The other night I was driving through the town my grandparents lived in when I was a kid. I had to hear No Love really, really loudly before I went to bed. It just helps. So I park in this street, start blasting it, and see three junkies walking across the street. The physical world belongs to junkies and old people. There's nobody else left.
Decided to listen to their droning, ridiculous conversations so I open the door a crack. Couldn't catch what they were saying, looked ... one of them was running across the road straight towards me. I SLAM my door. It takes a lot for me to feel scared.
We sat there looking at each other for a bit, deciding our next move. Suddenly I remember that while he's living this pathetic existence with the pants hanging out of his jeans, I am now respectable and have three tonnes of hulking metal wrapped around me. I turned my headlights on high beam, straight into his face. Then I start my car and drove off, nice and slow.
My niece Billie is eight years old - a most talented, true artist. She drew this self-portrait immediately after my sister told how how very sick grandad was. It isn't even some of her best work ... I just love her awareness of her own sadness. Despondently holding her own get well card. Crying a literal pool of tears .. the almost manga-like eyes. Matted hair. Her grief is a fluid, moving thing.
This past week we have all watched as my mother and Jim have spectacularly downsized their dreams. From a much-anticipated trip to Ireland, to maybe a cruise, to realising he might not make it out of hospital. One day I'll make an appointment with Jim's doctor, for a friendly chat about how he kept sending Jim back home to battle unknown cancer by himself late at night when only a shower would relieve his pain. No the doctor didn't know, but he kept dismissing Jim and my lord I cannot wait to dismiss him.
I believe whole-heartedly in revenge.
Jim is on steady doses of morphine.
Max: "Mum, who's your favourite dad?"
Me: "Jim."
Rocco, rolling eyes: "Is grandad STILL sick?"
Somebody well-meaning gave him a sympathy card instead of a get-well card and he just smiled. We're all very familiar with the hospital cafe menu. I have not paid for my hospital car parking once since I've been here because I like to live dangerously any way I can. REBEL I TELL YOU. I'm deeply troubled. Pretty sure my sisters are too. Something deep and unnameable in us, getting uncovered again. We'll be ok one day. Today is not that day.
Trying to wear the world as a loose garment but I want to strap something on and go head-to-head with the person in charge of biopsy results because we still don't know, won't know for days yet and Rome is burning. I haven't been home in weeks. I'm going to try salvage some school holidays with my boys this week. Maybe take some winter beach shots, get them haircuts and catch a movie.
Buy a fucking fiddle.
Don't know if we can ever thank the nurses in the cancer ward adequately. Nurses are the most important part of the hospital. I walked past a doctor circle jerk last night and almost stopped to compare penis sizes but I was too busy. (I would have won.)
Biding with my mother. She is a warrior. I'm exactly like her and never knew until this week. I love her. One day I'll take her away from all this shit and we'll go to a country we've never been before. She's a thrillseeker too.
She leaves for the hospital early every morning and gets home late every night. After dinner and a chat she's straight onto her computer. Very first thing she does is check my blog. Then her Facebook ... she sniffs around my sisters, brother, her friends from work. She retired last week.
Before she goes to bed she might play some lame Bejewelled Blitz, wakes up the next day and does it all again. She calls Jimmy her soulmate. He is. She is slowly making her way through the comments on my last post. She'll be reading them over and over for months, man do I thank you for that gift. So much, Computer.
The only reason I'm writing this is to give her something new to read.
Yesterday Jim grabbed my hands and told me he was proud of me. I never realised that before.
I apologised for my entire twenties and he told me he wanted to kick my arse .. "But you came good in the end, didn't you love."
The other week, Redundant Mother gave me this.
She made it using my words at the end of this post.
One of my goals is to perfectly rap Eminem's part in No Love but sadly I don't know that I ever could. That shit's QUICK.
I need to get some more goals, and I need to do them with a sense of urgency.
So do you.
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Write to be understood, speak to be heard. - Lawrence Powell