psychosis, he would need me to go with him...
Alice xxx
Sunday, 9 February 2014
Are You There Dad? It's Me, Alice (part 1):
{WARNING: VERY LONG. VERY}
My dad died yesterday.
...Yeah. Yesterday.
It happened at a little before 6:30-AM. His widow - Wife No. 3. A perfectly nice woman - let me know. We've been in contact on and off ever since their marriage a few years back, but particularly of late while he was in hospital. There has been more contact between us over the last few months, actually now I come to think of it, than there has been in the last couple of decades.
He left, you see. When I was 11. Then he came back, after six months of being MIA - nobody knew where he was - and attempted suicide (but not really. In a half-hearted-not-really sort of way. A "call for help", as it is called now) and was voluntarily hospitalized for a time for psychiatric evaluation, where he was diagnosed as "depressed". Then he buggered off again and began living with a woman (to be his second wife). Then he came back and said it was all his illness - as well as some manipulation from the woman he had been living with, who was, to quote him "evil and psychotic and incredibly cunning" - and he hadn't meant any of it to happen and could I help him to persuade mother to give him another chance?
I tried.
Of course I did. I loved him and (at the time) I believed him and I loved my mother and wanted nothing better than the two of them to be reunited and our family back to what it should have been. I tried, and I failed - mother was as polite and kind as she could be, even met him at my urging, but no; she could not take him back, as she could no longer trust him - and he left again. For a while we were in contact, spasmodically, as I tried to deal with the normal trials of growing up, maintaining the standards of my school work as I was shunted - whether I liked it or not - into higher sets in several subjects and began struggling to keep up, my mother being in the throes of a nervous breakdown, my brother in the throes of his then un-diagnosed schizophrenia and MIA (some of which time, I found out years later, was actually with dad himself), the changeover from middle to high school while at the same time trying desperately to maintain a relationship with my dad, the man I adored more than anyone in the world.
It was two years after that that I saw him in his true colours and it was a crushing blow. It began when he sent me a marriage invitation. He was marrying the woman, you see. The "evil psychotic and incredibly cunning" woman that he had claimed had manipulated him into breaking his marriage vows and that he hated and would have wanted dead had he not have been a Christian (yes, he said this). I couldn't believe it. That he should get married again, well, sure; why not? There was no chance of reconciliation with my mother. Why not have a special someone to share his life with? So remarriage: great, more power to him, no problem. But to her? To the woman he had condemned and wished dead? That made no sense, surely?
After much thought and inner turmoil, I rang and declined his invitation.
That was when he turned nasty.
His first claim was that my mother had poisoned me against him and was refusing to let me go. Good idea in theory, except that a) she hadn't - in fact, with hindsight now, she was a lot calmer and nicer about all that than I think I could have been - and b) she couldn't have forbidden me to attend a wedding she as yet had no clue about. The reason was simple; I could not sanction his union with that woman. Any other woman, yes, but not that one. I pleaded with him to understand, but he couldn't. Or didn't want to. It wasn't fair, he had claimed, in the coldest, hardest tone I had ever heard him use, to expect him to not move forward just because he was no longer with my mother. My mystified reply was that he wasn't going forward, but back. And then he hung up. And that was it for four years. No contact; no phone calls, no letters, no cards for birthdays or Christmas, even. I waited for over a year before accepting that nothing would come.
It was during this time that the illusion I was clinging desperately onto was finally shattered for good. The sending of the death threat (yes, a real, honest-to-God death threat) by The Grandmama shortly after he had sent the wedding invitation was what sparked it. She had sent it to his flat, but unfortunately her handwriting was - and is - so bad that the postman misread it and delivered it to the flat next door, that of a frail, elderly gentleman with a dodgy heart. Thankfully, other than a horrid shock, the man was alright. He did, however, call the police, who duly paid my grandmother a visit.
My father had been livid - obviously - and wanted her charged. With some persuasion from her two younger daughters though, the charges were dropped in exchange for a stern warning. Grandmama, on her part, was both outraged by the intrusion of the nice policeman and the fact that it was even an issue, because, after all; "HE DESERVED IT!!!"
"If anyone deserves to be blown up," she had shrieked; "it's that bastard. The way he treated my daughter..."
"That's as maybe madam," the nice policeman had tried to explain; "but you can't go around..."
"The things he SAID to her!" she continued to shriek; "the things he DID! How can someone like that have more rights than me!? My daughter had a nervous breakdown because of him: she could have killed her herself! And do you know how much debt he's left them in? Thousands! And that's not all. His children..."
"Mother," Amanda had snapped at that point, walking in; "will you SHUT UP?"
Grandmama had opened her mouth - presumably to say that she would NOT shut up - then noticed that Amanda wasn't alone. I was stood a little way behind her. THAT shut her up; she said no more. But the damage was done. Upon going home later that day, I questioned my mother about what Grandmama had said. Knowing that with my mother direct questions got a direct answer, I put it as succinctly and bluntly as I could.
It worked. She closed her eyes for a moment, as though pained. Then she told me. Everything. All the things that had happened that my then childhood self had been blissfully unaware of. The mood swings and negativity that she had shielded me from. The arguments about money - him, angry with her because they didn't have enough - that they had held when they were certain nobody was around. The snide remarks about her intelligence he often hurled at her. His laziness and refusal to stick at a job for longer than six months before he got in a row with somebody and then left in a huff, leaving her as the sole breadwinner - as well as carer - for two children, one of whom had growing mental health problems. The way that he was almost always "too ill" (with anything and everything) to help her with anything, no matter how small. The intense pressure he had put her under to attend university - even though she hated it and couldn't properly cope with it - so that she could get a "better job" and they could have more money (while refusing to attempt to get a job himself, I might add). The callous way he had dismissed her shortly after leaving the hospital and he had contacted her for a divorce; the things he had said to her (I can't repeat them here, but they were horrible) and the way he had said them (again, horrible). The debt he had run up while she was struggling desperately to get her teaching degree and then left her with... All of it.
She had not told me anything, she said, because she had not wanted to sully my view of him. Even when he had laughed at her, actually laughed, as she had begged him to come home to her and me and to help find MJ, and his response to "what about your children" was "what about them?" She had known how much I cared for him, how much I had loved him and believed in him, and she had never quite stopped hoping that someday he would have started to act like the father I had thought him to be; the father he actually had been when I was a small child. It was becoming increasingly apparent that that was not going to happen, but she assured me that any time it did, any time that he wanted to see me and I him, she would not try to stop me. She wouldn't even mind; he was my father after all, and as my mother she wanted the relationship I had with my father to be a good one. One thing, however, that she wouldn't do, was to see him. No matter what happened, nothing would induce her to do that, not even me. Nor did she want to know the names of anybody that he now associated with (I understood that to mean women).
Fast forward a few years. MJ was back at home (ish). With diligence and hard work mother had clawed herself out of debt, I into good grades at school and both of us into quite a happy life and the immensely close relationship that we have now. Dad wrote. Invited me and MJ up to his new home in Lincolnshire. He lives next door to his parents (horrible people in their own right. Fodder for another post) on his own. No wife. Divorced. I had been right to call her a horrible woman (...er, I hadn't. He had...) and he was well shot of her. Would we like to visit him for a weekend? He had missed us so much!
We um'd and ah'd about it. Then we went. MJ didn't want to, but I did - even after everything, I was desperate to see him - and he decided to go along with it to make me happy. We were driven down by a friend of MJ's that owed him a favour. And so we went, off the big reunion. Except it wasn't. It was awkward. The moment I arrived, I regretted it, and I could tell so did dad (MJ had regretted it before we started). The three things I remember most clearly about it was hardly anything to do - or that dad wanted to do - and so the time dragged, that the atmosphere was incredibly tense and that his parents (my mother's in-laws) were standoffish at best and toward the end, actually upsetting and rude. I can't for the life of me remember what it was that his mother had said about mine - I blotted it out - but I was so distressed that I ran out of their house crying and MJ was thrown out shortly after for threatening them with violence. Then we went home. Before we did, dad, quite cold again due to our behaviour to our grandparents, promised to write and MJ warned me bitterly not to bet on it. He was right. Dad didn't.
Another couple of years passed. Back in contact again; missed me, blah blah. By now I was in my late teens and going through turmoil; my hormones were raging - the emotional aspect of puberty was finally hitting me and hard - and nothing in my life seemed to be going well. He invited me for a week. Grandparents excluded. I went. It was lovely. We enjoyed one another's company. He took me out to various places (including a funfair. I remember that we shared a candied apple and some candyfloss, and then hopped into a cage on a Ferris wheel and spent the time it took to slowly make its way up and over and down again clinging on for dear life); and we talked and laughed and it was just lovely. He was the dad I had remembered him being. I went home afterwards with high spirits and high hopes that our relationship was healed. That when he assured me he would write, he would.
He didn't.
After a few disappointed attempts to write to him - to which I received no reply - I gave up. If he wasn't going to bother with me, why should I bother with him? My life was progressing. I had to concentrate on that. And on the family that I did have; the one that was there for me through thick and thin. So that's what I did.
I was twenty three before I heard from him again. He was married again to a Scottish woman called Fiona and was passing through Kidderminster on his way to...I forget where. Anyway, could I meet him for an hour or two? Fiona wanted to meet me. I was hesitant to agree, but Mike (that's my ex fiance Mike. Not my brother Mike, who is known here as MJ. Or even Mike my dad. Three Mikes is two Mike's too many) convinced me and MJ that it would be good to go.
And it was. We ate and talked. Fiona seemed a nice person and obviously very much in love with the great fat handsome hulk that was my father. I felt quite sorry for her. She was wife number 3 and I had little doubt that sooner or later dad would do to her what he did to the other two. Anyway, a fairly good time was had by all, though the air between dad and MJ was strained. Certain things had happened between the two during MJ's disappearance from mine and mum's life that only he and dad knew the full details of, some of which involved wife 2, who I never did meet or even speak to (I do know that he left her in around the same amount of debt he left us in all those years ago, due to collection agencies contacting me and MJ occasionally looking for him), that had left what there had been of their relationship in tatters. We took some pictures. Then they left. And once their car had driven off I cried, because I knew that that no matter how hard I pushed, that would be that; there would be no more contact, at least for a while.
Fast forward another few years. The contact was there, but perfunctory; exchanged birthday and Christmas cards (sent and even, we suspected, signed by Fiona despite being labeled from 'Dad'. She got quite good at his handwriting after a time) and the occasional brief email. At one time that would have hurt me badly, but now I was resigned to it. Three times yearly - Christmas, birthday and Father's Day - I had the urge to simply tell him to stuff it. That, the matter of his past behaviour aside, we were too different. Too apart. That this dutiful card sending was worse than meaningless. If there was nothing else behind, after all, it to back it up; if the effort to make there be something was always going to have to come from me with little or no return from him, then what was the point of it? That, actually, I had all the family I needed right here; I didn't need him. But I wasn't brave enough. I wished that I was, but I wasn't. Immature and cowardly though it was, the idea of the confrontation that would ensue was terrifying to me. And also, I couldn't bear the idea of our contact, little though it was, to end. So actually I did need him. And even more weirdly, I couldn't bear the idea of actively upsetting him. It was all very confusing.
So it carried on. I would often send his cards late - possibly due to subconscious passive aggression on my part. It certainly wasn't conscious. I always meant to post them earlier - which he seemed to accept with good grace. And in turn I took the frequent emails from Fiona that would turn up (usually in the form of those funny jokes and pictures that get passed round and round various in-boxes in an endless chain) and the much less frequent lines from him (usually in the form of a brief update with a - usually long - list of their various ailments) with good grace too.
He was what he was, I told myself, and he wasn't going to change. I was happy in my life and he, seemingly, was happy in his. He wanted there to be contact, slight though it was and with minimal effort on his part, and if I wasn't going to put a stop to it, then so be it; it would continue.
And all the while, he was quietly getting bigger and his health was getting poorer...
To be honest, I had never paid much attention to that. Massively obese (imagine at least twice the size of eighteen stone me; that was him when I last saw him) and incredibly lazy with it, he was also a hypochondriac; famous in the family for all the illnesses he contracted. Some serious, some mild, some debilitating, some merely annoying and frustrating...it went on and on and always had. So I gave his (and his wife's) list of various ailments little thought. Just dad being dad.
...Up to a few months ago, that is.
Logging onto my computer in late November (2013) after a long while of not using it, I found an email from Fee. She had been trying to contact me but neither number they had for me was working (the contact was so infrequent, I had simply forgotten to tell them when they changed): dad was in hospital. Kidney failure. It didn't look good. Dated 5 days before.
Cue me freaking out. My dad was in intensive care: had been for nearly a week, being treated for something incredibly bad. Kidney failure was something that regularly killed off people of normal weight and (otherwise) health; what chance would he have had??
I rang her immediately. Answering, Fee told me everything she knew. He was alive, but barely. The hospital was very worried, because due to his weight the treatment options were severely limited, but right now he was holding his own. Just. All we could do was wait.
She was so nice and grateful for my ringing that I burst into sobs. I had been such a selfish bitch, I berated myself: going around merrily living my life, not worrying about him or even thinking about him all that much and here my dad was in hospital for kidney failure. But how could I have known? When someone was always ill with something or other and at least three quarters of it was in their heads, how could one know?? And it wasn't just lack of effort on my part that had led to this, was it? He had had dozens of chances, to no avail. So I wasn't entirely to blame, right? But then again, holy shit; my dad was dying!
All this whirled around my head in a mad jumble. Once I had calmed down enough to -just about - speak, I babbled about my computer being broken, and life taking over, and the distance being so great, and my simply not thinking all that much......pathetic sounding stuff like that. She replied that of course, it was difficult, that she was that way about her family, with them being so far away. With the pressures of everyday life, it was far too easy to lose contact......sweet sounding stuff like that.
Well, whether she believed what she was saying or being kind, I grabbed it with both hands. Then she gave me the number for the ward and I grabbed that with both hands, too. I rang the hospital as soon as I hung up, then as soon as I hung up on them I rang MJ and appraised him of the situation. He was stunned and I could hear from his voice that he was feeling the same mad mixture of emotions as I was.
Within a week of those calls, dad had recovered sufficiently to be "out of immediate danger" and been moved to a regular ward (Ward 4). Shortly after he rang me using the number I had given to the head nurse to give him. We had a sort of tearful over-the-phone reunion, where much of the same stuff that was said between Fee and me passed between me and him, then he told me of being bored and lonely - Fee was barely mobile herself and could only travel up every ten or so days when a lift was able to be arranged for her - and quite scared about being stuck in there and separated from his beloved wife - who again, was very ill herself - over Christmas. Then I told him about various things in my life that I thought he might be interested in, which he listened to eagerly, and after drying up and going blank (which we both admitted to), we left it at that.
Later that day, I got the idea of sending him a bad joke I had heard somebody say at work - the sort you get in crackers - to cheer the poor boy up, to which he replied saying it was the best laugh he had had in ages. And thus, "Alice's Bad Joke Of The Day" was born. While he was in hospital, I told him, I would send him a joke at some point every day. And so I did. There were a couple of times it slipped my mind, but on the whole, every evening when I turned on my computer, I would log onto the Good Bad Joke Website (yes, that exists), find a new - non dirty - joke and send it to him. Typically it looked like this:
Alice's bad joke of the day is; what do ninjas wear on their feet? ... ... ... sneakers! x
And when he turned his phone on, which wasn't often because he wasn't able to properly charge it, he would receive it and it would make him laugh (or at least he said it did). Also Fee and I exchanged occasional texts concerning updates about his health. That was all. Not much, but more than there had been.
A few weeks later, just before Christmas, he was able to go home and we all breathed a collective sigh of relief. It had been another storm in a teacup after all and now he was well on his way to being on the mend. All well and good.
Three weeks later he was back in. No problem, we had expected that. His kidneys were still not right; there was a blockage in one, for instance, that needed to be removed. And of course there was the mass of problems that his...well, mass...had caused as well, including his legs building with fluid and not working properly. So I wasn't worried. Nor was he. Nor was Fee.
Then the numerous tests the hospital was subjecting him to over those things started showing other problems, like unidentified masses in his liver. And his heart. Still not too worried (though he was fed up).
Then he developed an infection. A big one. Became confused. NOW we were worried. Me in particular, having worked in a nursing home and seen the way that patients all became shortly before...but, I calmed myself with; dad was not an elderly and terminally ill patient in a nursing home, he was an unhealthy but not terminally ill youngish man - comparatively, anyway - in hospital where a dedicated team were working tirelessly with the latest that medical science had to offer to save that useless and incredibly selfish carcass of his. It was just an infection. They would give him antibiotics, drain off the excess fluid that was apparently building up in his left lung, and then get back to fixing his kidneys. So, right; I told myself. Right...
Three days later, he was improving. Enough to ring his wife and have a nice long conversation. And text me to thank me for my latest string of Alice's Bad Joke of the Day. I began to relax again. And then...
...Then...
At 11.15-PM on Friday 7th February, Fee rang me. She was crying. Her last visit with him, earlier that day, had been a disaster; he had barely been conscious. They had told her to try not to worry, that he had had some vigorous tests and being sleepy was a perfectly normal reaction to them, and she had gone home again trying to convince herself that everything would be alright, but just a few minutes before she had rung me, they had called her and told her that after a brief period of wakefulness and reasonably high spirits, he had deteriorated rapidly and to the point where there was nothing more they could do. He had been transferred to intensive care again and they advised her, she said, to prepare for the worst. So she rang me. I calmed her as best as I could, then rang them myself.
The nurse and then registrar that I talked to had adopted that gravely-gentle tone you see doctors use on television. The one that they use when the news is unbelievably bad. They told me that there was infected fluid in his lungs, liver, kidneys and heart. They couldn't drain it away because at his size and in the state he was in, the procedure would kill him. All they could do was wait and hope that his body would be able to fight it enough for his condition to improve to the point where they could step in. But, the registrar told me, in that gravely-gentle voice; the situation was grave and I needed to understand and be prepared...
In a daze, I hung up and after ringing MJ to tell him, I went to bed. I barely slept, but being wrapped in the duvet was comforting. In the morning I rang them; 5-AM (they said I could any time), and was told that he was "comfortable, settled and no worse".
Still dazed but relieved that his condition hadn't gotten worse, I went to work. It would be another storm-in-a-teacup, I told myself sternly. Another thing he managed to catch but then pull himself back up from. That was simply what dad did.
Then an hour later, my phone rang. Fee. I picked up, and... he was gone. Just a few minutes before, Fee said. I listened, let her cry, told her that I needed to ring MJ, hung up, rang MJ, told him, then - inexplicably - spent ten minutes finishing cleaning the bathroom. Then I walked onto the shop floor, told The Supervisor and calmly told her that I needed to sit down for a few minutes; compose myself. Then I sat down. And started sobbing. And didn't stop. Five minutes afterward, two members of B&Q staff arrived and escorted me gently out of the store to the warehouse manager's car, which he used to drive me home.
And that is that. That is all. My dad is dead. My massively overweight, utterly selfish, lazy, handsome, charming, cunning lump of a father is dead and gone.
And right now, I have no idea exactly how I feel. A lot of things. None of them clear enough to get ahold of. I just don't know. I'm numb.
Just numb...
Alice x
My dad died yesterday.
...Yeah. Yesterday.
It happened at a little before 6:30-AM. His widow - Wife No. 3. A perfectly nice woman - let me know. We've been in contact on and off ever since their marriage a few years back, but particularly of late while he was in hospital. There has been more contact between us over the last few months, actually now I come to think of it, than there has been in the last couple of decades.
He left, you see. When I was 11. Then he came back, after six months of being MIA - nobody knew where he was - and attempted suicide (but not really. In a half-hearted-not-really sort of way. A "call for help", as it is called now) and was voluntarily hospitalized for a time for psychiatric evaluation, where he was diagnosed as "depressed". Then he buggered off again and began living with a woman (to be his second wife). Then he came back and said it was all his illness - as well as some manipulation from the woman he had been living with, who was, to quote him "evil and psychotic and incredibly cunning" - and he hadn't meant any of it to happen and could I help him to persuade mother to give him another chance?
I tried.
Of course I did. I loved him and (at the time) I believed him and I loved my mother and wanted nothing better than the two of them to be reunited and our family back to what it should have been. I tried, and I failed - mother was as polite and kind as she could be, even met him at my urging, but no; she could not take him back, as she could no longer trust him - and he left again. For a while we were in contact, spasmodically, as I tried to deal with the normal trials of growing up, maintaining the standards of my school work as I was shunted - whether I liked it or not - into higher sets in several subjects and began struggling to keep up, my mother being in the throes of a nervous breakdown, my brother in the throes of his then un-diagnosed schizophrenia and MIA (some of which time, I found out years later, was actually with dad himself), the changeover from middle to high school while at the same time trying desperately to maintain a relationship with my dad, the man I adored more than anyone in the world.
It was two years after that that I saw him in his true colours and it was a crushing blow. It began when he sent me a marriage invitation. He was marrying the woman, you see. The "evil psychotic and incredibly cunning" woman that he had claimed had manipulated him into breaking his marriage vows and that he hated and would have wanted dead had he not have been a Christian (yes, he said this). I couldn't believe it. That he should get married again, well, sure; why not? There was no chance of reconciliation with my mother. Why not have a special someone to share his life with? So remarriage: great, more power to him, no problem. But to her? To the woman he had condemned and wished dead? That made no sense, surely?
After much thought and inner turmoil, I rang and declined his invitation.
That was when he turned nasty.
His first claim was that my mother had poisoned me against him and was refusing to let me go. Good idea in theory, except that a) she hadn't - in fact, with hindsight now, she was a lot calmer and nicer about all that than I think I could have been - and b) she couldn't have forbidden me to attend a wedding she as yet had no clue about. The reason was simple; I could not sanction his union with that woman. Any other woman, yes, but not that one. I pleaded with him to understand, but he couldn't. Or didn't want to. It wasn't fair, he had claimed, in the coldest, hardest tone I had ever heard him use, to expect him to not move forward just because he was no longer with my mother. My mystified reply was that he wasn't going forward, but back. And then he hung up. And that was it for four years. No contact; no phone calls, no letters, no cards for birthdays or Christmas, even. I waited for over a year before accepting that nothing would come.
It was during this time that the illusion I was clinging desperately onto was finally shattered for good. The sending of the death threat (yes, a real, honest-to-God death threat) by The Grandmama shortly after he had sent the wedding invitation was what sparked it. She had sent it to his flat, but unfortunately her handwriting was - and is - so bad that the postman misread it and delivered it to the flat next door, that of a frail, elderly gentleman with a dodgy heart. Thankfully, other than a horrid shock, the man was alright. He did, however, call the police, who duly paid my grandmother a visit.
My father had been livid - obviously - and wanted her charged. With some persuasion from her two younger daughters though, the charges were dropped in exchange for a stern warning. Grandmama, on her part, was both outraged by the intrusion of the nice policeman and the fact that it was even an issue, because, after all; "HE DESERVED IT!!!"
"If anyone deserves to be blown up," she had shrieked; "it's that bastard. The way he treated my daughter..."
"That's as maybe madam," the nice policeman had tried to explain; "but you can't go around..."
"The things he SAID to her!" she continued to shriek; "the things he DID! How can someone like that have more rights than me!? My daughter had a nervous breakdown because of him: she could have killed her herself! And do you know how much debt he's left them in? Thousands! And that's not all. His children..."
"Mother," Amanda had snapped at that point, walking in; "will you SHUT UP?"
Grandmama had opened her mouth - presumably to say that she would NOT shut up - then noticed that Amanda wasn't alone. I was stood a little way behind her. THAT shut her up; she said no more. But the damage was done. Upon going home later that day, I questioned my mother about what Grandmama had said. Knowing that with my mother direct questions got a direct answer, I put it as succinctly and bluntly as I could.
It worked. She closed her eyes for a moment, as though pained. Then she told me. Everything. All the things that had happened that my then childhood self had been blissfully unaware of. The mood swings and negativity that she had shielded me from. The arguments about money - him, angry with her because they didn't have enough - that they had held when they were certain nobody was around. The snide remarks about her intelligence he often hurled at her. His laziness and refusal to stick at a job for longer than six months before he got in a row with somebody and then left in a huff, leaving her as the sole breadwinner - as well as carer - for two children, one of whom had growing mental health problems. The way that he was almost always "too ill" (with anything and everything) to help her with anything, no matter how small. The intense pressure he had put her under to attend university - even though she hated it and couldn't properly cope with it - so that she could get a "better job" and they could have more money (while refusing to attempt to get a job himself, I might add). The callous way he had dismissed her shortly after leaving the hospital and he had contacted her for a divorce; the things he had said to her (I can't repeat them here, but they were horrible) and the way he had said them (again, horrible). The debt he had run up while she was struggling desperately to get her teaching degree and then left her with... All of it.
She had not told me anything, she said, because she had not wanted to sully my view of him. Even when he had laughed at her, actually laughed, as she had begged him to come home to her and me and to help find MJ, and his response to "what about your children" was "what about them?" She had known how much I cared for him, how much I had loved him and believed in him, and she had never quite stopped hoping that someday he would have started to act like the father I had thought him to be; the father he actually had been when I was a small child. It was becoming increasingly apparent that that was not going to happen, but she assured me that any time it did, any time that he wanted to see me and I him, she would not try to stop me. She wouldn't even mind; he was my father after all, and as my mother she wanted the relationship I had with my father to be a good one. One thing, however, that she wouldn't do, was to see him. No matter what happened, nothing would induce her to do that, not even me. Nor did she want to know the names of anybody that he now associated with (I understood that to mean women).
Fast forward a few years. MJ was back at home (ish). With diligence and hard work mother had clawed herself out of debt, I into good grades at school and both of us into quite a happy life and the immensely close relationship that we have now. Dad wrote. Invited me and MJ up to his new home in Lincolnshire. He lives next door to his parents (horrible people in their own right. Fodder for another post) on his own. No wife. Divorced. I had been right to call her a horrible woman (...er, I hadn't. He had...) and he was well shot of her. Would we like to visit him for a weekend? He had missed us so much!
We um'd and ah'd about it. Then we went. MJ didn't want to, but I did - even after everything, I was desperate to see him - and he decided to go along with it to make me happy. We were driven down by a friend of MJ's that owed him a favour. And so we went, off the big reunion. Except it wasn't. It was awkward. The moment I arrived, I regretted it, and I could tell so did dad (MJ had regretted it before we started). The three things I remember most clearly about it was hardly anything to do - or that dad wanted to do - and so the time dragged, that the atmosphere was incredibly tense and that his parents (my mother's in-laws) were standoffish at best and toward the end, actually upsetting and rude. I can't for the life of me remember what it was that his mother had said about mine - I blotted it out - but I was so distressed that I ran out of their house crying and MJ was thrown out shortly after for threatening them with violence. Then we went home. Before we did, dad, quite cold again due to our behaviour to our grandparents, promised to write and MJ warned me bitterly not to bet on it. He was right. Dad didn't.
Another couple of years passed. Back in contact again; missed me, blah blah. By now I was in my late teens and going through turmoil; my hormones were raging - the emotional aspect of puberty was finally hitting me and hard - and nothing in my life seemed to be going well. He invited me for a week. Grandparents excluded. I went. It was lovely. We enjoyed one another's company. He took me out to various places (including a funfair. I remember that we shared a candied apple and some candyfloss, and then hopped into a cage on a Ferris wheel and spent the time it took to slowly make its way up and over and down again clinging on for dear life); and we talked and laughed and it was just lovely. He was the dad I had remembered him being. I went home afterwards with high spirits and high hopes that our relationship was healed. That when he assured me he would write, he would.
He didn't.
After a few disappointed attempts to write to him - to which I received no reply - I gave up. If he wasn't going to bother with me, why should I bother with him? My life was progressing. I had to concentrate on that. And on the family that I did have; the one that was there for me through thick and thin. So that's what I did.
I was twenty three before I heard from him again. He was married again to a Scottish woman called Fiona and was passing through Kidderminster on his way to...I forget where. Anyway, could I meet him for an hour or two? Fiona wanted to meet me. I was hesitant to agree, but Mike (that's my ex fiance Mike. Not my brother Mike, who is known here as MJ. Or even Mike my dad. Three Mikes is two Mike's too many) convinced me and MJ that it would be good to go.
And it was. We ate and talked. Fiona seemed a nice person and obviously very much in love with the great fat handsome hulk that was my father. I felt quite sorry for her. She was wife number 3 and I had little doubt that sooner or later dad would do to her what he did to the other two. Anyway, a fairly good time was had by all, though the air between dad and MJ was strained. Certain things had happened between the two during MJ's disappearance from mine and mum's life that only he and dad knew the full details of, some of which involved wife 2, who I never did meet or even speak to (I do know that he left her in around the same amount of debt he left us in all those years ago, due to collection agencies contacting me and MJ occasionally looking for him), that had left what there had been of their relationship in tatters. We took some pictures. Then they left. And once their car had driven off I cried, because I knew that that no matter how hard I pushed, that would be that; there would be no more contact, at least for a while.
Fast forward another few years. The contact was there, but perfunctory; exchanged birthday and Christmas cards (sent and even, we suspected, signed by Fiona despite being labeled from 'Dad'. She got quite good at his handwriting after a time) and the occasional brief email. At one time that would have hurt me badly, but now I was resigned to it. Three times yearly - Christmas, birthday and Father's Day - I had the urge to simply tell him to stuff it. That, the matter of his past behaviour aside, we were too different. Too apart. That this dutiful card sending was worse than meaningless. If there was nothing else behind, after all, it to back it up; if the effort to make there be something was always going to have to come from me with little or no return from him, then what was the point of it? That, actually, I had all the family I needed right here; I didn't need him. But I wasn't brave enough. I wished that I was, but I wasn't. Immature and cowardly though it was, the idea of the confrontation that would ensue was terrifying to me. And also, I couldn't bear the idea of our contact, little though it was, to end. So actually I did need him. And even more weirdly, I couldn't bear the idea of actively upsetting him. It was all very confusing.
So it carried on. I would often send his cards late - possibly due to subconscious passive aggression on my part. It certainly wasn't conscious. I always meant to post them earlier - which he seemed to accept with good grace. And in turn I took the frequent emails from Fiona that would turn up (usually in the form of those funny jokes and pictures that get passed round and round various in-boxes in an endless chain) and the much less frequent lines from him (usually in the form of a brief update with a - usually long - list of their various ailments) with good grace too.
He was what he was, I told myself, and he wasn't going to change. I was happy in my life and he, seemingly, was happy in his. He wanted there to be contact, slight though it was and with minimal effort on his part, and if I wasn't going to put a stop to it, then so be it; it would continue.
And all the while, he was quietly getting bigger and his health was getting poorer...
To be honest, I had never paid much attention to that. Massively obese (imagine at least twice the size of eighteen stone me; that was him when I last saw him) and incredibly lazy with it, he was also a hypochondriac; famous in the family for all the illnesses he contracted. Some serious, some mild, some debilitating, some merely annoying and frustrating...it went on and on and always had. So I gave his (and his wife's) list of various ailments little thought. Just dad being dad.
...Up to a few months ago, that is.
Logging onto my computer in late November (2013) after a long while of not using it, I found an email from Fee. She had been trying to contact me but neither number they had for me was working (the contact was so infrequent, I had simply forgotten to tell them when they changed): dad was in hospital. Kidney failure. It didn't look good. Dated 5 days before.
Cue me freaking out. My dad was in intensive care: had been for nearly a week, being treated for something incredibly bad. Kidney failure was something that regularly killed off people of normal weight and (otherwise) health; what chance would he have had??
I rang her immediately. Answering, Fee told me everything she knew. He was alive, but barely. The hospital was very worried, because due to his weight the treatment options were severely limited, but right now he was holding his own. Just. All we could do was wait.
She was so nice and grateful for my ringing that I burst into sobs. I had been such a selfish bitch, I berated myself: going around merrily living my life, not worrying about him or even thinking about him all that much and here my dad was in hospital for kidney failure. But how could I have known? When someone was always ill with something or other and at least three quarters of it was in their heads, how could one know?? And it wasn't just lack of effort on my part that had led to this, was it? He had had dozens of chances, to no avail. So I wasn't entirely to blame, right? But then again, holy shit; my dad was dying!
All this whirled around my head in a mad jumble. Once I had calmed down enough to -just about - speak, I babbled about my computer being broken, and life taking over, and the distance being so great, and my simply not thinking all that much......pathetic sounding stuff like that. She replied that of course, it was difficult, that she was that way about her family, with them being so far away. With the pressures of everyday life, it was far too easy to lose contact......sweet sounding stuff like that.
Well, whether she believed what she was saying or being kind, I grabbed it with both hands. Then she gave me the number for the ward and I grabbed that with both hands, too. I rang the hospital as soon as I hung up, then as soon as I hung up on them I rang MJ and appraised him of the situation. He was stunned and I could hear from his voice that he was feeling the same mad mixture of emotions as I was.
Within a week of those calls, dad had recovered sufficiently to be "out of immediate danger" and been moved to a regular ward (Ward 4). Shortly after he rang me using the number I had given to the head nurse to give him. We had a sort of tearful over-the-phone reunion, where much of the same stuff that was said between Fee and me passed between me and him, then he told me of being bored and lonely - Fee was barely mobile herself and could only travel up every ten or so days when a lift was able to be arranged for her - and quite scared about being stuck in there and separated from his beloved wife - who again, was very ill herself - over Christmas. Then I told him about various things in my life that I thought he might be interested in, which he listened to eagerly, and after drying up and going blank (which we both admitted to), we left it at that.
Later that day, I got the idea of sending him a bad joke I had heard somebody say at work - the sort you get in crackers - to cheer the poor boy up, to which he replied saying it was the best laugh he had had in ages. And thus, "Alice's Bad Joke Of The Day" was born. While he was in hospital, I told him, I would send him a joke at some point every day. And so I did. There were a couple of times it slipped my mind, but on the whole, every evening when I turned on my computer, I would log onto the Good Bad Joke Website (yes, that exists), find a new - non dirty - joke and send it to him. Typically it looked like this:
Alice's bad joke of the day is; what do ninjas wear on their feet? ... ... ... sneakers! x
And when he turned his phone on, which wasn't often because he wasn't able to properly charge it, he would receive it and it would make him laugh (or at least he said it did). Also Fee and I exchanged occasional texts concerning updates about his health. That was all. Not much, but more than there had been.
A few weeks later, just before Christmas, he was able to go home and we all breathed a collective sigh of relief. It had been another storm in a teacup after all and now he was well on his way to being on the mend. All well and good.
Three weeks later he was back in. No problem, we had expected that. His kidneys were still not right; there was a blockage in one, for instance, that needed to be removed. And of course there was the mass of problems that his...well, mass...had caused as well, including his legs building with fluid and not working properly. So I wasn't worried. Nor was he. Nor was Fee.
Then the numerous tests the hospital was subjecting him to over those things started showing other problems, like unidentified masses in his liver. And his heart. Still not too worried (though he was fed up).
Then he developed an infection. A big one. Became confused. NOW we were worried. Me in particular, having worked in a nursing home and seen the way that patients all became shortly before...but, I calmed myself with; dad was not an elderly and terminally ill patient in a nursing home, he was an unhealthy but not terminally ill youngish man - comparatively, anyway - in hospital where a dedicated team were working tirelessly with the latest that medical science had to offer to save that useless and incredibly selfish carcass of his. It was just an infection. They would give him antibiotics, drain off the excess fluid that was apparently building up in his left lung, and then get back to fixing his kidneys. So, right; I told myself. Right...
Three days later, he was improving. Enough to ring his wife and have a nice long conversation. And text me to thank me for my latest string of Alice's Bad Joke of the Day. I began to relax again. And then...
...Then...
At 11.15-PM on Friday 7th February, Fee rang me. She was crying. Her last visit with him, earlier that day, had been a disaster; he had barely been conscious. They had told her to try not to worry, that he had had some vigorous tests and being sleepy was a perfectly normal reaction to them, and she had gone home again trying to convince herself that everything would be alright, but just a few minutes before she had rung me, they had called her and told her that after a brief period of wakefulness and reasonably high spirits, he had deteriorated rapidly and to the point where there was nothing more they could do. He had been transferred to intensive care again and they advised her, she said, to prepare for the worst. So she rang me. I calmed her as best as I could, then rang them myself.
The nurse and then registrar that I talked to had adopted that gravely-gentle tone you see doctors use on television. The one that they use when the news is unbelievably bad. They told me that there was infected fluid in his lungs, liver, kidneys and heart. They couldn't drain it away because at his size and in the state he was in, the procedure would kill him. All they could do was wait and hope that his body would be able to fight it enough for his condition to improve to the point where they could step in. But, the registrar told me, in that gravely-gentle voice; the situation was grave and I needed to understand and be prepared...
In a daze, I hung up and after ringing MJ to tell him, I went to bed. I barely slept, but being wrapped in the duvet was comforting. In the morning I rang them; 5-AM (they said I could any time), and was told that he was "comfortable, settled and no worse".
Still dazed but relieved that his condition hadn't gotten worse, I went to work. It would be another storm-in-a-teacup, I told myself sternly. Another thing he managed to catch but then pull himself back up from. That was simply what dad did.
Then an hour later, my phone rang. Fee. I picked up, and... he was gone. Just a few minutes before, Fee said. I listened, let her cry, told her that I needed to ring MJ, hung up, rang MJ, told him, then - inexplicably - spent ten minutes finishing cleaning the bathroom. Then I walked onto the shop floor, told The Supervisor and calmly told her that I needed to sit down for a few minutes; compose myself. Then I sat down. And started sobbing. And didn't stop. Five minutes afterward, two members of B&Q staff arrived and escorted me gently out of the store to the warehouse manager's car, which he used to drive me home.
And that is that. That is all. My dad is dead. My massively overweight, utterly selfish, lazy, handsome, charming, cunning lump of a father is dead and gone.
And right now, I have no idea exactly how I feel. A lot of things. None of them clear enough to get ahold of. I just don't know. I'm numb.
Just numb...
Alice x
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