October Woes

October Woes

Part of October sucks. It’s not because it’s my birthday and I’m getting older. Not at all, if you think in simple terms, you get older or you die. You choose. Exactly, so I’m perfectly OK with being 51 this year.

It’s the fact that family don’t get on board to see I might need them around. If you have followed me for a while, you might recall I had a baby sister born on my 8th birthday? Yeah, best birthday present ever. However, we only shared one birthday together where we were both sick. I’ve one photo of us during the day with mum at the dining table tasting the ice cream cake mum had made and when my baby sister, let’s call her three. When three was only fifteen months and a week old and she was gone.

My aunt said to me last November at a family gathering. No idea how this came up, but my aunt said Three’s funeral to date was still the saddest funeral ever. I had been 8 years old changing nappies and getting up at night because when she got big enough for a cot, the cot outgrew my parents’ bedroom at the front of the house and she took up residence in my room. If she woke during the night and my mum, let’s face it dad isn’t the first parent to jump out of bed in the middle of the night, is he? I would get Three up and carry her towards my parents’ bedroom often intercepted by mum on the way. None of this is wrong, it’s just I think it only occurred to me in more recent years helping me celebrate my birthday means we are not celebrating Three’s birthday. This year, Three would be 43. That’s sobering isn’t it!? It’s a lifetime but it’s something one doesn’t forget.

Some years ago, two of my family members chose to call me at 11.55pm, chanting “it still counts!” Clearly, oblivious I’d been through every emotional roller coaster all day feeling no one gave a fuck. I even finally had my dad trained to call me on my birthday. You heard me, I had to “train” him.

Yeah, I offer a certificate 2 in how to get your parent/significant other to remember to call you on your actual birthday. It’s a Cert 2? I think it would be.

For years, I’d call my father on his birthday every year, he’d be a little embarrassed even telling me it didn’t mean anything and I’d remind him it was HIS Special Day and it should mean something. It was always a pity I couldn’t be there in person to do something nice for him. I regret now, I never sent him a card even. He would have lived off that forever if I had done that. He would have had it on display forever. My mum I would send a card too because obviously I love her too and there would actually be hell to pay if I didn’t. In more recent years with the going to hell that has become of my handwriting, I’d outsource my mum’s card to be written by one of my slaves, OK, my lovely assists, my carers, my mum wasn’t thrilled about that either, you would think she would appreciate not needing a translator. No.

So, sadly the shit birthday is the start of thinking what the plan is for Christmas and where I will be and who I will be with? Also, how accessible it will be and how much time I spend there alone despite being under the same roof as actual family. If I’m not in my apartment, who will love and feed Mika, who will water my plants? One of those cannot be revived, but they are all important.

I had decided to take a year off in what would have been my father’s last Christmas thinking I’d go spend the following year with him and I have to regret about that too, because he didn’t make it. I had gone home for Christmas the year my father had had his heart attack in the early era of the Plague. (You are all aware this is my term, for Covid 19?) and all my carers asked him polite questions “How are you? How long have you lived here? Is it you and your wife?” And oh my God! So dramatic, I could just feel how sad he was. It was overwhelming, my father was horrified by learning his heart had stopped on the table, I wasn’t belittling his trauma however, I kept needing to remind him the surgeons had warned him this can happen. I reminded him the surgeons hadn’t spent however many hours getting his heart and arteries in peak for him to die on the table. I also explained to him when they move you from the surgery trolley, they put a timber board under you by tilting your body up, sliding the board under you then pulling you on the timber to another trolley that you stay on when they relocate you to recovery and then even up to the ward. Yes, I know this because I was conscious when this happened with me. I was alert, needing to pee and very unhappy, I had iodine floating around my arteries in my brain that made my blood pressure drop and nurses start panicking I might expire so they panicked, running around the room. I had wanted to remind them “I’m awake you know? And I can see you! Just calm down” I guess I need to context that now too?

The Christmas I spent alone, my older sister had attempted to be supportive by telling me I could make the decision to be where I would be happiest, even if that meant home alone. I later learnt she had been in my neighbourhood spending Christmas with a friend, more socially isolated than I am, but that it hadn’t occurred to even stop in for a cup of tea, was brutal.