It has been a week since the funeral.

A week since I said goodbye.

A whole month has passed since Dad was taken into hospital and placed into a medically-induced coma.

And it’s been a month since I got the phone call telling me that he wasn’t going to wake up.  I don’t know where the time has gone.

I’ve really needed to write.  I’ve needed to organise my thoughts and my memories and my feelings into some sort of cohesive order instead of having the swirly jumble of chaos somersaulting around in my head.  I’ve needed to get the words down on paper (well, computer screen) so I can make sense of them.

But I haven’t been able to.

Ideally, the last 7 days would have been relatively quiet, giving me the time and space to do what I so desperately need to do.  Instead I’ve had a jam-packed week of clients and supervision and meetings and phone calls, parents evening for all three girls, World Book Day costumes to sort, school disco drop-offs and pick-ups to organise, redecorating our bedroom, costumes for a school play to source and doctors appointments to attend.  Next week looks like more of the same, with four new clients on top of the regular ones I see, Red Nose Day outfits to create, a Mother’s Day assembly to attend, the school play to watch, haircuts for everybody, a hospital appointment and my Mum coming to visit for the weekend.

I have a mouth full of ulcers, my skin has gone haywire, people keep asking me if I’m eating (I am), and the bags under my eyes are huge due to my already limited sleep being interrupted by vivid dreams and/or at least one of my girls waking up needing a wee.

I need to press pause.  I know that.  Everything I’m doing is a distraction technique to prevent me from thinking about it or feeling anything.  I know that too.  It’s a coping mechanism.  I need to be numb.  I think that’s ok for now, but there will come a point where I have to face it head on and I don’t feel ready for it yet, so I’m just keeping on going.  I had a taste of facing it last Friday at the funeral and I don’t want to go there again any time soon.

It was a beautiful sunny day – the only day that whole week where it wasn’t grey or raining.  I’m pretty sure Dad orchestrated that.

The service was lovely, lots of people attended and the words spoken were a testimony to how loved Dad is (I can’t say ‘was’ yet) and how much of an impact he made on people’s lives.  You only had to meet him once to remember him forever.  I managed to stand up in front of everyone and (through the tears) say a few words and a poem that I love.  The music we chose was an expression of the many different sides of Dad, and the number of bouquets of flowers that people sent was astonishing.

(I couldn’t bear to leave them all at the crematorium only to be thrown away a few days later.  They were too important for that.  So I bought four arrangements home with me and spent a couple of hours the next day trimming them and displaying them in numerous vase and jugs – even jam jars.  I love having fresh flowers in my home and these ones kept Dad with me for a little while longer.)

I felt a lot that day.  I cried a lot too.  I gave myself permission to do so, knowing full well that I would only let it be for a certain period of time and then I would close the lid of my cardboard box again and not re-open it until I feel ready to.

The cardboard box.  I’m still carrying it.

It’s becoming a theme, this idea of boxes.

All I could see as I sat during the service was the coffin.  The wooden box.  Even with my head bowed and the tears falling, my eyes kept on being drawn back towards it.  It was the only thing I could focus on.

My Dad, in that wooden box.

I tried to picture him, dressed in his favourite suit and the tie that he wore to my wedding, his nearly-white hair neatly tied back in a ponytail, just lying there in that wooden box.  Asleep.  And I couldn’t do it.

Still can’t.

I cannot wrap my head around it, can’t understand or process what’s happened, can’t believe that it’s real and that he’s gone and that I’ll never hear his voice again, or his wonderful laugh, or have him tell me his stories or his terrible, terrible jokes.  I’ll never see his face again.  I’ll never get to ask him all the questions I had, or find out about his life before me.  I’ll never know him any more than I did a month ago.

This is it.

The memories I’m left with are all that I’ll ever have.  He will never get to see my girls grow up.  There will be no more photos of him.

He’s gone.

Placed in a wooden box.

Forever.

And it still doesn’t feel real.

I wanted to offer something useful for people who read this.  Some insight or thought-provoking idea that could help someone else who might be going through something similar to what Annie (Dad’s wife) and I are going through.

But I can’t.  I’m too tired.  I hurt too much.  I’ve given so much of myself over the last few days, weeks, months…maybe even years.  And I’ve run out of stuff to give.

So for now I’m asking you to bear with me as I try and figure things out.

 

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