Dad's renewal forms for his membership at the golf club came through last week - and he's not renewing. So for the first time in my lifetime Dad won't be a member of a golf club. When mum told me we sat and shed tears together - the stark reality that he's not going to be well enough again to play golf - is almost more painful than the concept that we're going to lose him soon. This is so real.
Such a little thing that represents so much more.. the first outward sign that this battle is being lost and the light of hope is dimming.
Before i knew about this Dad and I had been out for a drive,it was a sunny spring day, the hood was down on the car and i couldn't help think that this time last year he was fighting fit and seemed immortal. As we drove past the Golf Club he just said very quietly 'One of my greatest regrets is that i won't play again'....it made me realise that the cheesy epithet 'live each day as though it were your last' were so true - there's a random game of golf that he played last August before he fell ill with a 'chest infection' that will live on as his last game of golf. At the time it was 'just another game' - i have no idea who he played with, or how he played .... but that one was the last one he played ..... this was before i knew about the membership - oh how painful that must have felt for him.
40 odd years of playing golf - brilliantly and badly - all over the world... and one day last august he played a casual game with some mates (oh i do hope he was playing with people he liked!!) .... and that was it - the end of his game. I won't play with him again ... i hardly really played with him much... last time was when i lived in the South of France, he played really badly and i played way better than someone who's never really committed to playing regularly deserves to... it makes me laugh now because for 'our last game' it wasn't the most relaxed of affairs ( at one point his putter almost went into a lake!!!!)
Gradually his conversations are littered with references to his mortality ... 'I should give you my .......' is becoming a frequent comment - and then he drifts off into a quiet land of thoughts ....
Mum and i closed in together tonight, it's been a tough tough week for her, the golf club is one of many steps that are outwardly stating that this fight is slowly being lost... we just sat and wept for a while..... and then stopped... and hung out with dad watching tv... it comes in waves this sense of loss - sometimes little ones - but this weekend feels like a little tsunami has hit this precious home.
Dear ones - i never meant this to be the role of this space... but i find the writing so cathartic ... may the daffodils open soon and the spring winds blow in some new hope...
A la prochaine xxx
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