overlap

I've been not posting much for a little bit - partly because I've been busy getting on with stuff, and partly because there's no easy way to get into it. Read on at your own peril. It's no secret in certain circles that my connections with my family are limited, and that that is a matter of my own happy choice these days. Nevertheless, and however natural it may be for parents to die, I can hardly describe this as a great fun time. This is the end of a period of prolonged hospitalisation at the end of years of illness, and the natural, inevitable conclusion despite the efforts of many medical professionals who've done the best they could, so it's hardly unexpected or surprising news, and I'm fortunate to have had plenty of time to get used to what's been coming for quite a while. It speaks for itself that I'm here posting about it rather than with people somewhere else, and that's something I make no apology for. I can't say that I'd recommend it, but I can say that I've known what I'm doing and what the likely consequences of decisions I've taken were and despite the opportunities to change my mind, I haven't done so. I made my peace some years ago, and as I think I noted on here at the time, circumstances worked out a couple of months ago that I was able to make a brief hospital visit, which was my first time in contact in person for something over two years. The world can judge me as harshly as it sees fit, but I don't feel I need to defend a preference for having left it at seeing a fairly perky person having one of his better days rather than put myself through witnessing the gradual decline into someone barely there and machine-operated. That last visit upset me enough as it is, and utterly selfish as it may seem, I'm just not prepared to put myself through all the other stuff that inevitably goes with the usual obligations at such times. I'll be judged a bad son for not being there, just as I'll be judged a bad person for not making the funeral but I'm not about to start worrying about anyone else's approval. As it works out I won't be in the country in any case, but the truth is that I'll make my own commemoration in my own time, and in my own way. For now it's enough to mourn for a little boy who couldn't finish a packet of sweets without leaving one on the window sill for his father when he got in from work. We stopped being those people a long time ago, but tonight perhaps it doesn't quite feel like it.