a damned date

I've been trying my best all day to distract myself with music, comedies on the radio and work, trying to keep my mind off the damned date. I've grown to loathe this date, I'd cut it from every calendar on the planet if it would make a difference, but it wouldn't. It's exactly two years since mum was ripped away from us, just like that and nothing's really felt right since.

Happy birthday, mum

Today should be my mum's birthday. I should be hearing her delight at the flowers I always get her for her birthday, instead on a cold, misty winter day dad and I are taking flowers to her grave. I still don't understand why she isn't here, I don't understand how someone you love so much can be ripped away from you just like that. Why is her name on a bloody cold stone?? The world without her I don't care for; it feels like nothing has really gone well since we lost her, just seems to be one thing after another, more strain, more bad things, even someone who was so important to me letting me down very badly and always just under the surface the raw hurt of having her taken from us. There are honestly some days when if it weren't for dad and taking care of the mogs I really wouldn't care if I went to sleep and never woke up again. I don't see anything in the future to inspire me or encourage me and it feels like just waiting for the next bad thing to happen all the time and that really isn't much reason to keep going on, makes you wonder why bother.

is that a year?

Its exactly one year today from the worst day of my life. Is it really a year? How can it be a whole year that my wonderful mum's not been in this world with us? I've not felt this year go past; I know as we get older we all say how quickly time seems to pass, but this was different, it went past, much of it acting on autpilot. I miss her so much it hurts every day, its like the phantom ache of a lost limb. I hurt more thinking about my dad and how much it hurts him. I see bad people on the news every night and wonder why they get to live when she was taken away so early from us. She and dad should be enjoying their retirement time together, hand in hand. Life just seems a lot emptier and colder now and I feel permanently scared, something I never felt before. I'm worried and scared all the time, waiting for something else to happen, constantly worried about my dad. Losing anyone is so very hard but losing them suddenly can leave you in an even more vulnerable place, it shocks your sensibilities to see how swiftly someone so precious to you can just be taken away, it leaves you wondering what next and why you struggle to get through each day, what the point is.

And I know its also selfish - its so easy to be wrapped up in your own grief that you forget others are going through it. Mum already has far too many new neighbours by her plot, some family is going through that pain every single day. Some of my very dear, lifelong friends are coping with seriously ill parents right now. And I know in a perverse way that the grief and pain is almost an indicator of good fortune - its in direct response to the love my mum brought us and I know there are some who don't feel this pain and despite appearances I know actually I'm still luckier than them because they never had this love to lose and how horrible that must be never to have known what that's like, to be completely enveloped by love and warmth like that. I had that and there are too many who never did, there are too many kids who never get that love and care to grow up with.

The minister who gave the service spent quite a bit of time with the family listening to us to get a sense of mum. A few days before the service I wrote to him about her. The words weren't meant to be read out, it was just maybe to help him for the funeral service, but in the event he decided to read it all out in the church. I don't know where the words came from, I really don't know how I even managed to think or type that dreadful week and looking at it now its not what I'd have chosen to be read out, I'd have done more to it if I could, but perhaps that's the point, that I didn't re-write and edit and polish it, its just words pouring out, so to honour mum I'm reprinting it here:

"We've all, friends and family, been talking endlessly about my mum in the last few days and among some memories which made us laugh, even at this time, the one aspect of her which came up constantly was that she always tried to be there for everyone, whether it was nursing my papa, Michael or taking care of some of newest members of our extended family to let the new parents catch a breath. And every one of us could give a catalogue of times she was there to support us, from physically taking care of us when we needed it to the simple wee touch of a phone call before a big college exam saying good luck and I love you. But the single biggest thing my mum did for any of us was also the simplest - she hugged us and loved us. Of all the many ways people have to communicate to each other the simplest is touch - a hand held, a pair of arms holding you. Its the simplest but its the most powerful and its the most wonderful; there isn't a member of our family from child to adult who hasn't benefited from a hug from Pat Gordon when they needed it. And not just the family, I know there are plenty of friends here today who have had those arms wrapped round them in their lives. That simple act is remarkable - another person touching you, holding you, their warmth enfolds you, you feel their heart beating and know it is just like yours. You know they can't wave a magic wand and make all the bad things in life go away, but you also know that as they hold you they're saying I can give you shelter from those bad things, if only for a few moments my arms will be a harbour you can rest in. That simple act is saying something very, very precious in our world - its saying someone cares about others. We've been so lucky to have that all our lives and even now that love expressed so readily is holding us up when we feel like we're going to fall.

Our family has always embraced it - I know some folks aren't so comfortable with it, but we all are and its part of what keeps us going and keeps us together. Its a simple act but when we do it we show we care and when we do that we do something astonishing, we make the world just a little better. In my mum's name and in my dad's because I can't think on one without the other, I'd like to ask you to do one thing for her now, before we leave. Would you please turn to the people next to you, family, friend or someone you don't know, and give them a wee hug. Because its one of the most wonderful things in the whole, wide world we can do for each other and because I know she would want us all to."

I keep trying to remember her warmth and love and how it made me feel. They say that all of life is a desperate need to go back to the warmth and security of the womb, but really, who remembers that? I can't speak for others, but for me its always been more that magical feeling of being a very young boy, walking between your mum and dad, holding your hands and just knowing at some deep level that you were utterly loved and at that age there was no problem big enough that your mum and dad couldn't solve it. The boy in me still remembers that warmth, the man in me misses it terribly but is sadly happy to have had that warm childhood and all the other years. Then you grow up and often they say that's a hard time when you realise that your parents aren't heroes and magical, they're just ordinary folks who make mistakes just like you. I never really felt that; actually realising they were fallible human beings just like me but they did so much within those human flaws to make me better, to make our family better, that made me love them even more. I'm trying hard to remember that, but far too much of life looks very grim and frightening now and its difficult to find reasons to keep moving on when you don't feel like there's much to look forward to. And that 'time heals all' phrase, that's nonsense, it doesn't heal anything, it doesn't make anything easier, it just means you are older and wondering why.

I wish I could put it more eloquently, I wish I could phrase what's inside me with more care, but what it really, simply comes down to is I love her and I want my mum. And I don't get that ever again and that just doesn't stop hurting. Her name's on a bloody stone and I hate it, she should be here with us and I still don't understand why she isn't, I still don't know why the world took her away from us like that.

ahhh, Paris je t'aime

This time exactly a year ago I would have been sitting at pavement table in a brasserie in the Latin Quarter of beautiful Paris. I think that was the last time I can remember being really happy, blissfully unaware of what was waiting for me just a few weeks down the road. I don't mean I've been sitting around in sackcloth and ashes since we lost mum, I've gone out, I've done things and even laughed, but its all like little distractions and the great, dark centre is always there waiting and not a day goes past that it doesn't hit me like a hammer a dozen times and I don't feel like I'm really me anymore or will be again, just someone who looks like I used to going through the motions. And Paris has become larger in my head, not just because I love the city and its culture (of the two places I would most like to live in the whole world one is Paris, the other is right here in Edinburgh) but because it is that last time when I felt so freely happy and with what happened so soon afterwards Paris has come to mean something more to me emotionally, a precious space where everything was alright. Which probably sounds daft but its what I feel. Oh to be back not only in Paris but in that happy space instead of feeling like I'm going to fall apart endlessly through each, long day.

birthdays

Its my birthday today, my age clicking over in time with the ending of the year. I've never cared much for my birthday, always feels sort of squeezed in there as everyone darts around getting ready for New Year and this year I can be bothered even less with it. Dad warned me that my card was one mum picked up ages ago - she had the habit of seeing something she thought perfect for someone for a birthday, Christmas etc and she'd get it then and put it aside, often months and months in advance (or even years - one of my cousins doesn't know it but she had put aside a certain something for her to be given on an upcoming special occasion, its just sitting there ready). So I opened the card today and there it is signed love mum and dad. And I felt as if someone hit me in the chest with a sledgehammer and that was me out of it for quite a while. I'd much rather have it than not, of course, but it was still bloody hard and I was struggling already (birthday is bad enough but New Year is often depressing at the best of times). Goodbye 2008 - you started so well, with the promise of a trip to Paris and I was very happy. Then you became the worst year of my life and I don't even remember half of it going past because even when I think I am functioning okay I don't think I am and am still running on autopilot a lot of the time. Go away 2008, you're not welcome here anymore, although somehow I doubt 2009 will make me feel any better.

Christmas

Its been a pretty mixed Christmas for me and dad this year, as you can imagine. The normal opening of the presents on Christmas morning was pretty subdued without mum being there. Even little things like signing Christmas cards had been especially hard for my dad; I knew that before he said, as soon as I opened my card from him the other week there I felt a terrible pang because I knew right away how much it would have hurt him to be signing those cards from him and not from him and mum. Life is full of once absolutely normal activities and rituals like signing cards that are now tipped with barbs which dig in and remind us sharply of our loss and its worse for my dear dad. We took up Christmas wreaths to the cemetery for mum and also to her brother, the Comrade, which was terribly hard.

I know some folks say don't put yourselves through the wringer like that, but its impossible not to go. We did our best though and dad made a huge effort in the kitchen, with my cousin and her hubby over for dinner as they usually are. Obviously not on a par with the cooking and baking mum created (which was outstanding) but we did our best and had a good meal and a decent afternoon and evening drinking and chatting away. Very mixed day, as I say, it wasn't all sadness, we had good moments, but everyday there's something which gets us and at this time of year its far more pronounced.

Christmas

I don't think I have ever looked forward to a Christmas less than I do this year, it drives further home the stark fact that mum isn't there with us. Its not hard to see why so many people suffer depression at this time of year.

Happy birthday, mum

Today should be my mum's birthday; it's the first since we lost her with such awful, shocking, sickening suddenness. Right now I should be getting a delighted phone call from her after she received the big bouquet of birthday flowers I'd always have sent to her. She loved getting that big bunch of birthday flowers and I loved how happy they made her. Sometimes they'd even still be in bloom when I went home for Christmas.

I'll never hear that ever again. Instead I'll be back through to Glasgow with dad and taking flowers to her grave. And I hate this. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. She should be here and she's not. I feel it every single day, a horrible ache inside, a weight on my spirit I can't lift, but this makes it worse and the imminent arrival of the Christmas period lurks around the corner like an unwanted visitor and how I hate the thought of Christmas without her. The world feels very cold and all there seems to be to look forward to is small diversions but no real delight.

Rusted pipe

"Now the time has come to speak
I was not able
And water through a rusted pipe
Could make the sense that I do

Gurgle, mutter
Hiss, stutter
Moan the words like water
Rush and foam and choke

Having waited
This long of a winter
I fear I only
Croak and sigh

Somewhere deep within
Hear the creak
That lets the tale begin

Now the time has come to move
I was not able
Water through a rusted pipe
Could make the moves that I do

Stagger, stumble
Trip, fumble
I fear I only
Slip and slide

Somewhere deep within
Hear the creak
That lets the tale begin

Somewhere deep within
Hear the creak
That lets the tale begin"

Suzanne Vega, "Rusted Pipe" from Days of Open Hand.

I've always loved that song by Suzanne Vega, right from the warm tones of the marimba which plays under it, counterpointing its warmth against the melancholy of the lyrics. Now it seems very apt. I've struggled very hard to write something on here for months, since we lost mum. I'm still struggling, to be brutally honest, I can hardly keep my eyes clear at times. I've tried again and again to re-start the Woolamaloo in the last few weeks and months. Months already, how can that be? Already more of this year has passed by without my mum in it than the months of it she was here with us and its so damned wrong. I've never left the blog alone so long; the fifth anniversary came and went and I didn't give a damn. I'm finding it hard to care about much right now and yes, I know that's selfish but again I really don't care. Everything for me has become separated into Before and After now.

Each time I tried to restart I simply couldn't. I'd look at the last post in March, still deliriously happy from my time in Paris and then at the following one, the brief one, all I could hold myself together long enough to write. And I'd think how did I get from there to here. Back home in Glasgow among the dozens of family pictures on the walls there's one of me, a school picture, primary school years, little freckled face, bright red hair and blue eyes, next to it me in my mid twenties, long hair, cape, standing at my graduation. And I'd look at them and think how did I get from there to there to here? How did it happen? Why did it bloody happen? When dad was in hospital last Christmas, scaring the hell out of me, I remember returning to the family home. There was no-one in, mum had been in visiting him while I was on the train on the way through after my boss kindly told me to just leave and go home. And, worried though I was, I saw among the photos one of my uncle, the Comrade, who we lost a couple of years ago after a long fight. He's smiling in that pic and in the instant I looked at it I knew it was going to be alright, that dad would be fine and be home with us for Christmas. I didn't know it would be our last Christmas all together. And I found myself in April looking at that same picture and begging the Comrade to please, please, please make it alright now.

But he can't and no-one can. And that hurts more than anything in the world.

No-one can fix it, no-one can make it better, its a wound that I know never heals. To hell with all that 'time heals all' nonsense; I never believed that for an instant before and I certainly don't now. It doesn't heal; like Lancelot's wound it never truly heals. It might, as a good writer friend of mine who lost his mother a couple of years ago said, scar over the wound but the scar and the pain are there below it, they don't go away. Dad lost his mother when he was just a boy; that was half a century ago now and the pain is still there. I feel tired all the time. I've slowly gotten back to sleeping more regularly, unlike my poor old dad who hasn't slept right since it happened. But its not restful. I've never been great at getting up in the morning but this isn't my usual reluctance to get out of bed and wake up properly. Its more that I don't want to get up. I don't want to go out and face the world that's taken her away from us. Its a bloody struggle every single bloody day. Its a struggle to go to social events and weddings and gatherings, its a struggle just to go to work some days. I'm tired deep down and no amount of rest is helping that. My soul is weary, weary, weary and wondering is this it, is this all there is now but the slow, inevitable descent, losing the rest of the people you love until you find yourself one day alone and old and wishing it was your turn? I'm a cynic but also an optimist usually, but at the moment its hard to see past that sort of feeling.

And I don't think a lot of people get that. They see you, you seem normal. I walk, I talk, I make my usual bad jokes (inherited from dad) and they think isn't he coping well. No, I'm not. I'm really not. I'm drifting. One of the anchors for my life has been ripped away from me and I'm drifting in the current without any ability or even urge to put my hand on the tiller. I'm on autopilot a lot of the time, just getting through the work day and going home. I get out, make myself go out, go to films, festival shows and I do enjoy them and they do distract me for a while, usually, but afterwards the pain is still there, lingering. It washes over me a dozen times a day, every day. I doubt the folks I work next to even realise there must be so many moments during the day when I have to stop for a moment and try to hold it together as another black wave comes across. And I don't think some folks around realise how brittle it leaves me, how even small arguments or tensions at work or home cut right through because you have no patience and you have to bite your tongue and suppress an angry retort because emotions are right at the surface right now.

And I don't think they get that at all. A part of me is broken and it won't ever be fixed. When someone is in a dreadful accident they may spends months in surgery and then therapy to walk again. And even when they do they never walk the same way as they did before and always the memory of that trauma is there, waiting to pounce on them at any time without warning. Its much the same with loss like this. I'm slowly trying to learn how to get on, but even as I do I know I won't be the same again. I'm not the person I was in March, that Joe doesn't exist anymore except as a memory. Everything feels different now. When its bad I wonder why she isn't there to comfort me as she always did. When it ever gets good again - if it does - I'll wonder why she isn't there to share it with me. And yes, I know in a way she will be, but its not the same, its just not the same. And I know I am being indulgent - some kids never get the love and security that I've enjoyed since the day I was born, probably since before I was even born on a New Year's Eve years ago and I've had a lifetime of that love and I ache for those who never had that. But I'm still broken inside and the person you see is just a simulacra, not the same person as before. He might improve a bit but he's not going to be the same again and there's nothing that can make it better.

And that's the bitterest part of all. Nothing can ever make it better. There's no fix, no magic, nothing. Dad and I can alleviate some of it for each other but we can't fix it and that's the horrible, bitter reality of being born mortal. And I hate that feeling. Along with the sadness I feel angry at the world for doing this to us, for taking her from us just like that. Why so many evil, selfish people get to live to old age while my mum is taken at 61 I don't understand. If its god moving in his bloody mysterious ways then I'd like to give the old deity a good kicking because he deserves it. The headstone went up just a couple of weeks ago and that ripped me open again. Dad and I are up there every weekend with flowers and it upsets us terribly, but at the same time we can't not go up to visit her, to take flowers. I used to take flowers for my mum all the time or arrange to have them delivered to her on her birthday or mother's day and I loved how delighted she always was with them. And now taking her flowers spills my soul open. I could barely look at the bloody stone. Its a lovely stone my cousin and I picked out, but I still can hardly look at it. My mum's name is on a bloody stone and that's just not right, its never ever going to be right. I feel sick and tired most of the time and the smallest thing can set me off, even emotional scenes in the movies or books I try to distract myself with; I've got no armour left, my shield is shattered, my lance broken and my armour is all undone and I don't know if it can be mended. And if it can it will still never be the same. Its too much to bear sometimes. I loved her so much and the world took her away just like that and I can't bear it. I still can't work out how a heart so full of love can just stop. Why isn't it enough? It should be and it isn't and the universe doesn't care.

What happened?

I know I haven't posted for a while, folks, but I'm afraid my world has been turned upside down and pulled inside out and I feel like my heart has been too. I went to bed on Sunday 30th of March content after a pleasant late afternoon chatting to friends over drinks in my favoured haunt of the Caley Sample Room. And in the small, dark hours of the following morning a phone call, a sinking feeling because no-one phones at 3am for good news. Stagger out of bed, grab phone, its my dad. Its my dad more disraught than I've ever known him and through tears he's telling me we just lost my mum. I don't understand what's going on - I'm half asleep, mum wasn't in the pink but nothing serious that we knew of, what's going on, what does he mean. I'm still in shock shortly after as my cousin and uncle arrive to take me home to Glasgow, driving through the dark and I'm praying please let this be a bad dream, please let me wake up, please let me wake up, please let me wake up. It wasn't. We just buried my beautiful, warm, loving mother a couple of days ago and I feel like someone's ripped a chunk of my soul out.

I came home to Edinburgh today for the first time in over a week and when I checked my emails there was one from my mum, sent on that Sunday, which I hadn't seen because I had been out all day and because I never checked the following day because I was sitting back in Glasgow in shock with my dad wondering how this had happened to us so shockingly suddenly and why was it happening to us. She just got online a few weeks ago and was so proud about emailing the relatives in Canada and elsewhere. It was just one, short line, asking how I was and telling me her and dad had just booked their summer holidays - in fact there are two new cases they bought on Saturday lying unused in my room back home. It finishes 'see you Wednesday' - they were coming through to visit their wee boy and drop off his Easter egg. I didn't get to see her. Instead I saw her in the hospital and the spark that made her my mum was gone from her. And its not bloody fair, she was 61, her and dad retired only a year and I want to scream at the world for taking her from us. I wanted her to get up so badly, I touched her beautiful red hair and kissed her and she didn't get up and we had to leave her in that place. It feels like we've lived a year in the last nine or ten days, so damned hard and more than anything I need a cuddle from my mum and I can't have it and that's breaking my heart. I can't write anymore just now, its too raw and everytime I think I'm getting a grip something else will set me off again, I feel like my heart's made of glass. I wanted to write, to let some of it out but its just too hard right now.

Family crisis

I've not blogged for a while partly because I was busy trying to meet friends and catch up before the holidays last week. But sadly also because at the end of the week we were hit by a sudden family emergency when my mum phoned to say my dad had been taken into hospital back home in Glasgow. He had been feeling peculiar, on and off, and mum had forced him to go to his doctor. Typically the day of the appointment he felt fine, but she made him go (this is the woman we practically have to tie up and drag to the doctor's practise when she feels off) and it turned out to be a good thing she did. Although he felt fine his GP was a bit worried at a heart murmur combined with some dark flecks on his nails which can be indicative of Endocarditis, where an infection enters the body and, as you might infer from the name, attacks the heart, especially the heart valves which is an area of that extraordinary muscle where our white blood cells which fight infections can't go. When the heat of the surgery made him feel faint she decided not to bother booking him in for a visit in the New Year and just sent him directly to hospital then and there.

We were told not to worry unduly, that he wasn't in danger, but when a doctor starts talking about possible damage to heart valves it is pretty bloody hard not to worry and I don't mind admitting I felt physically sick with fear, as if I had swallowed a bar of lead, a heavy, nauseous feeling inside just worrying about anything happening to my dad. I was due to finish on Friday for the Christmas holidays and fortunately my boss told me just to leave now (thanks, Kenny), so after a quick stop to leave some extra food for the kitties I was straight home so I could go into hospital to see him and so I could stay over with my poor mum who is putting on a brave face but is obviously worried and scared too (and I wanted to be home for her as much as for my dad, think that did help her. She said she's made up by old bed before I phoned to say I was on the way because she just knew I'd be there). The rest of the family have been great too, offering lifts in and out (even my wee cousin who just passed her test days ago, bless her, phoned to offer a ride in if needed - naturally using her mum's car and petrol). I don't have any brothers and sisters, but I have a legion of cousins and aunts and uncles and count myself very, very lucky.

I hate even visiting in hospitals - I hate the smell and feel of the places and I hate seeing someone I love in one, but I had to see my dad. He had been a bit tetchy earlier, I heard, mostly because he hated being in there and wanted home (and this is a man who is almost never rude or tetchy) but he was in better spirits when I went in and the nurses on his ward were very nice and friendly. Much as he wanted to go home the doctor had made clear to him if it was Endocarditis then he had to be treated now; if not treated early it is a condition which could potentially hospitalise a patient for months and be dangerous. You just can't take chances with infections, especially one that can damage the heart, especially as at dad's age he is out of manufacturer's warranty. The doctor also told him he had a bloody good GP to pick up on these signs and send him in promptly, so good call there, Doc.

The bad news: he's still in there. The good news: he had an echocardiogram - essentially like an ultrasound scan but on the heart - which showed no trace of infection on the organ. Second doctor also joins in for a look and they pronounce what they are looking for isn't there and he's not showing other symptoms of this nasty infection such as pains, marks on the palms of the hand etc. Blood and urine tests look clear too, although they put him on an antibiotic drip as a precaution while cultures are grown from the blood for a final check, which takes a couple of days (the senior ward nurse was very helpful when I asked her for the name of the condition so I could look it up, talking over his results, the tests and what they were checking for). If everything continues to be clear, as they seem fairly confident it will (in fact they took him off the antibiotics yesterday, so they must be pretty confident), then his principal doctor will have another look at the blood cultures on Monday and if they too are good then we should hopefully be allowed to take him home. On Christmas Eve. That would be the best Christmas present we could ever have. Although I'm not sure if that would mean we would have to leave him wrapped under the tree till Christmas morning...

Small world: in the bed nearest to my dad was an elderly gentleman who turned out to be from the same part of town as some of my dad's older relatives from many years ago and who remembered some of them. He was having a slow blood transfusion, the drip feed bag connected to him. He'd asked how long it took and they nurse said about four hours, so he said what if I need to go the loo in that time? Few minutes later several of the nurses come back with those long-necked bottles for patients who can't leave their beds and they pile a dozen next to him, laughing - nice to see they can joke with the patients and keep their spirits up. I told him if any of the blood they were giving him had a peaty aftertaste to it then it might be some of mine (its all the single malts, good for the blood flow, you know) - it was interesting to see someone benefiting from a blood donation.

You know when you give it that it will help someone, but you don't normally see it in action. Of course, dad didn't need a transfusion himself, but he might well have done and frankly that's another bloody good reason to be a regular donor - you never know when something might happen to the people who matter to you and how they might depend on those donations, so again I'd say to everyone who has thought about but never done it, please, please go in and start donating; you might help a perfect stranger, you might be helping someone at the centre of your world. And it feels good to do something positive for life when there's too many bad things in the world. And if you find one of your loved ones in hospital (and sadly at some point in our lives that's likely to happen to all of us at some point) you'll be bloody glad folks do give blood, so don't just assume other will do it, go out there and do it yourself.

So fingers crossed we get my dad home tomorrow and we get our family Christmas together. We're feeling more positive than we were at the end of last week, but obviously we're still concerned and we're eager to have him home and worried that some last minute thing will crop up to get in the way, so think positive thoughts for us and if I don't get a chance to post again before the big day then peace and love to you all. We've just passed the Longest Night of the year; slowly, almost imperceptibly the long, dark nights of our northern kingdom will grow shorter and the days longer. Maybe that's a good omen for us. And after two days of mist and freezing fog today the sun rose bright and clear. I hope that's another one.