A year ago right now I was lying on my Mum’s bed, holding her hand and talking to her as she spent her last living, breathing hour on this earth. Mum was at peace with the fact she was dying, and that peace was a total gift to those of us who love her. Given […]
I’ve been grinning to myself all day today, for two reasons. Firstly because Social Care Curry Club was featured in the Guardian; ok so it wasn’t in print it was online on their Social Care Network pages but I’m delighted that it’s got some recognition and yet more support. We’ve been brilliantly lucky that people […]
I’ve not blogged too regularly of late, I blame Social Care Curry Club, which has been a brilliant distraction and useful channel of so much energy. That said I felt like today warranted a post, as today is Dad’s 66th birthday. Well it would have been his 66th birthday but he died last year. Do […]
Many, many years ago I started following Paul Clarke on twitter. I wasn’t sure who this man was particularly, and until today I had no real notion how digital he was, so either he was very modest or I wasn’t paying enough attention, but I liked his tweets. He was eclectic, witty, said it as […]
It’s 264 days since my Dad died. Nothing particularly significant about that, I had to sit and work it out as I don’t carry a mental tally of the days since his death. In one hundred and one days I’ll have lived a full year without one of my parents. I feel very lucky that […]
Yesterday was my parent’s Ruby Wedding Anniversary, 40 years of togetherness, in sickness and in health, till death do us part….and therein lies the rub, I guess technically it wasn’t their 40th anniversary because my Dad died last November. Do you stop being married when one of you dies, obviously legally you do, but do […]
Today it is six months since Dad died. I can’t quite believe it, one minute it feels like yesterday and the next like it was years ago, six of the longest and shortest months of my life. Time is a funny old thing, especially where grief and loss are involved. To mark the occasion this […]
It’s 101 days since Dad died today, I’d been thinking about this (non)-anniversary all week and was fully aware of it yesterday but couldn’t bring myself to concentrate long enough to write this post then. I’m confident Dad would appreciate the quirk of it being 101 days anyhow. So I’m going to keep this short […]
Ten days ago I wrote a blog post The beginning of the end? that reflected on my Dad’s journey/fight/life with cholangiocarcinoma (bile duct cancer) over the past four years. Well ten days on and things seem to have progressed even further. In March alone Dad has had three blood transfusions, which equates to about 8 […]
Tomorrow is my second blogging birthday, at the time I started to blog I really didn’t know whether I’d enjoy it or what I’d talk about. I knew that I’d have some stuff to share though (never really short of an opinion) and I also felt that cancer would feature in these posts….I’m not sure […]