In the end it was all too much.

So ……….my sister died yesterday.

She was only 46 years old. Married for 25 years. Two grown children.

Too young really.

Ironically, it wasn’t the Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma (stage 4) she was diagnosed with late last year that took her life. Nope. According to the scans she went through last week, there was no sign of cancer. She’d beaten that sucker. It was multiple organ failure.

You know when you’re about to undergo a tiny procedure and the doctor tell you all the things that could possibly go wrong but are a one in a million chance of occurring? My sister was that one in a million patient. If it was going to be an unusual reaction to a drug or treatment ……. she had it. The poor doctors and nurses at the Peter Mac have been left scratching their heads in bewilderment at what became an unending parade of unexpected and ultimately fatal complications.

Amber went into hospital nine weeks ago for what was supposed to be the final step in her cancer treatment. She never left.

It has been a long and terrible nine weeks for her husband and children. It has been a harrowing nine weeks for her parents, my mum and dad, who have been with her every day of this final journey. It has been a nightmarish nine weeks for my mum who spent weeks at the Peter Mac and the Royal Melbourne Hospitals last year as my dad faced, and survived, his own cancer battle only to be back there again watching her youngest child slowly fade away.

Like a cat with its nine lives, Amber had run out of lives. She suffered from severe Crohns disease that hospitalised her on a regular basis, was lucky to survive a brain aneurysm a few years ago, she had chronic migraines and she had to cope with seizures. I think that her body simply wasn’t strong enough to handle the horrors of chemotherapy on top of everything else.

And I think she’d had enough.

On Thursday afternoon her husband and my parents had to make the heartbreaking decision to discontinue treatment as Amber’s liver was failing, as were her kidneys. The only thing left was to keep her comfortable and wait. We’d run out of miracles.

Amber chose to leave us Sunday morning. Not Friday as that was her best friend’s birthday, and not today which is her daughter’s birthday. Her husband was with her as she took her final breath and the rest of us were there shortly thereafter to grieve and spend those last hours with her now that her struggle was over.

Amber pretty much missed the entire COVID-19 situation. I don’t think she was ever well enough in the last nine weeks to watch television, listen to the radio or read the newspaper. We told her about it as we sat with her on a visit, but it had no impact on her situation. She wasn’t going anywhere. It impacts her now as we decide how best to say farewell in the more formal sense of the word.

Goodbye sis. It’s a shame we never had a close sisterly bond. I can’t apologise for that, nor can I be filled with regret for it. We are/were two different people with two different paths to tread. But you are still my little sister and you’re not here anymore. And it hurts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Goodbye Riley.

Today was the day I had to make the hardest decision a pet owner has to make and I said one final goodbye to my amazing dog, Riley. I knew this day was coming as he was now 13 and he had health issues, but he had been going so well. I had hoped that he would get to his ‘adoption’ anniversary at the end of the month but his body knew different and my hand was forced by circumstance.

You’ve heard it all before from other grieving pet owners, but I can honestly say that no pet has ever had such an impact in my life than that of Riley. From the moment I saw his face in the online advertisement I knew he was mine. I just didn’t comprehend how deeply his presence would change me from the person I was when I bought him.

Riley, through his own personality, taught me to be confident, brave and unafraid.

You see……. Riley was a dude.

Riley was a little dog with a big personality but he was not arrogant or cocky. Everybody who met him loved and admired him.

No collar and lead for this man. He didn’t need it and as a matter of fact, when he was required to be on lead his whole persona was different. Riley walked the streets like he owned them. Just a couple of feet ahead of me, but never afraid of what was ahead of him and never intimidated by any dog he met on his walk. Without my even being aware of it, this is precisely what I needed to learn about life and myself.

Riley was never a clingy “Hold me! Pat me!” dog but he was always by my side. Sitting on the couch, he had to be beside me. Not ON me, beside me. Having a shower, he’d be waiting outside the shower screen, on the bath mat, for me to exit. Going to the toilet he’d be propped at my feet. Bedtime, sleeping right next to me from the first day he arrived. If I was sad or unwell his solid presence was something I could always rely on.

The number of times I’ve turned around and nearly fallen flat on my face because he was right behind me. And I tell you, now that I’m in my fifties I have often wondered if I’d be one of those women who breaks her hip tripping over her dog. Writing this now, without his body pressed against my feet and his snores vibrating the computer desk is breaking my heart. The lack of him is achingly present.

Fortunately, I still have Almond. I know she senses that something is not right. Matthew and I went out today with her buddy Riley but he didn’t come home with us. And Riley wasn’t there when she had dinner. But Almond brought me a perfect dose of reality as she waded through a deep, muddy puddle this afternoon. Nothing like being required to bath a muddy, smelly dog to make you know you’re alive.

The next few days are going to be hard and I’ll probably cry a lot, but never, for a single moment, would I ever consider NOT owning a dog or having a pet because of the likelihood of having to experience this absolute sense of loss again.

Loss is part of love and I loved my boy Riley with all my heart. For eleven years he has been my main man.

And now he’s gone.

And there’s a big hole in my heart.

Goodbye my Riley dog.

I miss you.

We miss you.

 

Plans change.

You’re probably wondering why I have a picture of the inside of the Peter MacCallum Cancer Institute (The Peter Mac) on a blog post titled “Plans change”. Let me tell you why…………

I had plans. BIG plans. Seven weeks overseas visiting Ireland, Scotland, England, Wales, France, Germany, Italy, Austria and Greece. I have had to adjust these plans a little bit.

According to Encyclopedia Google the quote “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry” is the modern translation of “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley.” from Scottish poet Robert Burns’ “To a Mouse.” I always thought it was written by John Steinbeck, but he only pinched a teeny bit of it to use as the title of his famous novel ‘Of Mice and Men’.

Cancer will make you change your plans. My dad has cancer. Lung cancer. He was diagnosed about 2 months ago. This is not his first cancer. It started with the melanomas. Then there was the squamous cell carcinoma on the left side of his neck a few years ago. Every visit to the Peter Mac had the family on edge. What was going to be cut off today? What else had they found?

The relentlessness of a post-cruise bout of pneumonia led to the doctors taking a lung x-ray which revealed the cancerous tumour on the left lung and subsequent testing led to the discovery of the bonus little tumours on the right lung.

Last week things got life-threateningly scary for dad. We were at the pointy end of things and the point was pressing into him pretty hard.

Packing a suitcase and boarding a plane that was going to take me thousands of miles away from my dad and my mum was NOT an option. I knew where I had to be and on a plane to Dublin was not it.

So I changed my plans. A postponement. Nothing a few phone calls and emails couldn’t sort out.

Unbelievably my dad was discharged from the Peter Mac today, a week after we were gathered around his bedside trying to bring him comfort in what we honestly thought were going to be his last hours. The team at the Peter Mac had only one option available and they gambled on it. The gamble paid dividends. But I don’t think they took into account the stubborn nature of my dad. He wasn’t ready to go yet. You don’t fuck with my dad.

He had better keep this fighting spirit going. The new flight is booked for the 31st.

 

 

 

 

 

The waiting game

The waiting game. It’s a game we play all our lives for millions of different reasons and it’s a game when the result can never be predicted.

Trying to get pregnant. The crippled-with-fear-every-second wait until the date of your expected period comes and goes, followed by the agonising two minute wait to see if there are two lines on the pregnancy test purchased in terrified excitement that morning.

Expectant mothers play the waiting game to welcome a new life into the world. The books tell us 280 days or 40 weeks, but head into any maternity hospital in the world and it will show you that it can be anywhere from 21 to 42 weeks. And, if you have been there, who can forget the anxiety as you wait to hear your baby make it’s first sound and hear the medical staff tell you that your child is healthy.

Life is the ultimate waiting game.

We wait for meals, we wait for sunrise, we wait for phone calls, we wait for sunsets, we wait for news, we wait for trains, trams, buses, aeroplanes, friends, family, television programs, heating, cooling, taxis, ubers, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, service, coffee, new teeth, loosing teeth, children to take their first step, children to say their first word, people to stop talking, rain to fall, rain to stop, the sun to come out, the heat to be over, the cold weather to arrive, the spring, the roses to bloom, the full moon, the computer to boot up, the light to come on, the shower to be the right temperature, the microwave to beep, the traffic lights to change, the cars to move, the Bulldogs to win a premiership, the first kiss, the first love, the first alcoholic drink, the engagement proposal, the wedding, the honeymoon, the romantic dinners, the fight to be over, the ‘please’, the ‘thank you’, the honesty, the understanding, the lemons to ripen on the tree, the tide to turn, the fish to bite, the fire to catch, the candle to melt, the hurt to pass, the smoke to clear, the exam to be over, the plaster to set, the starting pistol, the wound to heal, the results to be announced, the bleeding to stop, the bad haircut to grow out, the shift to be over, the battery to run out, the weekend, the extra kilo to be gone, the holiday to begin………………….

But the most unpredictable of all the waiting games is our life expectancy. There are those who never get the chance to take a breath in this world and those who continue to breathe until they have breathed longer than everyone they know.

It’s Russian Roulette. One day there is going to be a bullet in the barrel and that’s it…….. your waiting game with life is over. And nobody, not even you, knows when that day will come and what form the bullet will take.

So we play the game. We spin the barrel on the pistol.

We are the game.

It’s not your time just yet.

Last Tuesday morning I awoke to the realisation that this might be your last day with me and my mind became numb. You were not well. You hadn’t been ‘right’ for a while, but I explained it to myself as simply old age creeping up on you. But suddenly the creep had become a race and I knew that I needed to take you to the vet to see what, if anything, could be done.

Avoiding the inevitable had become the norm. I was a bad owner. Yes, your ability to see had diminished to the point where I was sure that you only saw shadows and your back legs were beginning to give way…….. but you were happy. You were still eating and drinking and following me around as you always had.

To be brutally honest, I didn’t want to hear what the vet might have to say.

However, I could no longer avoid the truth. You needed to be seen by the vet. Those back legs that had been giving way over time had deteriorated rapidly and this morning they were almost not able to hold you up. You looked afraid and suddenly very old.

As the minutes ticked away I became acutely aware that this might be the last time I talked with you, the last time I rubbed your velvety, black ears, the last time I looked into your beautiful, if now unseeing, brown eyes.

I had to take your photo.

With tears in my eyes I swapped lenses on my camera. It may sound ridiculous to non-photographers, but you needed and deserved the 50mm f1.8. If these were going to be my final images of you they had to be done properly and a prime lens is the only way to do you justice.

We went to the vet. The news was not good. You have spinal degeneration and the nerves to you lower back and hind legs have been severely compromised. The options were almost non-existent. You could have X-rays to assess the extent of the damage but they might not show everything. You could have a CAT scan, but again that might be inconclusive. Because of your age spinal surgery is not an option.

I was faced with two options. We could try anti-inflammatory medication or I stood by your side as we sent you to the Rainbow Bridge.

I’m a realist. I know that you are old. Your thirteenth birthday is but a few months away. That’s a good age for a dog. But it’s not time for you to go. Not yet.

So anti-inflammatory meds it is.

Within 24 hours your condition had improved 1000%. You haven’t become a puppy again, but you are able to stand and walk more confidently. It is true that your brain is telling you to turn left but your back legs are a few seconds late in getting the message, but that doesn’t matter. You are happier and my fears for you have been allayed……for the time being.

It is a day by day scenario, Riley dog. I know you won’t be with me for all that much longer, but it’s not your time to go. Not this week.

I won’t let you suffer. I won’t prolong your life out of selfishness. I will look after you until I know that the time to say goodbye is upon us. Until then I will continue to cook your food, pick up your poop and listen to your gentle snores as you sleep on the spare pillow next to me.

You’re my main man. You’re not leaving me yet.

I’m not the only one, surely?

Hands up if you enjoy wandering through cemeteries and looking at the really old grave stones to see the ages at which people died.

Yep. There’s a few of you. I didn’t think that I was alone in this strange habit.

I’m always a bit sad when I see the names of babies or children who died very young, but am accepting of the harsh realities of life back in the 1800’s. Many children didn’t make it through those first few years. Medicine wasn’t like it is these days. Measles or even the flu could kill you back then and those with immature immune systems were easy pickings to these diseases.

Similarly, I am impressed when I see the crumbling grave stone of someone who had lived till their eighties or nineties. Back in the 1800’s and early 1900’s getting to celebrate birthdays past your late sixties was a massive achievement.

I saw a grave stone in the Wellington cemetery that made me stop. It listed the names of five children who died within the space of two weeks in December 1876. A bit of Professor Google tonight and I have discovered that Diphtheria claimed the lives of these poor children, but all I could think about as I stood in front of this marble marker was the unimaginable grief the parents would have endured as their children died one by one.

December 21, December 22, December 28, December 31 and New Years Day January 1st.

Christmas and New Year was never going to be the same for John and Sarah Duff.

How do you move past such an incomprehensible tragedy? The thought of losing my only son almost paralyses me with fear. I don’t know how I would survive without him in my world. How do you even manage to breathe when you lose five children?

But breathe they did. John Duff lived for another twenty-two years. And as for the matriarch, Sarah Duff, she was clearly made of strong stuff. Sarah Duff lived to be nearly 74, dying thirty-five years after her five children.

Just as a side note, I have done a couple of calculations and discovered that Sarah and John may have started their family uncharacteristically late for the era. John Jnr was born when Sarah was 27. Goodness, this makes me want to know more about this family. I now have so many more questions. Was John Jnr the first child? There are four years between Edith and Hannah………were there children or pregnancies between them? Did John and Sarah Duff go on to have more children?

A beard with a story to tell

I met a man today with a most gorgeous beard. It was thick and well-kept and it had the most gorgeous curls in it.

Now I am known for my appreciation of a good beard and/or moustache and I have a Facebook album specially dedicated to them and their ‘owners’, so when I saw this delightful beard I had to take a photo to add to the collection.

While doing this, I got to talking to the man behind the whiskers and I learned that this particular beard has  very sad story behind it. This is a mourning beard. As part of his religious custom he is not supposed to shave for a period of twelve months. In May 2016 both his father and mother passed away, exactly one week apart. They were both in their nineties.

To make this sadness even more intense, his partner had lost his father the week before his own. Three weeks…Three parents. That’s gotta suck.

So in May this year the beard can go…………if he chooses it to. But apparently everyone love it so it just might stay.

I must say, I vote for it to stay.

It makes no sense

Honestly, it makes no sense to me.

All in one year. David Bowie, Glenn Fry, Prince, Leonard Cohen and now George Michael. And they’re just the big ones that I adored.

These are not OLD men.

These are men who have created musical history with their voices, their instrumental skills and their incredible songwriting abilities.

It has been a tough year in the world of music. And there are five days to go. I’m afraid to think about who could be lost between now and midnight December 31.

In the blink of an eye

Vale Annabelle Deall. Your light and life will be sorely missed by all who knew you.

On Saturday night a terrible tragedy occurred which has irrevocably changed the lives of countless people.

One stupid act of testosterone-fuelled bravado has left a beautiful, gentle man without his wife and soul-mate and has robbed four little boys of their passionate and devoted mother.

One young man, who like thousands before him and doubtlessly thousands after him, who believed he was invincible has learned in the hardest way imaginable that invincible he is not and that one’s actions have consequences.

Driving his pride and joy with reckless abandon and no consideration for the rules and speed limits that exist for the safety of all who use the roads. The rules don’t apply to him!! The rules are a joke, devised by stupid old men who want to suck all the fun out of driving a sports car.

This young man knew it all. He knew how to push the boundaries in his car. He knew those roads like the back of his hand. He had years of driving experience under his belt.

He knew nothing.

His life is ruined.

And he killed one of my mums.

Annabelle was taken from her family and friends in the blink of an eye.

Annabelle should be at home tonight filling out the Census form and laughing with her husband at some silly thing the twins did. She should be tucking the four boys into their beds and reading them a story before kissing them goodnight and hoping that they all sleep peacefully. She should be enjoying those precious hours of the evening when the children are in bed and she can sit down, have an adult conversation and drink a whole cup of tea while it is still hot.

But she’s not…………and never will again.

You stupid boy. You might be 22 years old, but you are a boy. And you are a stupid boy. You will be punished by the courts for what you have done, but you will live forever with the knowledge that you killed a woman. You killed a beautiful woman. You killed a mum. Your ego stole a person’s future and destroyed the lives of a good family. You have also destroyed the lives of your own family. You will always be ‘that guy who killed the young mum of four’.

I can only hope that Annabelle’s death creates a conversation between parents and their new drivers at home, be they son or daughter. I hope mums and dads are talking honestly and firmly to their learner drivers and P-platers about how their lives can be changed forever……. in the blink of an eye.

 

 

Weathered and old

One begins to ponder mortality on hearing of the death of someone you once knew.

Tonight I heard of the passing of a man I went to high school with. The first person in our year level to die.

A man the same age as me.

This is a reality check. A reminder that, though I may feel as though I only left school a few years ago, it was 30 years ago that I and my fellow Essendon High School classmates said farewell to our high school years.

This same group of men and women will be turning fifty in the next two and three years. Some of us are parents to young children, others to young adults and even some are enjoying the life of the doting grandparent.

We have lives, jobs, careers, families, pets, responsibilities, futures, plans.

God dammit……………we’re still young!!!

Not one of us ever contemplated that we would be sending condolences to the family of a school mate yet. Not yet. It’s too soon. We’re too young. We haven’t achieved our dreams. We’re still dreaming!!!