Coming up for air
Well, hello again. I stepped away from this blog unintentionally almost eight weeks ago and have found it blissfully easy to choose life over blogging in the interim. It would be an easy habit to slip into.
Truth is, I find it easy to blog about the daily delights of the garden but when something of enormous significance is happening, my brain doesn't want to connect with my fingers. And that something is that my dad got ill just before Christmas Eve and died at the end of January. He had to be hospitalised when his chest infection escalated into pneumonia and pleurisy but, in the last two weeks of his life, was reunited with my mum, the love of his life over six decades of blissful marriage. As she has dementia, she hasn't fully understood that he's gone but I think that's a blessing, given the grief she would otherwise be experiencing.
Truth is, I find it easy to blog about the daily delights of the garden but when something of enormous significance is happening, my brain doesn't want to connect with my fingers. And that something is that my dad got ill just before Christmas Eve and died at the end of January. He had to be hospitalised when his chest infection escalated into pneumonia and pleurisy but, in the last two weeks of his life, was reunited with my mum, the love of his life over six decades of blissful marriage. As she has dementia, she hasn't fully understood that he's gone but I think that's a blessing, given the grief she would otherwise be experiencing.
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| Dad, Singapore, 1961 |
I've written in the past of my parents' dementia. My dad had a form of Alzheimer's which seemed to affect his co-ordination more than memory. Although increasingly frail and unsteady, he remained welcoming and interested right up to mid December when he seemed to make up his mind that it was time to go. He was 84. He'd been moved into a care home in November as he could no longer look after himself; there, he was without my mum as she'd been taken into hospital. They'd been together for so long, propping each other up. He'd accepted the move with his customary good grace but without her, what was the point?
Dementia is a cruel disease, slowly stripping away the brain's essential functions. My Dad recovered from lymphatic cancer at the turn of the millenium only to very slowly circle the edges of dementia, spiralling inwards until, in the last year, the illness steadily pulled him down into the vortex. He was a loving father and husband to the end, always the polite gentleman.
The family has had a long time to watch the gradual living loss of our parents and, as such, the grieving process began months back. I'm saddened by my dad's demise but not mourning; I still have my mum to think about. My lovely dad had a wonderful life, full of love and laughter, travels and interests, family and friends and he found time for them all. What more could anyone ask of our time on this earth?
If you've read to the end of this post, thank you. It not only explains my prolonged absence from blogging but has helped emotionally to be able to write about my dad's passing. His funeral is this Friday. Death comes to us all but life goes on and I'll be back soon with news of my winter gardening exploits and a new project that I'm involved in. They say gardening is the best therapy and I'd have to agree.
The family has had a long time to watch the gradual living loss of our parents and, as such, the grieving process began months back. I'm saddened by my dad's demise but not mourning; I still have my mum to think about. My lovely dad had a wonderful life, full of love and laughter, travels and interests, family and friends and he found time for them all. What more could anyone ask of our time on this earth?
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| Mum and Dad in happier times. |
If you've read to the end of this post, thank you. It not only explains my prolonged absence from blogging but has helped emotionally to be able to write about my dad's passing. His funeral is this Friday. Death comes to us all but life goes on and I'll be back soon with news of my winter gardening exploits and a new project that I'm involved in. They say gardening is the best therapy and I'd have to agree.
