I'd love to think I could be even just a little like her in my final years - still attending educational courses, travelling and embracing new technology into her early 90s and keeping healthy and youthful until very recently. Funerals are so hard, aren't they, and this will be no exception, especially as I feel desperately sad for the husband she leaves behind - my dad's brother. In recent years, I've seen more of him than I have my father. And this is where it gets weird and is the reason I feel the need to write something here... because my dad may be at the funeral too...
So, I was trying to work out how many times in total I've seen my father since he and my mum divorced around 35 years ago... There can't have been more than about a dozen occasions and the last time was around 2005. He lives the other side of the country, frequently forgets my birthday (as he did again this year); he's only phoned a handful of times and then only when there's been big news (like when he was getting married!) Oh and one time to ask if I could record something off the telly for him when he was at a conference in Japan.... that may not sound so odd until you know that it was completely out of the blue - we hadn't been in touch for a couple of years beforehand and I didn't know he was in Japan. So our relationship seems pretty non-existent. I know that on paper, or in the eyes of anyone more judgmental, it might seem like he's not a good father, yet I feel the need to explain that he is a good man - he's just, well I don't know, but I think perhaps he has a degree of Asperger's. He's highly intelligent, something of a mathematical genius in fact (god knows where those genes went - down the back of the sofa?) and I know he has a kind heart and a very gentle nature. He's just 'different' - and I really don't think he knows how to 'be' when it comes to interacting with his two daughters. I simply think that we are not a part of his world, but - and it's difficult to explain - there is nothing deliberate or harsh about that, it's just the way it is.
Anyway, I'm just airing this now because tonight I'm full of so many mixed emotions at the thought of seeing him, particularly on such a sad occasion, that I'm already steeling myself for it. I may report back, or I may not - but I've realised that however bizarre and confusing it might be, I actually really do want him to be at the funeral, because I don't want the next time I see him to be at his.
