A month and a day

06Jul08

It was a thursday.  June 5th, 2008.  The draft was saved at 15.12.  I logged onto here and began to write a post about the 10 things that were occupying my mind at the time.  Boredom might have been one provocation.  Half-assed desire not to let this fingernail scratch in the world of the weblog die just because I’ve finished my final year may have been another.  Here is the list as it stood on June 5th, compiled as my elder sister made her way in a taxi up egham hill to change my life forever:

1. The Summer Ball TOMORROW (Will my dress look good?  Will my shoes rub all the skin off my feet by 6 am?  Is the main act REALLY Jason Donovan (really? REALLY?)??  What the FUCK am I going to do with my hair???)

2. Family (heard from Mum yesterday Dad was ill again but not enough for hospital, Grandpa in hospital with COPD, Impending neice OR nephew-with-unfornately-sized-genitalia to my teen sister)

3. The Future (I can’t travel because of the above issues, I can’t afford a flat in London… so what now?  Am I destined to go back to mindless Dartmouth (where, admittedly, the heir to the throne is adding significantly to the perks) and work freelance, helping nurse my terminally ill father and look after a baby for the rest of my not-so-pretty days??)

4. Degree Results (GEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!)

5. Graduation (Will my headthingy fit into the headboardthingy? Will I fall over?  Will my dad be there?)

6. Lost Season 4 finale (So the Island just… disappeared… riiiiiight…)

7. Wicked.  (I went, I saw, I got hooked on defying gravityyyyyyyy…  (nothing to do with my love for all things witchy I’m sure) only problem now is that I can’t stop singing (and I’m not much of a singer… seriously, I’ve been known to crack glass… and then have it held to my neck as a threat.))

8.

And that’s when the doorbell went and I saw the look on my sister’s face that told me that everything I had just written about, everything that had been occupying my mind for all those wasted days and weeks no longer mattered.  Our Daddy had died.  

And so I wore my new shoes to my father’s funeral instead of the summer ball.  I went and looked up my degree results and my heart only beat vaguely faster and when I got my 2,1 I didn’t really care.  I would give anything for the ‘future’ I dismissed so flippantly back then.  I might have implied that I was expecting this but I wasn’t.  I thought he could fight longer.  Hell, HE thought he would be sailing the river by now.  I wrote a poem for him and at his funeral I got up and read it out to a bursting-at-the-seams congregation.  No one who knows me and how shy I am thought I would actually be able to do it… but the weird thing is that I always knew I would.  I think it’s because shy and awkward as I am, being my father’s daughter is just so much a stronger part of me, and that’s what pushed me up there and worked my voice.  And that’s what will make me ok.

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Tags: cancer, dad, death, family bereavement, father, grieving, list, loss