The Ties That Bind

Sometimes perspective is subtly gained, and other times it crashes into view and simply obliterates the previous mode of thinking. The hospital which has been its stage - and my home - for the last week is a master of shifting attitudes; an arena so cacophonous with extremes of emotion that few are seldom fixed.

Being quite experienced in pain and complexity, I've struggled much less with the physical reality of this current unwellness than I have with some of the wider questions it has thrown into my path. The now-unavoidable gastric surgery carries with it substantial risks to fertility, the extent of which I am only just beginning to explore with the help of relevant specialists from the field.

Suddenly finding myself asking very big questions about my future has been made particularly jarring because I had never given much thought to it before. My mother was in her late 30s when she became a parent, and even as a child I had always presumed that the same would be true of me. As ever greater numbers of my peers have begun to have families of their own, and the quantity of nieces and nephews I've amassed threatens to overwhelm the world supply of Jelly Tots, I still felt under no pressure to consider my own reproductive responsibilities. It was a question for another time, another decade. Something that seemed so abstract and far away, and felt almost ridiculous to ruminate upon seriously when it was so far from being relevant.

It is a theme repeated, I suppose, by couples everywhere who find themselves actually having to think about fertility. It's an aspect of our health we take for granted in a more absolute, evolutionary sense than we might any other, and do not test until it fails us. I had been as naive as anyone, never questioning my ability to have a child of my own, and indeed focused more on the rights and responsibilities afforded me not to get pregnant than anything else.

Much as I adore the cheeky, sticky, noisy, lovable riot of children to whom I am Auntie, I have been perfectly content to postpone any thought of adding to that brood myself. I'm not the type who coos and clucks over other people's babies, and don't have much experience entertaining children. This awkwardness led to a general assumption that I am not a very natural mother and a much more intuitive Wicked Queen. (It may also have something to do with the tiara, but I still deny responsibility for those poisoned apples.)

Despite the teasing, I don't think I had really given the concept of motherhood much thought at all until I was twenty. When my grandfather died it was earth-shattering, but somewhere amidst the shock and the grief and the pain was a strange kinship and familiarity. That moment of devastation linked me to the past in a way nothing could have done before. The loss of that great man and all that he was to us, and the staggering realisation that from that point on he could be only a memory, was when it all fell into place. I have referred to it since as my "circle of life moment", because I knew, there and then, that our lives have power and purpose simply because we share them. As I felt both the privilege and the loss of having been loved so much by someone I so admired, I recognised my place in the order of things in a way I had not done before. I wasn't just a daughter, or a granddaughter, I was a link in a chain that stretched back generation after generation, and - most startlingly - would reach out just as far into the future too.

I've touched on the significance of that moment before, but have found myself remembering it so much more acutely in the shadow of this latest news. As I indulged the self-pity and allowed myself to sink a little deeper into what was becoming quite a comfortable sulk,  my whinge was interrupted by a whisper.

"Please let me go. Tell the children that I love them, but they must let me go."

An elderly lady in a bed across the ward is receiving only palliative care, and her lucidy drifts somwhere between remarkably keen and hopelessly lost, never certain which is cruellest. Tonight she has called alternately for her children, and her parents, earnestly seeking the comfort of those greatest loves as her life begins its end.

Her family is large and caring, guilty only in their eagerness to cherish the moments of respite from distress, despite - and because of - their rarity. It is impossible to watch life unfolding and untangling itself at such close hand without realising how small a part we each play. How insignificant the knots are in which we find ourselves tied, time and again, until there is no time. No "again". It isn't blood she calls to, or to which they cling, it's bond. A bond formed by loving as deeply, resolutely, and fearlessly as family demands, but which is not exclusive to genetics. It's the quality of the relationships that surround her which have brought the greatest joy to know, and are causing the most pain to leave, not their heritage.

As the spectre of their loss calls to the ghosts of mine, I find myself so very grateful for those in my life whom I would be most loathe to leave, family and friends, and equilibrium begins to restore. It's hard to be too dedicatedly self-pitying in the face of so much love, and life, and potential for more of the same. I may not know what shape my future will take, or how far it may deviate from the course I'd expected, but in this moment it is enough to possess the luxury of time to find out.

As the last of the ward lights are dimmed and the day's visitors reduced to a cluster of empty chairs, so she whimpers to the night and asks it to take her; eased of the pain her illness delivers but wracked with the agony she knows awaits them. She quietly asks the nurse if she can have something to cuddle, and they give her a pillow. As she falls asleep with it cradled tightly to her chest my heart breaks for far worthier tragedies than my own, but this single bed has never felt quite so vast.

Tomorrow's Yesterdays

Today would be my late grandfather's 73rd birthday. I've been contemplating what to write here for a couple of weeks now and as yet am still as clueless as I was then. It's not because I'm short of wonderful memories or amusing anecdotes. On the contrary, if you want the sort of melodramatic, heartbreaking tales of courage, dignity and love that will single-handedly resurrect the economy via sales of Kleenex, then I have several. He starred in many a story during his lifetime, and all who knew him have accounts worthy of retelling.

I just can't decide which to relay here, now, knowing that so many of you are so far removed from the world he inhabited – and have such limited reason to care about the moments I hold dear. I'm also a victim of my appalling memory. It isn't that I forget things – more that they lose themselves in my brain. I'm often moved to liken it to an attic; an overlooked space housing far too much junk, leaving sentimental treasures and the echoes of past lives hidden beneath more trivial pursuits. …Or, as in the case of our own attic, actual Trivial Pursuit. It was a small yellow box with a dinosaur on the side, and 'Trivial Pursuit' scrawled on the lid in a bright red font. This illustrates nicely how my mind provides shelter for so much inconsequential nonsense that it is – understandably – difficult to separate coherent bits of anything else without assistance. No doubt later today will provide opportunity for such discourse, as various members of the family commemorate the date in whichever way comforts them the most.

This year his absence is almost more striking than ever, as (for perhaps the first time since his death) there are clear signs that life's moving forward without him. Over the coming months I'm to be both an aunt and a bridesmaid, as my sister sees fit to breed and my father is getting married. Each of us has – in one way or another – rediscovered our course in the world without the security of the guiding hand he provided, which is as upsetting as it is a welcome relief from the limbo inhabited by the recently-bereaved.

I remember when he died, thinking even then that I couldn't possibly imagine the grander moments in my life occurring without him there to enjoy it, and claim his right to be proud of the adult who emerged from the childhood he so greatly influenced. The goals he set for his final days following the terminal cancer diagnosis were to reach his 70th birthday; celebrate his 50th wedding anniversary; and see-in my 21st. The last of those was the only he didn't quite manage, and is probably the reason my contemplation drifted in the direction it did at the time. Marriage, children – or even just celebrating the legality and chronological-significance of becoming twenty-one – seemed incomprehensible. I couldn't imagine ever welcoming anyone into the family, truly accepting them as "one of us", if they didn't know Grandad. It seemed inconceivable that subsequent generations (and/or members) of the clan would know of him only through the photographs and stories that were the only way my own great-grandfather was brought to life for me.

And yet, here we are, entering what will soon be the third year without him, and those things which appeared to be so impossible are as real and as marvellous as he would have wished them to be. Perhaps the additions to the family never will feel as if they knew him; the important thing is that we did. His strength, loyalty, and humour infused us all. The people who become a part of our world will – unknowingly – reap the rewards of his character (as well as be infuriated by the inherited flaws, which present as various mixtures of vanity [me], determination [Dad], bullish self-assurance [Auntie Sue], and stubbornness [all of us]). The more recent branches of the family tree may never be wholly familiar with the man we loved, but they validate the life he lived and the family he raised with such unswerving dedication because they love the people he made us.

That's an awful lot of nothing for someone who has typed this much and still feels lacking in a place to start, but is – I think – mention enough for today. It won't be too sad a time, because there’s little to be truly mournful of when I know he'd have loved Sam and Lee, and would have adored having the girls around as much as he enjoyed it when we were little. I have no doubt that overall he'd be happy for all of us, so while it’s always an emotional day, it won’t be one filled with too much regret.

Mind you, I also think he would have been the most likely to drop my sister's baby, and the first to make a "third time lucky" joke at Dad's wedding, so maybe it was a good job we had him cremated when we did…


Happy Birthday Grandad.

(Embarrassing photo's courtesy of 1989)