Can't sleep (one of the reasons I decided to create the blog) so have decided to carry on!
Took BB home early in the morning. All of a sudden she is huggy, touchy, feely but I don't think anything of it and put it down to the stress of the previous day and the rotten news.
All I can really remember about this day is feeling kind of numb but still so angry.
Mam and me went to the hospital for afternoon visiting to find the world and his wife there. I can remember feeling as though I was watching and listening to everything as if I wasn't really there. There seemed to be a lot of visitors so I spent most of the day in the waiting area. The next. few days were like that.
Perhaps now would be a good point to give you some family background.
My dad is no longer with us and died when I was 19. There is my lovely Mam who is 73. I am the eldest child and I am 53. I have three brothers - Dougy who is 48, Paul who is 47 and Gordy who will turn 46 at the end of the month. My relationship with Paul is extremely strained for reasons which are too long and convoluted to go into here, suffice to say I feel as though I have been used as his verbal punchbag for the last 10 years whenever anything has gone wrong in his life and we have not spoken for the last 2 years. This has not proven to be that big a problem as he lives in Dubai. Dougy works as a courier and travels all over Europe and up until the beginning of August Gordy also worked for the same company.
Well back to my story.
As I said, the next few days were rather surreal with a constant stream of visitors and a very huggy, touchy, feely BB! Dougy was away on holiday with his son, my lovely nephew Kyle. When he heard from Gordy he tried his best to get an early flight home but couldn't and spent the next few days in a living hell! I tried every which way to contact Paul and managed to get hold of one of friends and asked him to let Paul know he needed to contact me urgently. The message that came back via the friend was that "he was up to speed with everything and didn't need to contact me". I didn't think he was up to speed as he put it and indeed if he was and he cared as much about Gordy as he claimed to care then why did he intend to carry on with his holiday in Phuket and not make every bloody effort under the sun to get to England! But who was I to criticise!
Gordy had further talks with the doctors and they told him that the nodules in his liver were extensive and because of this they gave him a timeline of 7-12 months. My lovely Mam told me this very gently but to be honest Gordy looked so poorly this was better than I had even dared to think of. They also said that they had not managed to locate the primary cancer and would take a biopsy from one of the nodules which would tell them where this was. Then came the seemingly endless wait for the biopsy to be done.
Over the next couple of days touchy feely BB really started to get on my Mam's nerves. My Mam is not a huggy type of person unless she knows you really well and loves you very much, neither of which applied to BB. She also said if BB whined about how she was going to cope once more she would slap her. I managed to calm Mam down for a day or so until we found out that BB was also dumping her garbage on Gordy's daughter who was not only dealing with the fact that her precious Dad had stinking rotten cancer but her hormones were also in chaos having recently given birth. So I pulls BB to one side and as gently as I could told her to calm it down a bit and stop dumping stuff on them. BB's response - "I'm only trying to be supportive"!
WHAT!?!?!?!?! How is dumping her garbage on a woman who is trying to come to terms with the fact that her baby is dieing and his 22 year old daughter who is also trying to come to terms with the fact that her Daddy is dieing being supportive? Alarm bells now start ringing in my head about the selfishness of this woman but again I put it down to the awful situation we have found ourselves in and gently tell her that she is not coming across that way and she is upsetting two of the most precious people in my life and I can not allow this to carry on.
I then notice and indeed get told on several occasions from Gordy's female visitors that BB is being extremely rude and snappy with them and also find out that she is whining to Gordy and quizzing him about them. In their younger days all my brothers worked as doormen at various venues around the town and their 'friends' list is probably a little more extensive than most and she was told this over and over again!
The next day I sneak out for a ciggie (much to Gordy's disgust may I add) and BB follows me. This was the Saturday I think and I was feeling more than a little fragile through lack of sleep and the inability to eat very much of anything! As I was just about to light a very much needed ciggie she suddenly puts her head on my shoulder and starts with the "I just can't get my head around this and I can't cope, all my dreams are over milarky!" I'm afraid I snapped - pushed her off my shoulder and told her that all my resources were being used to support the man lying upstairs in the hospital bed who I had known and loved for all of his life, my lovely Mam who was falling apart at the seams and Gordy's precious daughter who was also falling apart at the seams. I added that I had very little if anything left for her and if she needed support then she should 'phone a f****** friend like I was doing! And do you know something, I didn't feel a bit guilty about it because it only hit me that particular day how cruel she had been in the manner in which she had first told me about Gordy's cancer. I was also feeling so very much alone with both my other siblings being out of the country and couldn't wait for Dougy to get home on the Sunday night.
Well Sunday dawned and off I went to the hospital for afternoon visiting. Gordy, BB, a long term friend (female) and me went down to what we now called The Pannini Cafe for lunch and once again I witnessed just how rude BB was to female visitors. Gordy's daughter Alex arrived with her partner Danny and lovely baby boy who they have called Zain. I think it's Arabic but can't remember what it means. Mumsy then arrived and we were all having a lovely time cooing and gurgling over Zain and Gordy was sat taking photographs of Alex and Zain on his mobile. All of a sudden BB jumps up, states she is going and stomps off after giving Gordy a perfunctory kiss on the cheek. Awkward silence for a second or two and then we get back to Zain. About 10 minutes later I developed nasty heartburn and trapped wind so went for a walk to get rid of it. Walking along the main hospital corridor I saw BB coming from the direction of the ward and realised she had been to collect Gordy's dirty clothing. I asked her what was wrong and she snapped that there was nothing wrong. I then asked her for her mobile number so I could contact her re. giving her a lift to the hospital, etc., whereupon she marched off yelling over her shoulder, "Oh just get it off Gordy"! How I didn't push her face into the wall I still don't know because I realised at the same time that the silly bitch was jealous of Gordy giving his attention to Alex and Zain! I was now beginning to dislike this woman more than just a little but for Gordy's sake resolved to keep my big mouth shut! And if you knew me you would realise how difficult a proposition this was if you also take into consideration the emotional turmoil! My family were so proud of me!
Gordy also told Mam and me that we didn't have to be there for every visiting time as we had been and he wanted us to try and get some rest as we both looked worse than he did and he was the one who was f*****! Had to laugh because he was right!
Dougy got home and I have to be honest - I felt as though a ton weight was lifted off my shoulders!
Thank you for reading my ramblings.
I think I've battered you enough for one day and will add more later.
Much love to all of you! I know you are all going through pain, suffering and emotional turmoil and you are probably being a lot stronger than I am and dealing with stuff in a much better way than me!
Chrissie xxxx
