Rest easy pops

[DanaC]

I could have done better by him the last few months. I never was much good atthe regular phone calls. I'd remember I hadn;t phoned him for awhile, but realise it was too late at night, then forget again. Weeks or even months might go by. By the same token, he wasn't phoning me :P We were always quite alike in some ways lol.

I had been meaning to phone him this last time for about a month, maybe longer. He knew what I was up to 'cause mum told him. I knew where he was at 'cause mum told me.

I am not bashingmyself or going on a guilt trip. We were what we were with each other. I was distracted and my mind on other things. I do regret not phoning him this last two weeks, after his best friend died. To be honest on that occasion it wasn't my usual lack of thought so much as not knowing what to say, and being unsure around the subject. I don't know (and never will) the nature of their relationship. I don't know if he lost a best friend, or something a little more.

This isn't winding me up or playing overmuch on my mind. I was there at the end and I do believe he heard me. I also regret not visiting on Sunday, when we found out he'd been in hospital for two days. My eczema was (and indeed still is) on the verge of, or at the beginning of, a nasty infection. Given that Dad has had MRSA in the last couple of years, I feared the risk factor and stayed home whilst mum and mart went over.

Again, this isnt a source of guilt. I had good reason for staying back. That I have since weighed the risk differently and made that decision moot, doesn't change that. But I do regret it. Because he was conscious and aware.

This is the thing with his kind of disease. He would go from crisis to crisis with 'well' periods in between. In and out of intensive care. One day we're racing across the Pennines hoping to make it before he slips away and the next he's sitting up in bed chuckling at the cards his grandkids had made and making arrangements for going home.

It breeds a kind of complacency. You know each time it might be The One. But because it never is, you don't fully believe that it ever will be.

At the end of the day, I was there and he knew it. Mart was there and he knew it. Mum was there and he knew it.