Dolly's blog: When The Rain Stops

Dad has died.  After months of following blue lit ambulances to the hospital, retracing the route with grim familiarity through dark streets past childhood ghosts, I know this is the final chapter but somehow expect a different end.  

The reality is rocky and dizzying, one minute being told he might not make the night, the next being told to make arrangements for his discharge. 

Weeks into this unwelcome world of long corridors, bright lights and dark thoughts, they’ve withdrawn treatment and I’ve said a final goodbye, again, watching the sun set on what I think will surely be his last day.  But it isn’t, and there’s another, and another.   We’re in limbo.  A liminal state of suspended animation, wearing the same handful of clothes.  I always wear makeup. I don’t wear makeup.  He's not dead so I should work. But I can’t work.  It’s like being run over by a truck, the driver of which then looks in the rear-view mirror and reverses back over you. 

I've moved back in with Mum and enter a teenage time warp of powerful memories, terrestrial television and telephone landlines. My bedroom long ago turned into The Study, I sleep in the loft extension he loved but could no longer reach and seek distraction in a Bill Bryson book I find there, the dust cover folded into the last page he read. I'm chemically tired but often can't sleep, the shipping forecast providing comfort in the dark. 

And then, inevitably, it does happen.   And in truth it’s a relief, tinged with a sense that we shouldn’t be feeling relief.  But the aftermath is better, definitely better, albeit littered with grenades.  We unpack his hospital bag of going home clothes that hadn’t. His voice still broadcasts the answerphone message as calls to check how he’s doing continue to come through.  I remove his aftershave from a bin bag Mum has filled with his toiletries and shoes. 

I oscillate. One minute I’m throwing my head back laughing with friends. The next I’m crying so hard it feels like I can’t stand and so I crouch, my legs gone from under me. 

I've realised many things. The big one is that no one tells you that death is like birth, by which I mean hard. The body clings on to life even when it’s time to die and watching that day after day is unspeakably painful. 

I’ve realised I need to know my limits.  I didn’t have the strength or bravery to stage a bedside vigil.  I wasn’t there when it happened.   But I know I was there for my mum and try to focus on that. 

I've realised that grief for me is something I periodically take down from a high shelf, turning it around, feeling the pain, then putting it back on the shelf out of direct sight. Repeating that process.  Processing. 

I’ve realised that there’s enormous comfort to be found in friendships, particularly the lifelong ones.  We are all of us living through an age and stage, buffeted by the demands of children, work, elderly parents, divorce, and grief.   We’ve never needed each other more – nor been in greater need of joy.  I pronounce that “Project: joy” will shortly commence.  Once I’m through the funeral.   

I’ve realised there’s still a place for humour amongst the pain - indeed a necessity.  It makes me smile that the last things my dad said were Alexa (as in the electronic device) and the name of the family dog.  Mum meanwhile is being supported by fellow widows who, presumably trying to comfort her, tell her they’ll never get over their loss.  

Mostly it feels like calm after a storm.  The perfume I’ve been wearing is called “When the rain stops” and both the name and smell are comforting.  Supplemented with the occasional sniff of aftershave. 

Love you Dad. You done good. 

Tags:
• Wellbeing