Sunday 10th October – It’s a week since my siblings and me bode the familial matriarch a tearful farewell. At this time last Sunday after mum’s passed I was utterly numb. A time existing in a dazed cloud exacerbated by the previous three days of sleep deprivation while being sustained by sandwiches and stolen slices…
Tag: grief
Canine Therapy
In an highly emotive and sad week, they were the first tears of joy I’d witnessed for a while. The water welling in my little lab/retriever buddy Coco’s eyes those borne from sampling the Guinness Beef Casserole I’d made for her mum Sam and my tea. My canine chum’ll admittedly trough anything and, if truth…
She Was Beautiful
Seconds after our mother’s final breath the song Cavatina’s opening lyrics “She was beautiful. Beautiful to my eyes….” played out on my sister Helen’s Chill Music playlist. Although not planned, this coincidence providing a fitting commentary to not only how our newly deceased mother comported herself throughout her life, but also how Maggie conducted her…
Thoughts From The Care Home
As I begin this chronicle I’ve just returned into my mothers care home room after vacating it while nurses undertook the matriarch’s personal care. While standing out in the corridor, adjacent to Maggie’s chamber, Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s emotive hymn Pie Jesu played out from a neighbouring resident’s room. The refrain’s celestial nature, incorporating prayers to a…
Settling In
My mum seems to’ve settled nicely into the care home she moved into late on Friday. Her transition from the hospital to what’ll be her final residence not going as smoothly as the family would’ve liked, but she finally got admitted at around 7.20pm. As the Better Late Than Never Society are fond of reminding…
Still Centre Stage
Around midday yesterday the opening verse of Jimmy Osmond’s 1972 hit ‘Long Haired Lover From Liverpool’ rang out in a West Yorkshire hospital ward for elderly ladies. Although memory didn’t afford its performers with full lyric recollection any voids were filled with chirpy and reasonably melodic “La, la, la.” substitutes. What the room’s other five…
House of Straw
Circumstances of recent days have dictated I’ve had neither the time or inclination to pen a blog of late; and with far greater events requiring my attention, if truth be told, that lack of inclination still lingers large. In fact, the only reason I’ve chosen to chronicle current life events is as a distraction from…
Plea For Delay
In lockdown, to continue revisiting some of the 60-70 poems written in summer 2017 (don’t worry I’m not gonna post them all!), I present prose penned to a higher being, pleading my moribund father be granted more familial time. Who that being was/is I don’t know. But regardless if it was one of the Holy…
Woodhouse Man
You may argue you’ve suffered enough during the COVID lockdown without yours truly starting to subject you to a selection of the eighty or so poems I penned in 2017. Although, not exclusively relating to the old man, this prose written during the last few months of my father’s life in 2017. A dreadful landscape…