21 days

21 days ago, I came home and cried.  The man that was sitting in the chair beside me at dinner was not the man that I knew as my father.  21 days ago, I knew that my dad was dying.  I hoped that what I had recognised in my father was his mortality and merely the markers of the journey we all begin upon our birth. What I feared was that the tendrils of mortality had already encroached and begun to tighten – choking his vitality.

21 days have passed and now I sit, watching his body deteriorate around him, waiting for the day it will completely loosen its hold on his spirit..  Each morning when I wake, I have a reprieve, the blissfulness of forgetfulness and then I remember, and a moan escapes my lips while the tears come. It is hard not to begin to grieve, to mourn even though his body still exists.  And yet, as painful and heart-breaking as this is, I am grateful.  I am grateful that even though this has happened so suddenly it has happened in this way.  There has been no long drawn out process of dying, no painful interventions, no tainting of special occasions.  Instead we got to live. We got to be together as a family.  We got to laugh freely.  And when he was diagnosed two weeks ago, he was still lucid and had the time to say and do what he needed.  We spent one last weekend together at home, where we laughed and loved and hoped.  When the hope was taken, we still had the laughter and the love.

My father’s dying has been a celebration of life and of love and though my heart is breaking and a moan escapes my lips – as I write this I am smiling through the tears.