Regret…

I am one of those people who regrets nothing, or at least very little in my life. All the choices that I made led me to where I am now.

Except that I am now sitting with a massive regret.

Let’s have a history lesson first… In May 1999, I started a new job in Salford. Nothing particularly regretful about that, other than I had moved from Sheffield. Actually, that’s a small fib. I spent the first month commuting, which was horrendous. I moved in around July.

I moved to get away from my first husband. He was abusive, luckily never physically, but mentally, he was cruel and sophisticated in his abuse. It was never done in public; no one ever saw him at his ‘best’. When I made that trip over the Pennines, I expected to be here for a couple of years, then come back home to Sheffield.

Except that never happened.

I stayed. I moved to Trafford, and bought a big house (as an investment) and never thought any more of it… Until four years ago.

In August 2021, my Dad was diagnosed with stage four cancer.

It had spread. The shoulder injury people thought was tendon-related was actually cancer that had spread into his bone, and he’d got a permanent fracture. He also had some spots in his lungs.

Hearing that the man you love more than any other has cancer is bad enough. But to be told that the only option was radiotherapy and that he would have ‘a good quality of life’ is like the biggest kick in the teeth ever. I wanted them to fix him. I wanted him to be OK.

The 50 miles back home to Chesterfield might as well have been the other side of the universe.

Dad said he was going to fight, and by god, he did.

This is the man who was knocked off a motorbike at 17. He made a mess of his left hip. So much so, they tried to fuse it and pin it. Eventually, in 1977, at the age of 30, he had a hip replacement. Then, after a fall at work, he had another, same side, in 1992/93. The second hip joint went all the way down his femur. He wouldn’t be able to have another on that side.

Eventually, his right knee gave in, so that was replaced. Finally, his left one gave up too, and that was replaced – no easy surgery there, they had just centimetres to play with.

People love Iron Man, don’t they? My Dad was literally made of the toughest stuff ever.

Last week, my Dad lost his fight.

He’d been getting worse for some time. The hospice nurses had said that they thought he was slowly deteriorating. But I am always that person, the one, despite mental health issues, who was positive. My Dad would bloody fight, and he would be ok.

Except he wasn’t.

On the 6th July, I got a call from Mum saying that he was now on end-of-life care and that the palliative team didn’t think he would make the following weekend.

Except this is my Dad. He’s made of tough stuff, remember?

I went to see him. He looked older than I remembered. He was lying in bed, and somehow, when I sat next to him, I felt at peace.

I never feel at peace.

My brain is like a washing machine on spin all the time. Even when I meditate, I still don’t feel peace. There is always something whizzing around in there. Except I had peace, for those few minutes, it was like the world had ceased to trouble me.

I spoke to the Macmillan nurse, and she said that he’d definitely not last long, that they would make sure he was comfortable and in no pain.

I drove home that afternoon thinking I’d not see him again.

The drive over the A623 is a good one. I am my Dad’s daughter in that I love a good drive, and if I had the balls, it would be on a motorbike. But perhaps that is for another day…

I made that journey a few more times. Every time it felt harder and harder. Until the last time, when we didn’t have a conversation, it was just glances between sleeping.

He was given more and more drugs to keep him comfortable. Less than a week turned into just under three weeks.

My Dad never did as he was told.

He was written off at school, left with no qualifications, but he ended up being the head of a laboratory for an engineering company. He had a horrendous childhood, but his bicycle and then his motorbike became his freedom. The accident changed the trajectory of his life and meant that I came into the world.

My Dad gave me my love of cars and bikes, my love of car chases (especially stuff like The Cannonball Run), and a love of his nigh on encyclopedic knowledge of Monty Python sketches. The list could go on.

The biggest thing he gave me? I am tough. Not just the refusal to take painkillers unless it’s really bad, he did that too, but also the fact that no matter how much you try and bring me down, I will bounce back.

And now, as I sit here, not feeling the slightest bit of bounce, my biggest regrets are that I didn’t move back home and that when my Mum texted me at 18:52 on 24/07 to say she’d be late calling because he wasn’t good, I didn’t go home right away.

Because I could have got home to see him one more time. Sadly, life doesn’t work like that. We can’t go back. We can’t change time.

At 20:40, my Dad decided it was time to go.

I don’t blame him. He’d fought most of his life in one way or another, and I am glad that he has found some peace. I like to think that he’s somewhere where he can ride a motorbike again. He’s there with my Nan (mum’s mum) and his Uncle Dennis. There’s probably some fish and chips, and he’s definitely playing some ZZ Top.

The hole he has left will never be filled. And whilst grief is the most horrendous experience I’ve ever had, I know that I want to do something positive with this.

I don’t know what it looks like. Right now, it’s about expressing how I feel. Like mental health, we talk very little about how the loss of a loved one affects us. I feel that I need to use my willingness to share (some think I overshare) to help others make sense of a time that makes no sense.

All emotions are valid, and grief most definitely is not linear. Literally one minute, I am laughing thinking about his exasperation when he was trying to teach me to ride my bike, the next I am crying because I can’t just call him to ask him what the best paint is or something crazy like that.

I miss you Dad…