So here we are, The Hounds and I.
They are barking madly as I write, protecting me from all intruders or, perhaps, waiting for the familiar sound of the car that is going to bring Our Hero home at last.
I feel I owe you one or two more posts – you who have travelled with us for seven months now.
I realize that life is going on for you, but I miss your humour and compassion, so will you bear with me?
The suddenness of it all has surprised us.
Polite to the end, Our Hero caused us so very little trouble. There was no being bed-bound, no Mac nurses visiting the house, none of that …
But there was also no time.
We had been planning the next stage of action: cyber knife; radiofrequency ablation; or whatever it took to keep the flame burning. And he was feeling fine. He was eating with dogged determination, driving the hundred mile trip to have radiotherapy, and walking better than I had seen him for months.
Forty-eight hours later he is dead.
And now here am I. The funeral is over, the memorial ‘bash’ is over, and everyone is gone. The house is full of cards and flowers but,more than that, filled with a huge sense of absence.
I am busily trying to stop up the aching empty spaces with photographs, with things that Our Hero loved, but I seem to be generating chaos – drawers are spilling out with memories, and everywhere my foot falls there is a shadow of the past.
There is a terrible irony about the funeral/memorial arrangements that I will share with you: Our Hero, jokingly, wanted ‘Always look on the Bright Side of Life’ sung at his funeral, or he did before he became ill. He would whistle and sing it to us all if we were finding ourselves ‘chewing on life’s gristle.’
We did sing it, with gusto, at his memorial send off. We stood and held hands and laughed and cried. Silly and wonderful. People went home whistling.
But the irony is that Jonathan suffered so much and was so brave that, given the context of the song, it is not funny any more.
To suffer with grace, with humour and quietness is truly heroic and Christ-like.
But we didn’t understand.
Lots of love to you all,
xxx
