Having read some of the posts in here, and trying to understand some of the struggles and the pain and the hardship that some wonderful people on this forum have been and are dealing with, honestly, I feel a bit of a fraud posting in this thread.
The truth is though, I'm struggling at the moment and it's difficult to know who to really get things out to. My wife is fantastic but she knows i'm not good at opening up, even to her, and so she doesn't push me. I've always been that way. As much as I want to, and as much as I do try, I just can't get things out. I find it easier to write things down, and I'm hoping just putting it down here might help in some way.
I lost my dad in April last year, after a couple of years of watching him slowly fade away thanks to Alzheimer's. As truly heartbreaking as it was to lose my dad, my hero, my best friend - there was a part of me that was relieved. Relieved for him, first and foremost, that he didn't have to experience that confusion and panic for a second longer, but also relieved that my mum and I didn't have to continue to watch on helplessly as a wonderful and once powerful man was broken down systematically in that most awful of ways. But I felt guilty that I was relieved. I still do. I just couldn't bear to watch what it was doing to him, taking away who he was and leaving a shell of the man I loved with all of my heart in front of me. I'd give absolutely anything to have him back, to see him again, even just for a second. I sometimes worry that I'm forgetting what his voice sounded like and it kills me. My dad passed away exactly two months after our twin boys were born, and he was in the same hospital at that point. Because of COVID we didn't take them to see him, because I was trying as best as I could to keep him safe at a time when not a lot was known. I regret not taking his grandchildren to him, to let him hold them and to have even just a fleeting moment of knowing that a part of him was going to live on not just through me, but through them now as well. And for them to meet their granddad. To be held by the greatest man I've ever known. Just once. If I knew then what I know now I would have taken them without hesitation. The one thing that I hang onto when I think about those last couple of years with my dad is that, as bad as things became, he never forgot who I was, or my mum. That was my biggest fear and I'm so thankful that even in that hospital, towards the end, he was proudly telling people in his ward that; "this is my son".
Because of COVID I had to tell my mum that her husband of 57 years had passed away through her living room window. As her legs went from under her and she wailed in a way that will never leave me, there was nothing I could do for her, other than stand and watch as her world fell apart. The last 18 months have been unbelievably tough for her, losing my dad and then being left isolated and alone because of wider global circumstances meaning that she was terrified to so much as open the door to people. I'll tell you what though, she got through that period with a resilience, dignity and strength that I could only dream of. I tried to help her as much as I could, called her every day, set her up with her "machine" as she called it (basically a tablet designed for seniors), so I could video call her and show her the boys and make her feel less like she was on her own island. Beneath the hard shell that my mum was very good at projecting though, I know she was in pieces, and she was trying to help me by not revealing that as much as she possibly could.
On Monday this week my mum passed away as well. The thing that I'm struggling most with, and which was different to my dad, is the shock of it. The unexpected nature of the loss. The thing with watching someone fade over a period of time is that you unconsciously process the loss, to some extent anyway, over a prolonged period. Or at least I feel like I did. It was like watching him die, every day, for two to three years. Clinging to the glimpses that he sometimes gave you of himself but ultimately knowing that they were ever more transient. This time there was no adjustment period. No foresight. Just gone. Like that. Black. It's crippled me, and I can't shake this overwhelming sense of being alone. For the first time in my life I feel utterly alone. And I know that's stupid and frankly, not true - I have my wife, who I adore, and my two boys - but every waking thought is consumed by the realisation that the two people on this planet who were always there for me, no matter what, are gone. My mum had been there every day of my life. On Tuesday, for the very first time in 37 years, I woke up in a world that didn't have her in it. Neither of them are there today, and they won't be tomorrow. I don't have a 'home' any more. The place I knew I could always go if I was in trouble. And I feel selfish for thinking in this way. And for feeling angry with her that she's gone, now, when she just was not supposed to, and leaving me. And behind all of it I feel such guilt that I wasn't there. That she was on her own when she died. I spoke to her on Friday, I showed her the boys, she was watching them mess about in the bath and she was happy. I even told her she looked and sounded like she was doing well, and she replied that she felt good. I spoke to her on Saturday too. I ended that conversation by reminding her that I was going to the football on Sunday so I wouldn't call her that day. On Monday she left me a voicemail saying she didn't feel well. I was working and didn't pick it up until early evening. By the time I called back she didn't answer, and I assumed she'd just gone to bed, as she remarked that she might. What if I hadn't gone to the football and had called her on Sunday? What if I'd answered that call on Monday? What if i'd just gone over to see her? Or called her doctor? What if. What if. What if. Would it have changed things? Would she still be here today? That's going round and round in my head. I know i'm beating myself up here over things that have no real answer, and she would never have questioned, but I'm just utterly haunted by the thought of her suffering alone at the very end and the thought of being able to have changed that.
They don't know how she died and so i'm now waiting for a post mortem. I then have to go and clear her home, their home - my home, and the prospect of that fills me with utter dread. They lived in that house for 50 years. I grew up there. Everywhere I look it feels like i'm watching home movies playing in my head, of memories from those rooms. Like there are ghosts of all three of us in every corner. I went through a lot of this with my dad last year, but not this part. I'm an only child so there is no brother or sister to help me with this. My wife won't let me do it alone, and I'm truly grateful that I have a core of friends that i've known since I was 4 years old and I know they're there as well. But at the same time, I feel like I need to do this. Nobody else. I have to do this. But the thought of for all intents and purposes clearing out my parents lives from that house which was their home for the majority of their time on this planet is so final that I almost can't process it. I want to close the door and leave it as it is, as my mum had it and wanted it. But I can't. I know that. I don't know where to start.
I had to start calling people to let them know yesterday. I got the numbers from the little phone book that my mum kept with her always, and the devastating irony in this is that I had intended to go round to hers on Friday morning before she was up, to grab the phone numbers for her friends and remaining family, to invite them to an 80th birthday celebration for her that I was planning for next month. She didn't know I was planning it. Those same people I'm now calling to let know that she's no longer here. In the back of that phone book she'd written a note to her best friend (and my dad's too, when he was still with us) which simply read: "Look after my boy". I don't know when she wrote that, specifically why, or even if he knows about it (I suspect not), but it summed her up in so many ways; Worrying about others rather than herself, and particularly me. The last words I said to her was that I loved her. I hope that was with her at the end.
Now I feel broken and alone and I just want that to stop.
I'm rambling so i'll finish there.
