Tuesday 11 January 2011

Bless you

Yesterday was the anniversary of my Dad's death.  15 years.  Marking anniversaries of deaths is dismal and I pay more attention to the birthdays of people I love, dead or alive.  But Dad's deathday never leaves my mind.  Perhaps because it was the first great loss. 

Early yesterday morning there was a glinting frost and burst of silver apricot sky, very like the morning he died.  15 years ago we were at home, where I still lived, in London.  My nearly godfather who had been a nurse had come to sit through the nights with Dad.  From 10 at night to 6 in the morning he kept him company through the quiet hours, while we (mum, my brother and I) slept or lay listening.  When Dad was first diagnosed with lung cancer I made a little deal with Life that I would keep on a silver ring he'd given me until we knew if he could have surgery.  Princess Margaret seemed to be living on half a lung and a 40 Rothmans and was doing well until she took a flying leap into the bath and boiled her feet.  Anyway, Dad's cancer had been busy too long and the blast of radiation he was given was only a token gesture.  So I kept the ring on anyway, a futile little circle of hope on a hand that still fitted completely into Dad's.

The night before he died we were all there in the warm dark, one lamp glowing and waiting for the shipping forecast. 

'Who's that at the end of the bed?' asked Dad waving at shadows.

'It's me, Dad' I said.

'No, standing next to you.  Oh, it's my mother.'  He was pleased.

'Maybe she's come to meet you,' said Mum, who as a child, was taken to seances like other kids are taken to the zoo.  'Do you think your father will be there too?'

'Christ,' said Dad, 'I hope not.'

We talked openly about death by then.  It had moved in and Dad dealt with it as with any new acquaintance by joking and making friends.  Dad fancied being buried at sea.  He had seen a funeral on his troop ship on the way to Korea in the 50s and thought it was peaceful, beautiful.  And the coffin was greeted by leaping dolphins.  I found out that to be buried at sea you need permission from the Admiralty. 

'When I've gone, you could just prop me up in the passenger seat of the car,' suggested Dad.  'Then drive onto a cross-Channel ferry, take me on deck and shove me off.'  Calais here we come.

Later, on his last night, Mum asked him how was was feeling.  'I feel amazed and excited,' he said looking as though he meant it.  He had stopped needing morphine two days before.  'It's not unheard of,' the nurse at the hospice told us. 'Sometimes the dying enter a state of euphoria and the body takes care of itself.'  Lucky old Dad.  Hours passed and his eyes were closed.  Mum sneezed in the chair in the corner, the one where she nursed us as babies and which is now in the corner of my kitchen.

'Bless you,' murmured Dad, his last words. 

Mum thought perhaps it had religious significance.  But I don't think so.  It was just normal Dad, gentle-mannered to the last.  It moves me more than a moment of divine revelation, a whispered human blessing in the dark.

We were sent to try and sleep for a couple of hours.  I'm still astonished that I slept then.  My dreams were of dancing light, meadows and singing summer air.  Fresher fields and pastures new.  'Get up now.  The pulses in his feet have gone.' said R.

We lay with him on the bed, me, mum and my brother.  We stroked his hair and his face and told him over and over 'You can go now.  We're safe.  It's OK for you to go now Dad.'  That rasping breathing stopped and started.  Three or four times.  No more breaths came.  His eyelids squeezed tight and a tear came from each eye.  We kissed them away.  Morning came and he was gone.

We made tea.  We are English, after all.  I ironed the silk pyjamas I had given him for Christmas.  We had been told he wouldn't live much into the new year so I gave him silk and cashmere and a bottle of Dom Perignon.  The special occasion should always be now.

My brother and R washed my Dad's body in lavender water, which he'd taken to having in his bath to help him rest.  My brother shaved Dad, what tenderness that morning.  We dressed him in his new pyjamas.  He was ready to receive guests.  His three sisters and younger brother arrived, all hopeful faces crowding up the path.  My mother stood on the steps slowing shaking her head.  Too late. 

I'm glad they weren't all there.  I'm glad it was just us with Dad that morning, with R to help us.  'I have seen hundreds of deaths,' he said as we pulled back the curtains to let in the sunrise, 'and I have never been in a room where the feeling of love was so tangible.'

Nothing's changed, Dad.  I miss you.

Thursday 6 January 2011

Things that have happened

I went off the boil with this but am simmering away again.  After July momentous things happened.  Here are some of them:

- My gentle, valiant sister in law died surrounded by love. She would be enormously proud of her husband and sons who are staying true to her brave spirit and are planning a boys' road trip in America this summer.  And I am of my own husband, her younger brother, who found the courage to speak at her funeral because he loves her.
- My jack the lad brother in law went off the rails with someone too close to home.  And back on them again.
- My sensible rational brother in law is marrying someone he just met.  It's turning out to be a whole family of wild cards.
- My other sister in law gave birth to a daughter with a name like a pagan celebration and chubby cheeks that have to be tweaked all the time.  She has a binary birthday - a numerical palindrome.  Her big brother has taken to his new role with solemn love and many soft kisses.

Other things happened too...

- Nice Guy Eddie gave us two pheasants shot by Prince William - he's getting married next year too.  Prince William, not Nice Guy Eddie who has been married for a couple of hundred years.
- Lucy the sheep might or might not be pregnant by one of her sons.  Normal for Norfolk isn't a joke.
- Father Christmas fitted down the flue of the woodburner.
- My son started wearing glasses because he really needs them.
- My daughter started wearing glasses but doesn't really need them.
- People have been on holiday in our cottages and loved them.  Even the people who had no heating or hot water.  They left me a jar of duck rillettes for Christmas.
- Mr P saw John Major mooching along.  I can't imagine Edwina Currie would ever have set foot in rural Norfolk.
- We have become friends with Jim, who thought of being a lawyer but spent 10 years surfing instead and with Heather who believes in fairies and loathes The Sound of Music.
- The pumpkins we carved for Hallowe'en are still sinking into mouldering heaps along the path.
- The villagers' protest about fat traffic and skinny little lanes has temporarily halted plans to build a biogas plant.
- We had a harvest of walnuts and skirmishes with squirrels.
- We made no resolutions for 2011.

Things that might happen...

Chickens, pigs, ducks, a peacock, vegetable garden, a third cottage finished, a fourth cottage bought, and more time in London to retain sanity amid all this Good Life.