AUTHOR'S CORNER;

THE TRUE REALITY OF IT...

WARNING; THIS BLOG MAY BE SLIGHTLY DARK, QUITE DEEP AND AT BEST DEPRESSING.

I started off my birthday with a sudden and rude realisation of my own mortality.  It's personal, I can't really say, except that someone very close to me, someone whom I thought would always be there, always see me through life, always hold my hand and be my rock, has fallen very ill.  I am a writer and I can only write about things that touch me, and this my dear readers has hit the core of my very being.  You see that someone was the person who has always been there, the person who has always comforted me, held my hand, taught me how to ride my first bike and saw me through happy times and sad times.  This person was the guy who held me tight, wrapped up inside his 1970's fur coat as he sat me through my first Frankenstein movie at the tender age of six.  He was the guy who threw snowballs at me, chased me round the park, let me ride behind him on his moterbike and taught me how to fight like a boy! The person I loved, who loved me back, the person whose love was so strong that it was always easy to sometimes hate and know that he would never, ever hate you back!  My dad.

It is never easy seeing the rock in your life crumble, never easy to understand how someone so tall, so strong and so wise can be reduced down to a hospital bed and helpless expression on his face, tearful eyes and there is nothing you can do about it.  

It is life; I know it is inevitable for parents to get old, ill and perish, it's just we never really think they will!  They have always been there, strong, decisive and caring and it is difficult to imagine them any other way.  

But as I held his frail hand and looked into his eyes, I realised that life is but a short fuse that passes us by with no second chances; once the fuse blows, it blows!  I realised that time wasted is time never regained and there is never any going back.  The person I took for granted, loved for granted, is in trouble and all the times I promised to phone, visit, take him out, are no longer available within my grasp. The moments we spend being too busy, are the only moments we ever have, the rest... the rest never comes, because in reality there is always a tomorrow that will never come!

Guilty?  Yes, I am.  Sad, very.  Because I thought I had all the time in the world; that is what I was promised when I was born, or at least that's what it seemed like.  He is stable, but has a long road to recovery.  Suddenly that soap on t.v. isn't so important, the fact that it's cold outside or I have to write my next novel, all seem futile and stupid excuses made in a moment of selfishness.  

For each heartbeat, each beep from the monitor represents a memory, a moment spent in my childhood; the six foot Christmas tree, the broken bike he found and we fixed up together, the shopping trips down the market and the roller blading in Hyde Park!  Each beep from that monitor is a phone call missed. a promise broken, a "I'll come round soon" excuse I made, thinking that I had forever!  

It is a sad fact that each middle aged adult learns the hard way, parents will never ever be there forever...it could take only a breeze, a sullen southern wind, or a blink of an eye for the hands of fate to reach out and grab them away!  I pray he gets better, so that I could actually see through all those broken promises I once made!