No Ordinary Bloke...

I have spent so much of my time blogging about the Squeeze; his horrendous kid who needs a back hander across a room; and his hairy arm pitted hillbilly ex-wife who mistakenly believes she is God – so much so that I wonder now that this is no longer a factor of my life, what the hell I am going to write about…

Obviously, life goes on; so maybe I will just document where I am at for a while and see where it takes me.

Perhaps not ideally, I have a great amount of thinking time at present.   I am off work.  My dad is dying and I am struggling to understand how the world can work without him. Hell, I struggled to even type that line.

Part of me knows that I should be content to some degree.  He has had a lifetime of love with a family who adore him and he will go out without this awful pain in the heart that I have… Of losing someone you can’t imagine a life without.

But knowing that… Understanding the words and feeling it are two completely different things…

In some ways, the Dad lottery really is just that.  A lottery.  The Squeeze’s dad had a penchant for marrying and breeding.  Sadly, most of his life it seemed he would marry and breed and then move on; more than likely not pausing to divorce before the next marriage and breeding began.  And he wouldn’t go back.  It was abandon the kids and keep moving.  In some ways, that goes a long way to explain the hook the Harridan uses to gouge the Squeeze’s eyes out, the “you are just like your father” line.   She has the way to rip his soul out down to a fine art.

For me, I come from the opposite end of the spectrum.  You can get the deadbeat Dad that the Squeeze had, or you can get the Dad that I was lucky enough to get.  For my whole life, I knew that no matter what time, what was happening or what I had done – I could call my Dad and he would come get me, fix it or bury it.  He did the same for my kids.  He is one of the good guys.  A true gentleman who loves and protects his family.

And I’m doing it tough at the moment.  I have basically spent the day crying from 7.30am until now, 11.30pm.  I’ve burst into tears at a meeting and left work to drive down the coast and have breakfast with my family; just so that I could spend time and then go see my Dad.  I see glimmers of the person he is inside, but mostly; I see how weary he is. And I feel selfish coming home to cry and wish for him to rally again; stare death down as he has so many other times. 

And part of me feels lost.  An alien in my skin.

I have been abandoned by the person that I believed loved me.  He would say this is about his kid; but considering I was giving up 4 days a week for the kid, I’m not sure what else I had to give.  I’ve only got one heart and liver; after all.

In the end, how could he be anywhere but by my side..? And it is with that thought that I realise that he has always been emotionally absent when I needed him.