Dad

On the 24^th of January at 8:25am my dad passed away after four days on life support. We were assured that he was in no pain so at least there was that comfort. It wasn’t actually the prostate cancer that killed him; about two weeks prior to his death he had his first dose of chemotherapy, which, as chemotherapy does, wiped out his immune system, then while he was still in hospital he picked up Legionnaires’ disease, having no immune system he couldn’t fight it off. Usually Legionnaires’ is nasty, but with antibiotics you can recover.  We have no family in Australia, it was pure coincidence that my aunt and uncle (Dad’s brother) were here and such a blessing too. Dad and his brother were very close and it’s great that they got to spend some time together before the end and we had their help in the aftermath. They’re gone now and it’s just me, Mum and my brother in the country, kind of lonely if I think about it.

Grieving has been easy; I was distraught the day he died but that’s it. Mum has been keeping her-self very busy and is doing well and S (brother) seems fine too. I don’t know if we’ll all fall to pieces at a later date or if we’re genuinely okay. Friends have been a great support, a handful of women from my church made us meals and mum’s colleagues took up a collection and used the funds to buy a billion things from a catering company, filling our freezer to the brim. The house smelled beautiful for a few weeks from all the flowers we received and there were a lot of people at the funeral. We’ll all miss him and the house is certainly strange without his quirky presence, but we’re okay.

It took me two hours to write those two paragraphs, I think I need to find a way to reinvigorate my brain before uni starts in little over a week.