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06/24/2002 Archived Entry: “Clearing my mind…”
So, I’ve got some stuff playing on my mind – as per usual – need to clear my brain ‘cos I’m not getting any work done, I’m just sort of staring at the computer thinking about stuff….
So, as I’m sure you can guess I went home for the weekend – seeing my parents again – helping them try to sort out 50 years of their lives – most of which is lying around in boxes in the garage. It’s fairly painful watching them both throw away box after box of memories just because my dad’s ill and they don’t want to have this stuff around if the have to move suddenly. But more than that – watching my dad slip into the same depression which I’ve encountered so often before. That’s so hard to fight.
It’s hard for people who didn’t know him before he got ill to see – but he used to be so energetic, so positive, well – active, we did have a tendancy to call him ‘Marvin’ – ‘cos his outlook was sometimes not wildly positive. It’s hard to explain. And it’s not even the cancer that’s got him – although the depression is at least partially caused by that – it’s one of the side effects of the the treatment – the Anaemia. He’s always been an incredibly intelligent individual – meeting him now, maybe you wouldn’t see it – but this is the same person who built a computer while he was at school (which doesn’t sound that impressive now, but was then!) – helped my sister through her maths degree, was taken on by Digital as a network hardware designer despite the fact he’d not done any design work for 5 years.
I dunno, it’s hard to pin down – he just always seemed to be good at everything. And patient, and hardworking. And right now he can’t do any of that. He can’t do the work because he’s not well enough to – he finds thought hard – because he’s anaemic. Less so now. This weekend he was at least not sleeping the entire time I was there (last weekend he was sleeping much of the time).
He’s so tired – all the jobs he wants to do around the house – he’s to tired to – and hes finding it hard to find the motivation to do that. Where was I reading(?) about human’s ability to sort of deny their own mortality so they can go on and achieve great things despite knowing that at the end of it all you’re still going to die. Well, denied of that ability to ignore that I can see how hard it is to achieve anything. To care about anything.
I heard him saying things I never imagined I’d hear him saying – things I say – things that hurt because I don’t think anything I can say will help him. I tried. In the end I wrote a letter and left it for him – just because I’m crap at expressing myself in person – at least about anything important. I’m better now than I have been but I still have great difficulty – it’s often easier to write it.
But how do you tell someone going through something as horrendous as cancer that it is worth it?
And my mum can see him slipping – I just hope he finds the strength to fight the cancer again. At least, as I say, this week he was up and about – depressed, but up and about. I hope when I go back in two weeks he’ll be happier. Or more determined to fight at least.
