Dad Death Day

Herons, Willow and Camellias in snow.

This card arrived today from a good sangha friend. She wrote, “I believe I’m right in thinking that it will be 20 years since your Dad died. I think it’s on Wednesday 29th so you and he will be in my thoughts that day”. Many thanks, and even more thanks for taking care of me during the days following his death. I was not the easiest of people to take care of at the time. So sorry. Heck! I was getting around on crutches having broken my leg recently. I needed to be taken care of, obviously. Not obvious enough for me though.

Twenty years and much has happened since then. And, in a way, nothing has changed. The fact that he died on a railway platform and I was present, all be it several tracks from where paramedics were trying to revive him is emblazoned in my memory. Knowing how much he would not want to be revived, in my thoughts I spoke to the chap (for I didn’t know it was my father at the time) saying, “If you want to go now that’s fine. You are free to go”. And he did! He would have been glad to have beaten the ‘system’. I love him all the more for that and for going where and how he did. I’d imagined I would fall to pieces when he died, but I didn’t. Not then, later I howled.

My parents are burried side by side in our cemetary at Throssel.

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