Happy New Year, let’s hope it’s a good one…

New Years Eve, 2011. I’m sitting at home, on my own (except of course Owen is asleep upstairs ). I am watching I don’t know what rubbish on TV.  There is ’100 Most Annoying People Ever’, ’1o0 UK’s favourite Beegees Songs’, ’100 Biggest Most Pointless Scenes from Films that went Straight to Video Ever’… well okay that one I made up. But it’s scheduled for next year’s New Year’s Eve, I believe.

I never watch TV, but I admit to having watched a bit more than usual over the last week or so. I did originally have plans to watch a DVD but the DVD player has broken down, in solidarity with the boiler and the washing machine. Oh, and the doorbell.

I have drunk far too much wine, and eaten a lot of peanuts, whilst watching the completely dreadful Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World’s End. I am, however, happy(ish), with this state of affairs. I didn’t want to go out. I’m not in a particularly celebratory mood, surprisingly. I’m tired, and relieved in a way that I am forced to stay in by the fact that mum has a party to go to. I’m happy, too, that she has gone out to a party. Last year she stayed in while I went out and drank far too much. And she had to cancel lots of things before Christmas because first Owen got ill so couldn’t go to nursery, and then of course I was going up to visit dad in hospital quite a bit. So at least she’ll have a good old knees up tonight!

Oh dear, the fireworks have started already. Someone’s clock must be a bit wrong, it’s only 10.30.

Dad, if you’re up there, sitting on a cloud…

Well life is gradually returning to some kind of normality. I am starting to feel a bit more normal, my anxiety levels seem to have dropped down after rocketing sky high in the week before Dad died. I am having moments, and even Owen is noticing them as he asks me, ‘Mummy, are you happy?’ and I realise that I’ve been just lost in a memory or something… Owen has been amazingly supportive, actually. That sounds weird since he is only three and doesn’t have a clue really what is happening, but he is picking up on my mood and when he realises that I am unhappy he comes over and asks for a snuggle, and then looks at me and says, ‘Are you happy now, mummy?’, and I am – really am happy – because a hug from Owen is pretty much the only thing that can make me feel really happy right now. Unless dad – if you’re up there, sitting on a cloud, if you’d care to just say something… maybe along the lines of, ‘Hi Sam, I feel great, heaven’s amazing and all these angels… wooo. They are really something. Kind of like waitresses, only better.’

I promise I won’t be freaked out. Or maybe I will. I always was a bit freaked out when you chatted up waitresses who were younger than me!

The days before dad’s death I don’t want to revisit. The days after were also pretty awful, but then at least there were no mad dashings, no sudden hopes that he would recover, no awful messages telling me of yet another indignity or deterioration. I was there, when he died, holding his hand. I hope against hope that that helped him, if he was in any way aware of what was happening – I pray to god that he was not, but if he was then I hope that he felt my hand and knew it was me, and that that was a comfort.

The two days after the death were the worst, for me, I think. I can’t even begin to describe the black pit that opened up on Friday 23rd December. My friend Kelly came round and we just slumped on the sofa, with Owen between us, and watched kid’s movies. And that was about all I could do. My anxiety had shot sky high, and I couldn’t sleep, and could barely eat. On Saturday, Christmas Eve, I still felt pretty much that way. Auntie Val came over that day. My stress levels were going through the roof, but later that day I managed to achieve a sort of calm acceptance that dad just wasn’t there anymore, and whatever happened did not matter to him, he was at peace, oblivious, in oblivion.

Christmas Day was okay in the morning when I had to cook the dinner, but then I only managed to eat about five mouthfuls of it before nearly having a whitey and after that just lay on the sofa and didn’t really do anything at all. I even went upstairs and slept for a bit. It was only the family, me, mum, Rob and Em and Owen, but even that was just a bit too much socialising and I found it really hard. I lost the plot a bit with mum in the evening and stomped upstairs in a huff, and later I wrote my letter to dad which I posted in the previous post, to be read at the funeral. And it was really hard to write, I cried a lot, but I think it got a lot of emotion out of me that I’d been bottling up over the last few days, and actually from that moment on started to feel better.

Boxing Day was easier and we started to actually talk about dad, and the funeral and etc. etc. Kay came over too, and brought some of the presents that her and dad had got for Owen and everyone. I started to feel calmer. I even said sorry to mum for being a stroppy old cow yesterday.

I’ve never had to deal with this kind of grief before. Nor has Rob. It’s weird, but I think we are dealing with it in totally different ways. I do think there’s a gender difference. I’m much happier talking openly about it, Rob seems reluctant to do that. He wasn’t keen on writing a tribute to dad for the funeral and certainly would not have wanted it read out, whereas I felt it was something that I just had to do (and was therefore utterly distraught when told I could NOT read my letter myself).

But then I’ve always worn my bleeding heart out there on my sleeve, dripping all over everything. As a performer I sing vitriolic eulogies about ex-boyfriends to total strangers. All my hang ups, my faults and failings and idiocies and selfishnesses – all there, for the world to see. I don’t care if I can’t sing like Whitney or play like Hendrix. I’ll get up and tell you how I feel through song. I did at dad’s wake, I played him my song that I wrote for him and I’m glad I did, I think it went down okay but even if it hadn’t it was the act of doing it that mattered, not how perfect my voice was (which it wasn’t) or how faultless my finger-picking was (which it wasn’t). I’m sure no one noticed that I fluffed a couple of chords. Oh, maybe one person… Dad was no doubt sitting on his cloud up there, saying, ‘Yeah yeah, it was okay but you really fluffed that E flat diminished up – get a grip, girl!’

 

Letter to Dad, to be read at funeral.

Neil Watkins, 14 March 1948 – 22 December 2011.

Big Granddad and Owen having a giggle together

25 December 2011. I’ve never had to write a sadder letter, on Christmas Day or any other.

Dear Dad.

If you were here now , I think I know what you’d say. You’d tell us all to bugger off and do something less bloody miserable. But you’d be secretly pleased that you were the centre of attention, of course! I am trying very hard to not be bloody miserable, honestly I am, dad, but it’s really hard. I miss you. I can’t get my head around the fact that you are not here on this earth, and that you aren’t going to come over and see us anymore, make Owen giggle and tell bad jokes about everything under the sun. So I’ll make this short, so we can get on and do something less miserable.

I will always look back on my childhood years as idyllic. Our family life was very special. Although you and mum didn’t have much money, you made sure that we didn’t miss out on anything. I remember a lot of time spent out of doors – many, many wonderful camping trips and walks in the country. You always shared your own passions with me, nature, reading, music – especially music – I owe all these parts of myself to you. You showed me how to do things differently, to look at things differently, to work things out for myself. Sometimes that made my Maths teachers a little stressed, but if the answer was right then you had the last laugh!

In recent years, you became a doting granddad to Owen. He, I know, loves you and looks up to you in the same way that I did as a child. You will always be ‘Big Granddad’ to Owen. He is such a chip off the old Watkins block! He has your irrepressible spirit, a musical ear, an experimental approach to food and tells really, really silly jokes. I wish with all my heart that you could be here to watch him grow up. I will make sure that he knows his big granddad, always.

This letter doesn’t say even half of what I’d like it to. Maybe the thing I’m trying to say is just that I really love you. I hope you know that I always have and I always will.

I’m going to stop being miserable now and remember all the happy times.

Your loving daughter

Sam

x

No news is good news. I hope.

Well it’s been a very hard couple of weeks. I am shattered tonight, and this is not going to be a long post. Basically, dad is in hospital, he’s in a critical condition and yesterday he nearly died. I’m not going to put too much of the detail of this on here – in one way I want to, because the devil is in the detail, and the detail is what keeps going round and round in my head, the horrible, visceral reality of illness – but in another way I don’t because it feels disrespectful to him. He’s stable now, on life support and heavily sedated – although the detail of what this means has been explained to me quite a few times and in various ways by different people, I’m still not really sure if he is in any way conscious or aware of what is happening around him.

I am not sure how I feel about this. Sad, yes – of course. And scared. Not particularly of death – I think that in a way death is the end of suffering, and the person who it happens to is finally released from pain. It’s pain that I’m scared of.  I hope to god that he can’t feel anything and isn’t aware of what’s being done to him, all the tubes, and blah blah blah. We (as in me, my brother and my brother’s wife) arrived at the hospital yesterday in a panic, after a text from Kay (dad’s second wife), to find things in full on emergency mode, doctors and nurses in green coats milling around, doctors performing CPR. It was truly terrifying. All those machines, the ferociously bright lights, the beeping, the waveforms that may or may not mean something awful… we relatives stood to one side like idiotic spare parts, not part of this particular medical drama, the lights were not on us. I’m not even really sure that we should have been there,  to be truthful – because those images are going to be very hard to erase from my brain now.

I went to see him today, and it was calm. Dad was peaceful – still critical, still on maximum dosages of most things, still being kept alive by drugs and machines (although they are reducing his oxygen a little) but peaceful. His eyes were closed, his face seemed more relaxed. No fierce lights or dispassionately efficient doctors. I talked to him a little, and felt happier. He’s a stubborn old fool, he has to make it. If anything, his sense of humour will bring him through.  Or the thought that he’s missing out on chatting up all these good-looking nurses…

No phone calls, no texts today. This can only be a good thing, don’t they say? No news is good news. I hope. Is this because we only feel compelled to inform people of the bad things that happen and not the good? But it’s the waiting, and every time the phone rings my heart contracts painfully. This is not going to go away overnight, either. It’s going to be a long haul. He’s a very very sick man right now. But he will make it, I feel sure. He’s not going to let go that easily.

Did I mention what dad has? He has pneumonia, caused by COPD, caused by smoking, which he finally gave up in 2007. But it was too late by then. His dad, my granddad, also had emphysema, caused by smoking. And I, too, was a smoker. Heavy smoker, for a while. I gave up in 2009, when I became pregnant. But did I leave it too late too? I don’t even want to think about that right now.