10 Years

[anthraxia]

So today was the 10th anniversary of my father's death from Non-Hodgekins Lymphoma. In some ways, it feels like such a long time; in other ways, it still feels like I last spoke to him only a few days ago.

I've spent a chunk of today reflecting on the last decade of my life - what has changed, what has stayed the same. When Dad died, Drakey and I were at the start of our relationship, my mother Denise was alive, healthy and cancer-free, my maternal Grandmother had yet to suffer her first stroke, I was living in Melbourne and seriously considering opening a bookstore in Footscray, my paternal grandfather, Poppa, had died only 10 weeks before from pancreatic cancer, my social life was pretty stale but my work life was great.


Today:

• Drakey and my relationship died the death 7 years ago, although we are still good friends. He's in another serious relationship that I thoroughly approve of and hope succeeds long term now they are finally living together in the same state. Me? Single, not wild about it, in love with someone in another country with all the problems that entails (hence single, not long-distance relationship.) Very concious of the biological tick tick tick, and that the clock is going to stop in a very few years. Wrapping my head around potentially never having children is not succeeding too well. I'm not obsessing about it, I'm just having a very hard time making that seem real.
• Denise died of endometrial cancer nearly 4 years ago and that specter of genetically-linked cancer is the ghost on the edge of my conciousness.  Another thing I struggle to make seem real. Denial is not a healthy place to be.
• Grandma died over a year ago after nearly a decade of her mind and body slowly degrading from multiple strokes, complicated by a lifetime of heavy smoking. My uncle Brian gave up his nursing career and most of his social life to care for her, and he's still catching up with his own life since her death. I did what little I could to support him, but the truth is he carried most of the burden, especially after Denise died. For me, it's a complicated, emotional subject but there is one thing I am sure of - we treat carers like shit in this country and our government completely ignores both how much their labour is worth and how much support - physical, emotional and mental - that they need and absolutely do not get. 
• I've lived in Canberra and then moved back to my childhood home in Adelaide, in the house I have now inherited, with all the responsibilities and costs that owning a 100 year old home brings, as well as all the financial freedom owning my home debt-free brings. The fact that I am debt-free and don't pay rent means I can live without having to work full-time. The fact that Denise didn't leave a will (or at least not that I can find) makes things bloody annoying, even though I am her only heir (and the one she certainly intended to receive all her property.)
• Thoughts of the bookshop are long gone, though every so often I think "what if" about how my life would be different if that was something I had done. But the last two months has been spent getting a small business off the ground, and the chance of making a frugal living from writing is (scarily) an option. Not an easy one, and one fraught with odds not in my favour, but an option.
• My Nanna is still alive, and will celebrate her 90th birthday in a few days' time. She seems tinier than I remember, she's slowly going blind and losing her hearing, but she's still independent and determined to live in her own home. I joked recently that we'd throw a big party for her 100th birthday, and she laughed and said "I hope not." I understood - it's not the party, it's the living to 100. I see her weekly, with an ongoing project to scan all the family photos and record her memories of who the people in them are, how they relate to us, when they were taken. Because when she's gone, that's it, there will be no one else to tell us. When I was growing up, there were a dozen or so people who were my unofficial family, the friends my grandparents had known from their earliest days in Adelaide, the people who watched my father and his siblings grow up and then my generation. Nanna confirmed today at lunch that only two of those people, a married couple, were still alive, and both were so frail they were effectively housebound and she simply didn't see them any more. While Nanna does still have an active social life, I know she misses those friends who knew Poppa, who knew her children and grandchildren as people, not just people she talked about. Both her brothers and all her step-siblings are gone; she is very conscious of being the last of her generation. It's hard for me to admit without getting teary, but I have to acknowledge that she is ready to die. She's not waiting for it, or wanting it to happen, but she is expecting it and is ready. I'm not. When Nanna dies, the last of my ancestors I have personal knowledge of will be gone. Selfishly I want her to live for another 10 years or more.
• My social life? Has the option to be insane. Protectively, I keep it largely segregated and deliberately restrict it. I've become frustrated by the difficulty I have spending time with certain friends I want to see more, and conversely extremely irritated by the people I see regularly but don't feel like I want to be friends with any more. Part of that is simply time commitments, part of that is transport issues. I'm seriously considering buying a car - but that requires getting my driver's licence and I hate driving. I got my motorcycle licence at 17; I hate that in a car I can't see anything! I'm in a box, I'm confined, I can't move and see with the same ease I can on a bike. So... we shall see. But I've been looking at the people in my life and I'm slowly feeling more comfortable with pruning out the people that make me unhappy. Not entirely possible - the world will always hold twats - but I don't have to put up with crap from people who call themselves my friend but who don't treat me like one. This is harder than you would think.
• Work - well, yes. Uni study will continue, but part time. Work and money - scary, scary scary, because I have so many options on how to live without working full time. Really, really scary. Lots I still need to do to get that solid and reliable, but it's there. Wrapping my head around not working 50+ hours just to keep my head above water, or living on the poverty line on a student's income, is an interesting experience.

So, ten years. So much has changed, so much is still the same. I STILL hate doing the dishes. I still hate Valentine's Day and refuse to acknowledge it as anything other than money-grubbing cynicism and crass emotional blackmail. And I still miss Dad.