I wrote this a few months back as I was spending time caring for my dad who had just started chemo. It was a very difficult time full of love and sadness and fear and private rage at life.
I had completely forgotten I wrote it until I came across it tidying up some files.
It’s a reminder to me, and a kind of testament, to how human it is to endure what seems like unbearable pain at one moment in time, and in future moments, to have so forgotten the darkness of that time. For me, it is a reminder that no matter how shitty I think my day may have been, I have experienced far, far darker shades of life, and that really, in this moment, I have no problems. It’s a reminder that This Is Not A Problem.
It is a reminder too, that in darker moments, there will come a future where I will not be able to remember this level of suffering, and it will cease to have existed. And that is a kind of hope in itself.
My dad passed on 8 weeks ago today.
Oh how I long for black and white problems.
Problems where someone is right, and someone is wrong.
Where some clear injustice has been done to me, and I have someone to blame.
Where something I had to pay for was much too expensive, and I know I am being taken advantage of.
Where someone I love has hurt me, or I them, and one of us is waiting for the other to find their right time to say the sorry that will come.
Where I might, may, possibly get that promotion I’ve been waiting for, or I am cross because I have been waiting for forever to hear back from the car mechanic.
Where the delivery man was supposed to come on Tuesday, but it’s Thursday now, and I still don’t know where my parcel has gone
Oh how I long for black and white problems, where there is a clear right and a clear wrong. And I can feel anger, I can feel blame, I can feel sad and have tears and feel better again after. Where there is a clear beginning and a clear end, and I know there will be a resolution which will help me let it go.
But my problems right now are not so clear and not so black and white. And there is no clear path to an end I’m not sure I want.
There is no one to blame. This is just life.
This is life.
And people get ill every day. And fight for their life every day. Quietly at home, or in hospital. Tucked away. Out of view. And the world still goes on. People keep moving. And rushing to not be late. Pondering their problems as they walk hurriedly.
But here in this house, we don’t rush. Time is slow.
I hear the clocks ticking. On good days, the birds singing.
And I wait. I wait endlessly. Stuck waiting.
Stuck waiting for an end I may not be ok with.
Some days I do hope, that things will be ok. And we will get more time.
But even on those days the realisation looms over me that our time on this earth is limited.
And that no one else can walk my path.
Nor I walk theirs. That I cannot learn what they are here to learn for themselves. I cannot save anyone.
That I cannot save anyone.
And there is nothing, nothing, nothing that I can do. But wait. And watch. And be there.
And wait.
And it is agony. This problem.
Agony.
And it continues…Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Tick. Tock.
And I pick myself up and I put one foot in front of the other and I go and make lunch for us.
With love.
Endless love.
I love you Dad.
So much.
And I long for black and white problems instead of this hell.