I am 51 years old now. That is incredible to realize. It's exciting to be this age and final to be this age. And strange to be this age with a young family where I feel so much like a young Mum. I have an 11 year old, a 9 year old and a 4 year old. I didn't realize it but I was a 1 in 1000 chance to get pregnant with Gabrielle my youngest daughter. Wow naievety and just going along for the ride (so to speak) are amazing gifts to have and of course I was just so dam lucky. So here I am reinventing myself again. Living in the country for the past 10 years after a great career in teaching and singing and travelling the world and now I am loving it all over again. Which makes me think that I will keep on reinventing myself at the different ages and each will be great. Still your own mortality looms like the people on 'Logan's Run' you know that green light will turn on one day and your number will be up.
My father died when I was 10 so I know the 'impermanence of life' to quote K.D. Lang (another of my favourite singers- forgot to mention her). I remember going up to communion in Mass and each time just saying that prayer in my head...'please God let Dad get better....I never thought it would happen. I guess when you are ten you believe in the possibilities of life and you don't know as much about death if you have been brought up in a happy family environment as I was. I didn't know what I could do for my Dad as he lay in that bed in their room day after day and I decided that I would tickle his feet. So I was the little girl that sat on the chair at the end of my Dad's bed each day and just tickled his feet. It probably became irritating but he never said. I remember the day he asked me to come and lay down next to him. He wanted me to lie on his outstretched arm and cuddle into him but he was so wasted by that stage that I held myself kind of up off of him in a half lying half suspended kind of way. He told me that he was going to die and he wanted me to take care of my younger brothers and sisters. I started to cry and right at that moment where we were about to share something so poignant my mother knocked on the door and said in a low voice...'Des, Larry Holmes is here to see you.' I remember I had to get up from where we were and walk out. I stood in the kitchen partly shielded by the fridge and I glared at the man who walked past through the kitchen and into Dad's bedroom. I hated that man for years (not his real name). He had come to close the deal on the new car that Dad was buying for our family to have when he was gone. And for years I have had that regret too about Dad and that moment. Later he called us all in...myself and my brothers and sister and we all sat on the bed with Mum and he told us all that he was going to go to heaven and he would still be with us and watching us. We started to cry and I remember this he said, "why are they crying...." a strange thing to say. I don't think he knew what to say. Mum said gently, 'because they are going to miss you Des." almost in a jokey way. It's funny how even in the most tragic circumstances you have conversations that are normal and life still happens. I can't imagine how hard that must have been for them. All of us sitting there on the bed where we had shared our Saturday morning cups of milky tea and cuddles with our parents. And now there they were telling us that Dad wasn't going to be with us anymore.
A few days later Mum told us that Dad was going to be t
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