Where Does The Time Go?

Tomorrow, it will be twenty eight years since my Father passed away. I remember the problems I had asking for time off from where I worked to look after him. We weren't busy and in reality I wasn't being missed nor was I being paid whilst not working. Then I had phone calls and hassle asking when I could be expected to return. I resigned.

I remember how eventually he had to be admitted to hospital and we were told that they could not get him better and it was only a matter of time...

How we walked down to the town centre whilst hospital staff did what they have to do and how we cried all the way, how we tried to have a cup of tea and a snack(in a kind of restaurant within a big departmental store)that's long since disappeared.
We went home in the evening to be called back almost immediately.

We arrived at the hospital and just missed him passing away.

The nurse said that he thought he was at home...he asked for a drink of water, as she left the room she turned around and thought something wasn't quite right, she went over to him and he'd gone...

I remember returning another day for his few personal possessions another sad day...you go in with a person and come out with a carrier bag of a few items of clothing or whatever.

The church was full of people and there was little if any space for anyone else to attend.

The Crematorium was having some repairs done so the service was held in an old church on the same site(Dad loved old buildings etc...)so ironically it was appropriate that it was used for him.

Mum doesn't remember but I remember her rushing to the window where the curtain closed on Dad's coffin and her being gently taken into the arms of the vicar who comforted her.

Its been a long time since I visited the Crematorium to see the Book Of Remembrance but it is a little difficult to visit and there is a very long walk when you get there. To think it will be open again tomorrow and for a few hours his name will be there for anyone who happens to visit the little room where the book is.

But we always remember what we had written in it...

My Father's name and our names of course followed by the simple words..."Resting in God's garden, Dearly loved and sadly missed"

How true that is...

I'm not sure if I mentioned it on my blog before but Mum and Dad were as much in love with each other in the final years as when they met. I'm sure as with all marriages there were difficult times but I do remember when through work he had to attend some kind of course in Derby and we missed him so much. He didn't want to do much either so he phone...he even wrote some letters to Mum and myself and in the evening he just stayed in his hotel room and read a book. He was a very big reader...he loved books.

When it was time for him to come home and he met Mum from where she worked it was remarked on how excited she was to see him.

Mum first met him after going to a local venue where most of this areas seemed to go(mainly on a Saturday night for a dance)and she'd seen him walk across the floor and been attracted but never thought she'd see him again.

Then upon waiting in the queue for a bus to go home Mum was being jostled and she felt an arm guide her back into the line(and it was him)they started talking, he walked her home and...

In those days he had a look of the film star Ronald Coleman and had a moustache to match.

When Mum was in hospital(with me, I was born prematurely)he could see Mum from a window so he park his car nearby and clean the car or whatever just so they could still have some kind of contact(visiting a hospital was very different in those days)

Also he nearly lost Mum(let alone me)and he spent all the hours you can think praying all night that we'd be safe, though I suppose his priority was Mum as he did know me yet. And he'd lost his own Mother in child birth having him so it was a little like history repeating itself.

All turned out well in the end.