A Lucid Dream about my Dad

Me with my Dad, November 2011

I began this blog on the death of my Dad in 2012. I can't believe we are coming up to 5 years since he died. 

Last night I dreamed that I went to Dad's house to pick him up for Sunday lunch. I went upstairs to find him, and he was lying in bed with the newspaper over his face, he had fallen asleep reading it. I was worried for a second that he might have died, but when I picked up the paper it woke him up, he was fine. 

He was moaning about having to get ready to go out, and as I was making his bed I was saying, 'Dad, I don't know why you're making such a big deal, you're so much better than you were in the nursing home....' As I said it, I suddenly realised he had been in the nursing home because he was dying, and he had died, and so this must be a dream. I turned around and sat on the bed, and Dad said, 'what's up?' because I was crying. 

'I've realised this is a dream, and I don't want to wake up, I want to stay here with you.' I got up and hugged him and he put up with it (he didn't really do hugs). Sort of patted me on the back and said, 'you soft sod, you know you've got to go to work.' 

I tried to hold onto him, but I woke up. 

I've not let myself think about it all day, but now I'm home from work I keep thinking about it, because I want to remember how it felt, and how lovely it was - it was so real. But it means I can't stop crying. I feel like I've lost him all over again.

Grieving is an Empty Room and an Empty Day

This is Oscar, and on Monday I had him put down. Oscar was 21, and as people who know me will know, he has been a complete arse of a cat for the last 8 years.

Put something on the floor, and he'd piss on it. Shoes, bags, clothes, whatever. He was confined downstairs for that very reason - nothing was safe. In the last few years even putting things on a table was no guarantee - he managed to balance on top of a Vicar of Dibley box set to wee over my sister's Christmas present one year. And of course, there was the famous incident that really needed a cat-shaming photo:

But I've had him since he was a kitten. As my sister likes to point out, 'he lasted longer than your marriage.' He was like a beloved relative that becomes infirm - you don't just abandon them because they piss (and poo, towards the end) everywhere. Even if that means you end up with a litter tray in your living room, right next to the door. Nice.

His passing wasn't a shock - I'd been worried he wouldn't make it to Christmas, and had prepared Son for that fact. But he carried on, despite his thinness. Then last weekend I realised he was really poorly - his breathing was laboured and his paws were swollen. I was half minded to call the vet to put him down then, but Son really didn't want me to, so I didn't. Instead, we had one last weekend, where all he wanted to do was sit with me. This was not the usual Oscar - normally given the choice between me and Son, Son will win every time, because I'm the baddie who shouts at Oscar when he wees on the cooker (for example).

He couldn't jump up onto the sofa so I was having to lift him up. He couldn't support himself on his back legs when he was pooing, so he would lie in the litter tray and get a pooey arse that I tried to clean, but never quite managed. 

On Sunday night, as I lay in bed, I heard him crying. So I spent the night with him. When I left the living room even to go to the loo, he would cry again. 

Monday morning Son said goodbye to him. I took the day off work and called the vet. An hour before the vet arrived, he got off the sofa and drank and ate - up to then I'd been bringing him his water and food, so I wondered if he was somehow recovering. But when the vet arrived, she said no, he was a dying cat. His heart stopped before she finished the injection. 

It was a lovely death really. I was stroking his head, the nurse was rubbing his chin, and he was purring. Then he was gone, bar a bit of twitching, which is apparently just the nervous system dying.

When they had taken him away, I just broke down. I had no idea I would feel that way - I was worse than when my Dad died. 

And now, I just feel so empty all the time. The next day, I really felt like 'what's the point' when I woke up - even though I have a Son, and a great life.I could cry at any moment. 

Every day is just one huge litany of reminders he is gone, from the minute I go into the living room (don't have to push the litter tray out of the way as I open the door) to last thing at night, when I don't have to feed him and drag the litter tray behind the door from the other side of it.

For the first time, I am alone at the weekend when Son goes to his Dad's. The weekends, that was when Oscar would sit with me. I would put the heating on for him, even though I didn't need it, because he was an old chap, and he felt the cold.

I woke up this morning to snow, and I began to rush down to tell Oscar - but of course, he isn't here. Although sometimes it feels like he is - I feel as though he is sitting next to me, or is waiting for his food. 

When Dad died, I found I had a lot of extra time on my hands, because visiting him had taken up so much of my time for a year. With Oscar gone, so has the entire routine of my day, for the last 21 years. No body fluids to clean up, no food to put down, no one to chat to, no one to argue with (we often had our disagreements)

When he was twitching, after being put to sleep, the vet said, 'don't worry, it's just his body remembers what to do and it's going through the motions. It happens a lot with old cats especially, their bodies have so much memory.' I feel like that - he was here for so long that even now I still expect to go through the motions of caring for him daily. The grief feels so raw because there are constant reminders that those actions are pointless now.

I feel like I'm being an idiot because he was 'just a cat'. But he really wasn't. He was my Baby Cat, a constant companion, the only 'person' I would talk to for days at a time, sometimes. He was always there. Without me realising it he had become an intrinsic part of my routine and my life - and my life feels as empty as his chair now he is gone.

RIP Oscar Cat. You git.

Deja Viewing

I think I've mentioned before how there's something about Timothy West that reminds me of my Dad. I watch him on his barge programmes, and on Eastenders, because sometimes (more often on the barge than on Eastenders) he'll do a 'Dad' look, or a smile, and it is sort of comforting. In the same way as stalking old men around Tesco's if they remind me of Dad is, but without the potential for freaking out innocent elderly men. 

Unsurprisingly, it was a bit of a shock to find out that Stan Carter, Timothy West's character in Eastenders, had prostate cancer (the cancer Dad died of). That was nothing to Tuesday's episode though. 'Old'Stan was a curmudgeonly character, not like my Dad at all. Of course, in true soap style, he has mellowed, and we have seen a more sensitive and vulnerable side to him of late. Then after all that softening up, what happens? He only suddenly goes off his legs, doesn't he? The exact same thing as happened to my Dad. It was horrific to watch, I went through all the emotions of that night again. Same cause as well - metastases in the spine. 

Now I get to watch my pseudo-Dad die in exactly the same way as my real Dad did. Not so much deja vue as deja view. 

At least if it gets too much I can change channel this time. Real life is a single channel you don't get to turn off.

If You Care, You Can Say What You Want

We've all seen things like this, haven't we? This one is about people who have been abused                                                                    

Here's another one:

These are both symptomatic of a trend that I am starting to really dislike, and here's why. I had 'liked' a Facebook page called 'The Grief Toolbox' because it was really helpful and a comfort when my Dad died, and had remained so for a long time. I finally was prompted to 'unlike' it recently, after yet another piece written about 'what not to say/do/think when in the presence of the bereaved' came along, and with it yet more comments from people bemoaning how cruel and unfeeling other people are/how dare they say that/no-one understands unless they've been through it and even then they are still arses etc etc.

Well bollocks to that. 

I am grateful for every last thing anyone took the time to say to me when my Dad died. Even the things that were a bit 'off', the things that I didn't particularly agree with, the things that really didn't make any sense to me. Cos you know what? Those people tried. They saw I was in pain and they tried to make it better. I'm also grateful for the people who said nothing because they didn't know what to say. We've all been there and I know they don't love me any the less just because they had no clue what words to string together. Who can blame them really, when the Grief Fascists are out telling people they are the lowest of the low if they tell you they 'know how you feel'?

Same with depression. When I was depressed, it didn't matter what anyone said to me, I wasn't going to feel any better. And in the same way, I wasn't going to feel that much worse either. Again, you know the people who love you, even if they don't say the right things. And you also know the people who don't give a shit, whether or not they remember not to look at their watches.

And as for being abused - well, I am just grateful for anyone who put up with me and my enduring capacity to completely ignore all the good advice I was given whilst in an abusive relationship. I don't give a teensy little rat's ass what words came out of their mouths - and in fact, the views that least chimed with my own were probably the most useful in the end. 

To me it seems like it is all part of a victim mentality that is ultimately dis-empowering. It's as though being a victim of something means you should have special privilege to be a delicate flower that the world and his dog have to tip-toe around just in case they upset your little cotton socks. Well thing is, shit happens. And shit happens to everyone - the people being slagged off for being insensitive about grief may well be depressed people themselves. So slagging them off makes the slagger themselves a bit of an arse, doesn't it? We are all human, and we all have our own crosses to bear. A lot of times when people screw up what they are saying about your situation, it is because they are extremely uncomfortable, they think you are too, and they are trying to make you and them both feel better. What on earth is so wrong with that?

Wouldn't it be better for groups and meme-makers to encourage people to be a bit less touchy and a bit more tolerant of eachother's failings? Not everyone has been bereaved. Not everyone has been abused, or depressed, or raped or mugged or whatever. But we have all been in situations where we haven't known what to say for the best. Why make it harder for eachother? Why not take whatever comes out of a person's mouth (or whatever doesn't) for what it is? Because usually what it is, is an act of love.