4 Months On and Life has REALLY Decided to test my Resolve BIG TIME ….

Wow, what can I say?

It’s been a while since I posted and I’ve been a huge mixture of emotions since then. And if I am honest, I still am.

Sadly, my lovely Dad passed away on the 10th July 2013. We’d had our up’s and down’s that’s for sure! My Mam passed away in December 2002 and that was painful enough in itself, but when my Dad met his second wife, Angela, and moved her in – well the way he went about it all was unforgivable. Nevertheless I opted to try to accept her as my Dad’s new partner – as difficult as I found it. I’m glad now that my Dad had someone with him that he loved when he said “goodbye” to this world and moved on to the next. And actually Angela *is* all right … after all, my Dad chose my Mam, so his judgement can’t be that bad really can it? I am just glad that we had become friends and father/daughter again before he passed.

My husband is very sceptical of having another life from this one, and to some degree so am I, but it is actually quite comforting to think that we don’t just end our lives completely but go on to something better … something more peaceful and relaxed where we can float along in our own little bubble doing all the things that we would have loved to have time to do in our “real” lives ….

My dad had emphysema and congenital heart failure mostly caused by, yes, you guessed it, smoking. Although to be fair he was born with a heart defect (so much so that, when he was born, the doctors – back in the late 40’s you understand – said to his mum (our Nana) that he had no chance of living and that he might as well be “put down” there and then – 64 years on he proved them wrong didn’t he?!!! – but what a shocking attitude back then!) – so smoking wasn’t entirely to blame, but his cause of death was ischemic heart failure – basically furring of the arteries, so much so that the blood flow to his heart was restricted. I guess you could say he died of a “broken” heart.

It is certain for sure that he never got over losing Mam … even Angela acknowledged and accepted that … but she always says that is, for her, what made him a man. I guess it takes some kind of woman to step into those shoes.

I have found this time quite stressful and upsetting. To lose your second parent is distressing. At the funeral, most of my family were there … and they all smoke … every single one of them – I went outside to find them all puffing away like chimneys. Why don’t people learn from these situations? … it’s almost like “It will never happen to them” … well let me tell you, it can and there is every chance that it will.

Seeing my poor old Dad, traipsing up the stairs to the loo several times in a short space of time, due to the water tablets he was on to control the fluid on his lungs, and then coming down and hardly being able to breathe or walk … I don’t EVER want my children to see me like that. Not EVER. It’s frightening and I really wish my husband could’ve seen it so that he could see how debilitating smoking really is. Because yes, he still smokes. This also distresses me considerably.

Regardless of that, and despite what I have been through recently, I am proud to be here, still an ex-smoker – still to have not touched one nicotine-dripping, cancer-causing, heart-attacking fag … despite all of the shit I have gone through and the grief that some people continue to put me through, I am still here and still doing it …. and fuck the rest of them. I’m doing this for me and my kids – and to show my Dad that I can learn from him and live our lives better and healthier. These things are what are important in my life and me being here for my kids is what matters.